ARPANA CAUR SHARES SOME THOUGHT WITH KAINAAT FATIMA

As Shakespeare said, “The world’s a stage, and we are all mere players”, my story too since its beginning substantiated changes of our turbulent times. A story that gave me the wisdom to accept and portray the truth, A story that gave me the mind-altering turn to my thoughts, and a story that made me help perceive the world from all perspectives. Hence I consider my Artwork as the mirror of the society that tried to signify the odds and evens of the change around me. This is the story of two of my early series.


I am an Artist and a bit of a social activist. This is the journey of my life where I credit my Mother, Mrs. Ajeet Caur for making me what I am today. My journey was unique yet similar to that of the others. When I was a child, I was drawn to the works of Amrita Sher-Gil and since my mom never associated me with a name or a religion, I wanted to take up her name as mine. Today, I understand why people often called my mother as the black sheep of our family of doctors and why she didn’t keep my name. She went against the stigma of society. She wanted me to see the world from every perspective and not giving me a name, was a sign of not letting me associate myself with any doctrine. This in turn helped me to look at society from a perspective that was way beyond anyone’s imagination. My mother wanted me to get familiar with classical dance, sitar, and music because she always acquainted me with the thought to understand that “


It was always important to never forget the roots, even if one reaches the sky of success” and despite me being well versed with classical dance, I saw myself getting attracted to the world of vibrant charcoals and bare walls that often spoke a thousand words to me. At the age of nine, I came out with my first oil painting. This painting of mine reflected the admiration I had for Amrita SherGil as I painted from an inspiration of her painting and called it “Mother and Daughter. My name was yet unknown and then one day one of my teachers asked me to keep a name. I went to my mom and told her and she said to keep any name I wanted and like every kid, I also wanted to keep a name on someone I admired and hence thought of Amrita. However, a sudden chill went down my spine as I realized that I was nowhere near her and hence I did not have the choice of keeping such a precious name and so I switched it over to Arpana and even the usual “Kaur” was changed into “Caur” as my mother used C instead of K. This thus reminds me of an incident when I met Mr. Mulk Raj Anand, who was a close associate of my mom. He asked me for my name and I said Arpana Caur and he in a humorous tone said Arpana and Caur do not match and the only response I could give was that this is the name I like. Such was my childhood, a story on its own but all of this did not hamper me from pursuing the choice of career I wanted, rather it helped me to work more diligently on the choices I was about to make in my youth. I was rather given the choice to choose my career, in times when Painting was not itself a career