We have seen that over last decade we have been living in a ‘one-party one-opinion world.

The US and its allies have gone bezerk at a pace that it knows no boundaries. Iraqi invasion is just the most visible act, there are scores other going on all the time.

What we have seen since September the 11th an anger of US having been challenged on its own ground is one of the visible results of excesses of ‘one opinion world’ actions.

Now you are either with The powerful or you are out.

In early 80s Mrs. Thatcher believed to be steering the planet, it was Salman Rushdie in his famous speech at the Commonwealth Institute London; who observed that British people missed the opportunity to de-colonise the English language and thinking. He was pointing to an exercise that was felt necessary in Germany after the 2nd world war to de-Nazify the German Language.

Rushdie could see it so clearly, where other British writers/thinkers couldn’t. It was due to the fact that he being a migrant to Britain, he occupied a space, were the artists’, writers’ and thinkers’ awareness become very sharp.

In late nineties, in Britain, media was busy clapping pathological tantrums of Damian Hurst and un-made bed of Tracey Emin, and other British artists were happily busy cherry picking newly created public-art projects, it needed a migrant artist who could see beyond the cherry-pickers. He was first one who felt a need that artists, Writers and thinkers need to collectively provide a counter balance to North Pole’s wobbly spin.

To come up with such observations, the artist must be in neutral space (a no-man’s land). From Where He or she can not only make such an observations but can also use this unique space/situation as springboard to allow a somersault of his/her thoughts and imagination.

Let us look at other way – “If we imagine, the whole of humanity is a large caravan travelling with time. In this caravan most people are busy pulling/pushing, carrying their possessions, sweating in a race of material achievements.

It is the Artist, who disengages him/herself from this entourage; frees him/herself from this rat-race, runs ahead of the caravan, finds a vantage point, to visualise, where the caravan is coming from and where it is heading to. Then the artist expresses this realisation/vision by singing a song, playing a piece of music, making a painting, a sculpture or he/she uses another medium to share it with the world.”

This was a part of an article I wrote in 1989, when I observed that artist must not be part of the material rat race. Having lived in this part of world over 2 decades, I realise that pressures of the western social structures and value systems are such that you have to very determined escape its expectations. When I say expectations/pressures, I talking about the value system where art has become a product, a product that has no real functional value but only supposed value that a handful of people in the market can decide. As result most artists are busy chasing this illusion of success, that is like shadow of a flying bird that you can never catch.

In this so-called free society, most of the artists are busy chasing this shadow. Now it is only the migrant artist who has left his engagements in his own country and has not become the part of the host country’s rat race, who is squatting in this no-man’s land. On one hand he feel homeless, helpless and little frightened of the new environs, but to survive in this space, he/she must sharpen his/her senses and keep observation. He or she can use this unique space as a springboard, from where our imagination can perform a somersault of creative infinity.

Without such observations, and creative somersaults, Hirst and his supporter at the Tate, would tell us, oh! by exhibiting a dissected a cow corpse was to remind us of Human Mortality.

If one reads back the report of William Laurence, August 9, 1945, in New York Times; after he returned from his US military sponsored free trip in the plane that dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki. On his return he very casually called the second atomic bomb, ‘The Great Artiste’. This so-called ‘The Great Artiste’ turned a city of sixty six thousands human beings into corps in one single action.

This is very first time on September 11, the world has realised/understood the mortality of human beings. If is a realisation resulted not by seeing a corpse of dead cow in a glass case or the un-made bed of Emin.

It is challenge for the artist squatting in no-man’s land to make his next observation.