Hello Tyeb,
When I saw a painting of yours in an exhibition catalogue, for the first time I came to know that a person like you exists. For me, the world of colours and lines was restricted to M.F. Hussain, Picasso and other such celebrated names.
Do not be mistaken. I have no knowledge of paintings. I was sitting along with an accomplished print artist who was touching up photos of a musician for us. And, I hated you because, someone would call him and he would keep aside our work and start touching up your celebrated work, Kali.
But, my hate lasted for only a minute. As I saw this accomplished print artist playing with the scary blue colour of your Kali and trying to match the scan colour with original painting, I could sense my heart melting in the blues. Honestly, in spite of this, I truly got interested by you when I read the auction price of a few crore rupees noted against Kali.
“He is really something!” I thought.
After this short interaction with you, I absolutely forgot you. But, our meeting was not supposed to be so short. Two days ago, while I was having a cup of coffee at the Zen Cafe at Amdavad Ni Gufa, I saw a book store around. From their glass walls, I could see piles of heavy and costly books.
As I entered the book store, Ideas Images Exchanges was the first book to greet me. Though I had to catch a flight and had very little carrying space, I bought the bulky book along with Svaraj written by Ramchandran Gandhi.
For past two days, your colours, strokes and immortal figures from your famous Shantiniketan Triptych have been haunting me. I call those figures immortal because they touch human or life instincts which are temporary yet perennial. How can you, on a piece of paper show something which is trivial and then something which is significant; as significant as the existence itself?
At first, your paintings look absurd. To a novice like me, the dark blues and reds in them might even look obscene or Bibhatsa. It was Ramchandran Gandhi who held my hand and showed me what richness you had put together on the canvas.
As a student of music, I am more touched by you and your work. We musicians have a Tanpura which gives some reference to us. Though finding a correct shade of a note takes lifelong practice for a musician, I wonder what it must be taking for a painter to select a shade of colour to convey what he or she wants to!
I know, your paintings are nothing more than just a drop of what you are and what you have absorbed looking patiently at life around you. A painter or any artist, can never flourish if he is only concerned about his art and not bothered about the play, leela happening around. And then, the artist also has to master the Sakshibhav, the role of a witness to see through this Leela. I deeply admire you for the fact that you managed to be on both the sides of this curtain of Maya and managed to show both the sides of it on a single canvas.
As I google more about you, I understand how your paintings being sold for crores of rupees helped little with your financial situation. Who am I to tell you that you have accomplished much more than piling up huge sums of money?
Through your works, you preserved a seed which will blossom when the right time comes!
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