“My life has been a broad canvas…”
A Satish Gujral Interview
Ritika Lall Chakravartty

I was basking in the sun, surrounded by the magnetic life size sculptures, while I also walked through the layers of architectural marvel and set my eyes on the spread of colours. The essence of art was so powerful that it enabled the most enriching journey through the canvas. The master of the canvas was yet to arrive, but I was already so soaked that I needed the manifestations to be understood by the creator himself. My monochrome pages were finally paintedwith his brush.


He arrived on his wheel chair, exuberating energy and warmth. I was welcomed with the most affable smile. At 94, life still looks like a rising shade of sun, a promise to day ahead; mind which still floats in creativity like cloud, memory as clear as sky,heartstill has rainbow and warmth of sun. He says, “an artist is an unrestricted form of his own manifestation”. Creativity has no language or definition, it’s an artist’s dream painted on canvas, formed as sculptures, lived as murals, flowed as poetry, and visualised as structures.

The veteran artist, who lost his hearing ability at the age of 10, due to high fever and was bedridden for some time, he eventually regained his speech, but his hearing could never come back. Never ever disheartened by situation or he lost hope; his constant effort to learn and constant flow of thoughts has kept his spirit so high till today. A well of knowledge, an ocean of creativity and a great story teller; we started the conversation on his early days of undivided India. I could see the play of emotions on his face, the veteran artist recalls the agony and joy both. He was reminiscing, how his entire family was a part of freedom struggle and how his parents served some important days of their life in imprisonment. He also recalled with an extreme emotion that his mother was so grief stricken, the day Bhagat Singh was hanged, as he was her adopted son and his parents were permitted to visit him before he was hanged.


Suddenly, there was a silence in the room, I could sense the dark history and after a gap of two minutes, he sung a Punjabi freedom struggle song, sung by his mother. Hathkadyaanjinhaan da gehnennein,UnhaanPhaansiaan Jhooleylaineynein(Those for whom handcuffs are bracelets,Will treat the gallows as if they are swings) It’s very rare now to hear first-hand undivided India’s tale and to get into the same tunnel of thoughts. His early works were highly emotive narratives of partitions, one can never miss the agony that surfaced in his black and white work.

He also mentioned, Delhi – Lahore Bus, the symbolic efforts made by both the governments to foster peaceful and friendly relation.The maiden journey of Delhi – Lahore Bus 19th February 1999, carried many celebrities who had Pakistan connect, and I was one of the co – passenger.

“I see myself as the enemy of impurity, because out of purity comes nothing, and I thought that was what had happened with abstraction, which was hijacked by the Americans of course…everything is like that, you have to have raw material, and so I decided to ‘rough it up’”