Kathakari by SidharthI have known Sidharth now for maybe fifteen years. We were first introduced
by Manjit Bawa and funnily enough, the reason for engagement then was our
common love for food. Three of us love to cook and eat.
Since then I have begun to understand both his life and his art. I consciously
put life before art because Sidharth is amongst those whose art is just an
expression of his life and painting is just one of the arts he uses for expression.
His involvement with music is no less.
Three years ago I had gone to Konya in Turkey. It was the 17th of December
and it was Jalaluddin Rumi’s Urs, or death anniversary.We were mesmerized
by the music and the intoxicating whirling of Dervishes
little phrase.So influenced was I that twelve months later
we decided to celebrate the event in Delhi. My friends
Madan Gopal Singh and Jasbir Jassi agreed to sing Sufi
compositions and we invited over a hundred friends for
the occasion. I went to invite Sidharth. While accepting
my invite, he modestly suggested that he join the singers.
It turned out that he spends two weeks every year at
Konya, living with the Dervishes and learns to meditate
with them. I agreed to his suggestion even though I didn’t
know what to expect. Then he said that he would paint
Rumi when Madan and Jassi were singing. In two hours?
Yes he said, he should finish the work.
He started the evening with a powerful, almost
guttural call (Hoook) that went on and on. The audience
was enthralled and he sang a full song that he said was
originally sung by one of Rumi’s female devotees. First he
told the story and then he sang the song. The song was
fantastic. And yes, the painting too happened. Like magic
it appeared on a 5ft x 8ft canvas and two weeks later was
adorning my living room. Rumi in prayer with ManjitBawa’s look alike face. It is one of his great works.
So here’s a man who paints, sings, meditates, treks,
designs and builds houses and has learnt art from early
childhood, first from his mother who used natural color
sources to paint pots, then from Tara Mistri, a fresco
painter in his little village in Punjab, then from Sobha
Singh, master of creating eternal images for all of Punjab,
before becoming a Lama in Dharamshala for 6 years just
to study Thangka painting. As if that isn’t enough, he gets
formal art education from Chandigarh Art College and
then finally ends up working in Delhi.
Somewhere in between he had a stint in Sweden long
enough to imbibe some of their cultural traditions and folk
tales – each lost in his own