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Artist Pallavi Paul presents two World War II espionage episodes whose details are still shrouded in mystery

Their misrepresentation can colour history. Gargi Gupta finds out.

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Spies and ciphers (the secret codes spies use to send messages) seem unlikely subjects for art, but Pallavi Paul manages to seemingly use them to fashion two art installations, currently on view at 24 Jorbagh, the art space by The Gujral Foundation, in Delhi.

'Burn the Diaries', as one of them is called, is based on the life – rather death – of Noor Inayat Khan, a British spy of part Indian origin who was killed in France during World War II. Ironical, says Paul, for Noor was the descendant of Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore who gave the British colonial army a hard time in the late 18th century. Even though she's the recipient of the George Cross, UK's second highest gallantry award, Noor has been forgotten in Britain and India. Noor's pedigree is of interest also because her father, Hazrat Inayat Khan, was a Sufi teacher of the Chisti order who moved to the West in 1910, married an American and settled in Paris.

Noor's cover was blown by Hitler's Gestapo, it is known – but how did she die? Paul found the answer, actually answers, while going through Noor's SOE personnel file, at the National Archives in London. For there are multiple versions of her death, going by the letters written to her loved ones. In one, she is shot at the back of the head, in another she is given a lethal injection, in a third she's beaten, and so on.

Burn the Diaries consists of such multiple versions stuck on rolls of butter paper, with their transcriptions in Morse Code – used by spies and radio operators in Noor's time. In the background is a recording of a performance at the Imperial War Museum during which Paul got visitors to read out the Morse translation of Noor's SOE file, a sequence of "duhs and dits" which sound gibberish – the exact narrative of Noor's death.

'Bluff Check Omitted', as the other art-work is called, too draws from World War II espionage. This one is a series of "photographic portraits", as Paul calls them, of the 'Playfair Code' cards used by British soldiers. Playfair Code, explains Paul, was a cipher used by the Allied forces that helped them defeat the Germans. Like other ciphers, Playfair worked on the principle of a "key" to decode meaning, but where it differed was in having not one key, but an individual key for each user, to be devised by the user himself, using Playfair Code cards. Each user chose a phrase, "I love you darling", "whisky and soda", "Talk to me in bed" – anything that came to mind, as the unique code. Read together, says Paul, "they are an archive of memories, emotions, desires, confessions – for many of them didn't know whether they'd ever make it out."

So what is it about spies and cyphers that excites her? Not much says Paul, "I'm not interested in knowing if Noor survived or if she died." What interests the artist, also a filmmaker and will take part in the Contour Biennale in Belgium next month, are the stories that the British spy bosses told about Noor's death. "What I want to know is what is at stake in so graphically representing and misrepresenting, and re-representing, and un-representing this moment in history. And why?"

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