Memories of a valiant Effort : Amba Sanyal
The little child in the photograph of the Delhi Silpi Chakra members with an Indonesian delegation was me an eon ago – witnessing something whose significance I was totally oblivious of.
Artists, who were immigrants from Lahore and others who shared a high octane level of the making of a new era, were searching for ways of building pro-active bonding. This was with people who were perhaps not artists or at least not practicing artists. Also they were looking to create a space of reflection and interaction amongst themselves, as they had much to share and much to learn from each other. This was the urge of the democratic process which was the consuming force motivating them; they were initiating the freedom run which was coursing in their veins. They wanted to carry the fledgling democracy and its ‘PEOPLE’ as partners in the making of this new world.
The fact that they were driven as a group, seeking their own artistic language, and also the need to communicate in equal measure, made them wither all kinds of obstacles. They met under trees, in parks, in each others’ homes, sat on ‘durries’ and ‘moodas’ or on the mud or grass, or later in institutional buildings, having been donated free slots of time for their use. The fire that they forged supported by their undoubted romanticism was not just the prevalent, but in fact the dominant flavor of the times. I was unknowingly imbibing it, playing in the mud, in their midst.