PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST
In one of the last interviews before his death this month, artist Ram Kumar turns the pages of his life – from his days of struggle in Paris to sketching in Banaras with fellow artist MF Husain
It was in early February that I met the late artist Ram Kumar at his home in Delhi’s Bharti Artist Colony for an interview. Little did I know then that this would be among the nonagenarian’s last interviews and that he would have passed away before it was published. At his age – Kumar would have turned 94 this September – death is not unexpected. But with his passing away on April 14, an era ended in Indian art, an era that had also seen the genius of MF Husain, SH Raza and Francis Newton Souza.
It was a quiet house I walked into that February day, a quiet that was perhaps combs for delousing, which suggests they were particular about hygiene.”
SYMBOLS OF LOVE, LUCK
Among the Murias, a Gond tribe of the Bastar region, unmarried boys would make ornate wooden combs and present them to their favourite girls.
The girls would flaunt each piece they received in their hair until the day of marriage. Once married, they would preserve the one gifted by their husband and return the rest.
Among the Kukis – a hill tribe from Manipur – men wear long hair fixed in a knot with wooden combs that they treasure. Losing your comb is considered unlucky. During wedding ceremonies, the priest presents a comb to the couple. “It’s considered a sacred object. They preserve reflective of the calm of its occupant. The renowned painter sat in the drawing room, unshaven, a handkerchief clutched in one hand, a walking stick resting nearby to his left. The famed Delhi winter was on its way out. But the artist was doubly guarded against the chill by the electric heater that radiated warmth into the room and the zipped-up cardigan that he wore. The perfect host, he pressed sweets and mathri on me as I sat down.
The once world-traveller was now house bound: “I have stopped going out,” he said. But his art still kept him busy and he would paint, he said, “for five-six hours every day.” This dedication was one of the traits that fellow artist Krishen Khanna found so remarkable about Ram Kumar. “He never wasted time and painted regularly,” said Khanna. “He had a vision, which few have. He was very truthful to himself. I wish I could paint like him.”
Yet, art had come late to Kumar. A contemporary of artists like Satish Gujral, he had a Masters in economics and had worked at a bank. He also wrote and published short stories in Hindi before devoting himself to art. “When the art increased, I stopped writing,” he told me, when I asked him about his writing.
In the beginning, he learned under artist Sarada Ukil, before going on to Paris to study art under Andre Lhote and Fernand Leger in 1950-51. He had no contacts or money and the two years that he spent in Paris were a struggle. Fame and prosperity would eventually come to him, but during his student days in the French capital, he would, he remembered, often go hungry – living on bread and vegetables because meat was so expensive. “I had no energy. My stomach protruded, but the hunger remained,” he recalled.
The tempting fragrance wafting out of a pastry shop on his way to the university made him change his route since he couldn’t afford such delicacies. “Cheap food – priced at about ~5 - was available to
MEET THE ART COLLECTOR RETRACING HISTORY THROUGH COMBS
this comb for the rest of their life,” Duary says. Only man and wife may use the same comb, states British scholar LA Waddell, in his book, The Tribes of the Brahmaputra Valley (originally published in 1900). “When a man dies, his comb is buried with him, and his relatives break their combs and go about with dishevelled hair for days.”
The finger-sized combs in Mahawar’s collection were used by Bhil tribals to curl moustaches and tame beards. “They kept them tucked in their turbans,” he says.
The Gwarias of Ajmer in Rajasthan carved a peacock and a mango into the comb presented to a bride on her wedding day, as symbols of fertility.
“Over the past few decades, plastic alternatives have flooded the market. So it’s rare to find a tribe still making such combs,” Mahawar says.
FULL CIRCLE
Mahawar began collecting combs in the early 1960s, soon after he moved from Madhya Pradesh to Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region to set up a rice mill.
He had graduated in economics, but a keen interest in art led him to explore the bronze sculptures made here using the lost-wax technique. That’s when he discovered the tribal combs.
Over the next four decades, he travelled across the region studying tribes and their art, and also slowly adding to his growing collection of combs. His findings — including some of the rarest combs he came across — were published by Abhinav Publications in 2011, as Bastar Bronzes.
About 150 combs from Mahawar’s collection will also soon move into a museum being built for his collection at the Pandit Ravishankar Shukla University in Raipur. In a few months, a 5,000-sq-ft hall will hold bronze sculptures, traditional masks, paintings and combs.
“Mr Mahawar’s collection is rich in meaning and symbolism,” says Arun Kumar, professor of prehistoric archaeology and paleoanthropology at the University. “It’s important to preserve these rare artefacts.”