Artist Krishen Khanna’s memory is a repository of uncountable anecdotes. Even at 93, he recounts intimate details of many a moment he holds dear in his heart. There is one in particular which he remembers vividly for it illustrates how desperate times call for desperate measures. As a young man of 21, who had fled his home in Lahore along with his family for the fear of persecution before the Partition, he was restless in his new ‘home’ in Shimla. He was on tenterhooks for he felt that being the eldest in the family, he was expected to share responsibilities with his father. “I had lost a job and didn’t want everything to be piled up on my father’s shoulders,” recalls one of the last surviving modernists of India. It was almost around six weeks that he, like many others, was confused and bewildered — trying to make sense of what had happened. The confusion compounded by joblessness and it was doing more harm than good to the mental state of Krishen. “I didn’t know what to do. Inside me, I was still locked and closed.” In the midst of this, he went to watch a play to temporary distract himself from the grim realities of surroundings. It was here a fortune stroke of serendipity changed the course of his life. He met a man from the Grindlays Bank asking him whether he was an alumnus of the prestigious Imperial Service College. It was the ‘tie’ from the alma mater that gave away the cue of his identification. “He asked me if I would be interested in joining a bank. At that point in time, I would have joined anything,” says the nonagenarian. So, the person then spoke with his manager and subsequently an interview was arranged with the chairman of the bank in Delhi. And this was where the most interesting interviews of his life took place. As he met the chairman in the Connaught Place, he asked him, “So, you want to join the bank?” I replied, “Yes, Sir.” “What makes you think that you would be a good banker?” I said, “Nothing at all, sir.” He looked slightly puzzled and posed, “Then why do you want to join the bank.” To this, I said, “Have you heard that there has been a Partition in this country?” “So you want a job?” As Krishen replied in affirmative, the chairman said, “Ok! You have got it.” The interview lasted not more than five minutes but this was how he became a banker. It wasn’t a profession of his choice, but a means for living. And at that point in time all that mattered was ‘survival’.
Krishen Khanna’s "A Girl Combing Her Hair"
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The Padma Bhushan recipient can’t pin point a particular time in his life when he took the brush in his hands. His father had come back from Milan after finishing his PhD and brought a small print of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’. He then explained to little Krishen the concept behind the popular work of the Italian artist. Krishen tried to copy the painting, but couldn’t succeed. Nevertheless, it ignited a fire within him to learn the craft of brushes and strokes. But he also gives credit to his father for encouraging all his children to take up a creative activity. And the patriarch would ensure that every Sunday his children would engage themselves in creative activities. “Each one of us would busy ourselves doing some kind of art. My father, who had lost his right arm as a child, would go to the Mayo School of Art to learn from a gentleman called Mr Gupta. So, art has always been a part of my life,” says the artist. In fact, while he was in the boarding school in England, he was one of the few students who had taken up arts as a subject. The drawing and sketching has been a regular feature of his life and continues to be. In fact, post the Partition, he used the canvas as an expression of his outpourings. Art continued to be intrinsic to his life as he moonlighted as an artist even while he was employed with the bank for 14 years. The self-taught artist nurtured the passion with single-minded focus, forged profound friendships with the likes of Ram Kumar, S H Raza and M F Husain and was also a member of the Progressive Artists’ Group. Even at the twilight years of his life, he continues to spend a minimum of seven to eight hours at his basement studio at his house in Gurugram. He calls it a day only after engaging in a good ‘drawing session’.
Krishen Khanna’s “Sarangi player”
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A year after Krishen turned 90, he lost one of his close associates, Raza. The news of his death has slightly jarred him as even after a year, at an art gathering, he had candidly admitted how the loss of losing his friends ‘one after another’ was unrepairable. So, when the news of veteran Ram Kumar’s death beeped into our phones last month, I too, like many of my fellow writers, dialled him in. Only to be told to visit him if I wished to speak at great length. An opportunity I seized in no time and after a few weeks of communication we sealed the fate of our appointment for a Saturday morning. I was surprised when he opened the door of his red-brick leafy house. He was wearing a black shirt and looked radiant. The effusive boyish charm dominating his overall disposition, with the silver hair falling elegantly on his forehead. Inside, a striking monochromatic painting by his contemporary Akbar Padamsee adorned the full wall of the drawing room. A small Raza painting hung on the adjacent wall. But the living room, where I was seated, displayed his version of ‘The Last Supper’ and a magnificent painting of St Francis stood on the ground, against the wall. He sat right before it, making it a perfect background to capture him in our frame. After we wrapped our protracted and interesting conversation, he took me down to his studio which smelled of fresh paint. It was messy with his tools for scrapping hanging neatly on the walls and brushes of all sizes and shapes placed in the empty single malt whisky boxes. The wall along the staircase which led us to his studio offered a collage of his eclectic, youthful days. One particular frame that caught my attention was a photograph by celebrated lensman Raghu Rai who had captured the artist in various moods. A colourful work-in-progress shone bright on the easel. The ubiquitous and a recurring muse of Krishen’s oeuvre — the bandwallah was once again making his presence felt in the silent surroundings of the artist’s workplace. His obsession with the Chaplinesque bandwallahs in red uniforms is well known, but not many know that he picked on them not only because Krishen has always painted the ‘common man’, but also because they were the “post-Partition variety”. “There is something sad and musical about them. Like refugees, they too came to this side of the border and like me, they too didn’t know what to do in life. They had the skill, got together and waited for the first wedding session. The irony is that nobody wants them otherwise. So, I have some affinity for them,” he says.
