Top Notch | Scenographer Sumant Jayakrishnan: 'I want to create stories and spaces that heal'

When Sumant Jayakrishnan turned 50 three years ago, he threw himself a party that his guests are still talking about. It was a Babylonian costume ball, at a friend’s New Delhi farmhouse, that started at dusk and should’ve ended at dawn but went on till office began. The garden was filled with sequinned elephants and neon cows, had 10 DJs playing through the night, and had Jayakrishnan wear a skirt, a corset and African braids.

“There were four Frida Kahlos, a Freddie Mercury and a Mother Mary too. Yeah, a lot of monsters crawled out of the woodwork,” Jayakrishnan laughs. “But the best part is I had said no gifts, and requested for people to donate to an animal shelter instead. We raised Rs 25 lakhs that night.”

The country’s best scenographer, installation artist and costume designer is just back from Goa putting together an elaborate wedding. It’s amazing that he is still working, as a freak accident four years ago nearly took him. Jayakrishnan slipped on a rug at home and hit his head on a table, causing two fractures in his head and a torn tissue near his brain. It took him months to physically heal, but the emotional trauma can still be heard when he speaks.

“Perhaps one needs to look at oneself through another person’s lens. When you are younger you put things away in your head. But these are gifts that help you learn about yourself. I had started dealing with depression and therapy more than 15 years ago, and I was glad to be able to deprogram myself, to be open and creative, and to break away from a pattern,” he says.

As the son of a bureaucrat father, Jayakrishnan went to seven schools when growing up– from Arunachal Pradesh to Goa to Delhi. When in a Grade 11 Biology class, he realised he could draw. He applied at the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad and was accepted. This was in 1986, when the large campus had just 150 students (it can now house more than 600). “NID was a jewel, it was a little cocoon of self-discovery and leaving your baggage behind,” he says. He studied visual communication, graphics, advertising, filmmaking and animation. “In my fourth year there they opened a program for exhibition and space design,” he adds. His final project was on design and costumes for a ‘Mahabharata’ style musical. Five years later, he would professionally repeat his work for Lillette Dubey’s rendition in Mumbai. At the National School of Drama, he would work with Barry John and Chandralekha. The British Council then gave him a grant to go to England, for two years he apprenticed with the design team of ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ and ‘The Lion King’. Ten years later, he would be back designing the set and costumes for Tim Supple’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.

He also costumed for films. Govind Nihalani was a friend of his aunt, the playwright Manjula Padmanabhan. “He bumped into me at an exhibition of khadi and he offered me ‘Thakshak’. He asked me to act in his next film, playing a transgender villian which was fun,” he recalls. “I met Deepa Mehta at an airport and worked on ‘Water’ with her. The hunger for the experience of film was there, but it ate up all my other projects,” Jayakrishnan smiles,
He then began to do the runway sets and exhibitions for fashion week, which brought him great fame. He began to design for weddings, most recently Lalit Modi’s daughter Aliya’s in Venice, which he had a blast working on.

“When I plan weddings, I ask the family to fill a form for me listing their favourite foods, travels, films, life-changing moments and such. Then I come back with 150 pages of imagery and ask them to respond to it. This exercise helps me delve into their minds and find what gives them joy and hope. I want to create stories and spaces that heal, the solutions are all theirs. Someone told me I’m a healer of demons. I function from a place of love.”

I read in an interview where Jayakrishnan says scenography is a cross-pollination of arts. “It’s true, our weddings are our cultural chroniclers. They are a true example of where we are as a society today. They tell stories, whether it is an opera, a music festival or a wedding, they all tell stories,” he avers.

Jayakrishnan remains one of the most beautifully dressed men in the country. He wears a mundu and kajal daily, and tons of silver and tribal jewellery. He really is his best canvas. “My mother had a greta mix of monastic saris. My grandfather was a Freemason, and I’d see him dress up and perform rituals, which I didn’t know of when I was younger. My years in fashion have brought me incredibly close to the industry. Manish Arora, Tarun Tahiliani are my closest friends and I’ve learned so much from them. Punk from Manish, swank from Tarun and textile craft from Gudda (Rohit Bal), I learned how to read people via their fashion. Manish did a show for the Freemasons in London last May and he had me weeping,” he says.

“But I am totally into bindis these days. I went for Bharti Kher’s 60th birthday and I wore a dress with a bindi on my forehead and a sperm motif on my sleeve,” he laughs.

Namrata Zakaria is a seasoned writer and editor, and a chronicler of social and cultural trends. Her first book, on late fashion designer Wendell Rodricks’ Moda Goa museum, is due to be published shortly. Zakaria is especially known for her insider’s take on fashion, luxury and social entrepreneurship in India. Her writing is appreciated for shaping opinions, busting myths, making reputations and sometimes breaking the odd career. Zakaria is also involved in putting together philanthropic efforts in the field of economic and environmental sustainability.

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