Krishen Khanna at residence
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For many years, he was the most underrated artist of India and unlike his contemporaries whose paintings broke records across several auction platforms. Unfazed by these developments, Krishen continued to focus on his art and took up projects that challenged him. One of it being the ‘The Great Procession’, a monumental and elaborate mural in the dome-shaped ceiling of the ITC Maurya Hotel in the Capital. It took almost five years in making, but it contributed immensely to hone his skills. But devoting himself to his first love and foremost passion – panting was only possible once he could dedicate himself to it completely. For almost 14 years in the bank, painting was a moonlighting exercise. But by 1961 he had reached a crucial junction where he had to make a choice. He had saved enough to survive and fulfilled all his responsibilities as the eldest son. So, when he broached the subject of pursuing his passion, he wasn’t surprised to find support from his wife whom he calls his “pillar of strength”. The two have been together since childhood and got married in 1950. Their years of companionship has only strengthened over years. “I had a wife who could support me. She taught English at the Modern School in Delhi. In fact, she is better educated than me.” However, the biggest surprise came when he disclosed the decision to his father. “He said, ‘You only live once. If you want to paint, go ahead and do that.’” So, without any inhibitions he went ahead and tendered his resignation. After that he hasn’t looked back. “Once I got full-time into it, it became my occupation. So what happened was that I started thinking about painting the whole time. My mind would be preoccupied by it all the time. The improvement and the change of idiom reflected through my works,” he recollects. Painting became more like a journey for him afterwards. A sense of immense freedom engulfed him and he was no more scared of making mistakes. “I learnt by making mistakes. In fact, everyone makes mistakes. But, if you don’t act and avoid making mistakes then you have negative energy within you. One has to push himself hard to learn. This is the part of the game.” The gamble paid off and he became the first Indian artist to win a year-long fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, US, and was invited to be the artist-in-residence at the American University in Washington DC.
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A witness of the Partition, Krishen, whose paintings evoke the uncertainty of the turbulent times and the bloodshed and massacre that ensued, is heartbroken by the machinations of the political parties which are using caste and religion as a tool to divide India. “Nobody would have imagined that the Partition would mean this. We never thought that the movement of people across the border would be restricted. The worst has happened to people of my generation because for us, Muslims were our friends. So, suddenly I can’t start thinking or believing that they are vile and horrible people. But then, the new generation didn’t go there and has no friends on that side of the border. So, they are beginning to look at them as ‘the other’. This isn’t a good thing. Actually, there is no other. Good and bad people are on both sides of the border.”
The current political climate of the country has also left him disappointed. For he believes that a country that is starving its farmers and pushing them to commit suicides, has no right to make flyovers and concrete buildings. “Isn’t it sad that these people can’t even afford to live?” The times of the Partition were “intolerant” too, he admits, but what is being played out on the national stage has started bothering him, especially questioning the role of judiciary in India, almost 70 years after its independence.
“We are questioning the hierarchy of judiciary. I don’t want to comment on this thing, but I would say that a disciplined society is always better. Discipline doesn’t mean that it runs over everything. It is there to facilitate and get work done.”
“We are living through a difficult time and this certainly impinges me and my community. And my community is the art world. An artist can’t assume the responsibility of changing the situation directly, but all we can do and should do is to keep the memory alive of the times we have witnessed.”
Renowned painter Ram Kumar
On Ram Kumar
He was a great man. Yes, it is sense of loss. But I have also realised that these things have to happen. So, there is no pity in this. It is just how the life on this earth is. I had met him in Delhi for the first time. Then when I was posted in Kanpur, he came there for some work and we met again. But while I was away, we corresponded a lot. He would write a postcard in his tiny handwriting. Many said that he was a recessive person, but then so was Gaitonde. However, Ram had no room for small talk, but strangely whenever all of us would meet, we always indulged in plenty of small talks. Of course, he would be missed. Man is nowhere a more tenacious settler than among right thorns and ruins and yet he nourishes the seed of content. But there is a sense of release and a sense of regret at every farewell. And always will be till the last of the dark departure. Isn’t this the truth of life?
