Krishen khanna | Marching to his own beat

The first time we met was at a gathering of luminaries at a retreat in Goa Intent on Saving “Democracy in India”. We did such things in that day distant days of the 70s. Goa was still an Unexplred Destination. There we were dancers, poets, historians, political activists, the odd freedom fighter, one of Each. Manohar Malgankar The Novelist lived in Goa and was our unofficial host to discovering the state, in better the long sessions at the conference table.

Krishen khanna, well known by then, was the artist. He was then as he still is now a handsome man; With a fresh pink complexion from his lyallpur childhood in Pakistan, The Thick Swatch of Hair Falling Over His Forehead, A Secret Smiling Over His Pursed Lips.

When he finally spoke, we listen. “Let us not forget,” He said “the leela of this ancient place, let us not forget to live! ” In that one moment we forgot who we are as individuals.

Khanna was the band-master of every world he entered. In much the same way that the red and gold brass buttoned Bandwallas In his paintings who emerged from his canvases in the 1980s Played their Trumpets Through Marriages, Parades, Political Rallies and Funerals. They marched to their own music.

Street Quartet (Bandwallas)

They could be said to reflect the trafficory of his life. In his autobiography, The time of my life: memory, anecdotes, tall talkof a childhood in lyallpur, now faisalabad in Pakistan, and then in pre-partition lahore, followed by a very privategeed schooling on a Rudyard Kipling Scholating Scholand Schole 1940, Khanna DesCribes How His Father would eat a Piece of Fruit at the Table. “He would almost Attack the fruit and examine it will chomping to see where strategically he needed to bite next. While Motion, simultaneously, so that not a drop of Juice Went Astray… ”in 1947, the family as with many others, left their home driving across the divide in a car. They found a second home in Shimla.

The time of my life: memory, anecdotes, tall talk

“I Remember my interview with the top brass at grindlays bank,” khanna say with the same mischievous smile. “It was a formal dinner with full tableware and cutlery that also included a marrow spoon. He Got Into Grindlays in 1948.

Khanna’s bombay chapter

By then He Had Met Renu Chatterji and Married Her Subsequently. She belonged to an equally distinguished family. Her Brother PC Chatterji is Considered a Doyen of Indian Broadcasting and has written Several Books on the Subject.

When they moved to bombay, the artist in khanna began tugging at his tailored suits. His 1950 painting, News of Gandhiji’s DeathAttraced the attation of rudolf von leyden, the émigré art connoisseur from europe. Von leyden went to anoint the mixed cabal of artists that would put Bombay as it was knowledge as the front runners of post-independence Indian art.

As khanna described von leyden’s influence in a recent biography: “He belonged to a generation of immortals… he never said as much but he was a Votary of Beauty and was not giving other heel Theorses, there was much openness which made Made Discussions [more] Lively. “

Krishen khanna’s Newspaper Reader (2008, oil on canvas)

Another Immortal was HOMI BHABHA, a Great Collector as Well as Being a Scientist. As the head of the tata institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), He Bough One of Khanna’s Paintings for ₹ 225 in the late 1940s. He Created an extraordinarily prescient collection of art that decorated the walls of the tifr. He had started a trend for corporate collector to discover and create a renaissance of Indian art in all its its varied manifestation.

‘He Never Stopped Being An Artist’

In the early 1950s the Khannas came to chennai where their daughter rasika was learning bharatanatyam, and met S. Krishna, a Cultural Advisor to the Usis (Us Consulate General). Khanna’s First Solo Show was at the Usis in 1955. Subsequent, he was to paint a great mural on the Maritime Glory of the Cholas for the newly Built Itc Chola Hotel. The Same Mural Now Gilds The Walls of the ITC Grand Chola.

Long before that khanna’s connection with the itc welcomgroup hotels was fullfilled with the wonderful series of paintings that decorate the Foyer of the Grand Maurya Hotel in New Called The great processionEach Panel Tells The Story in Glowing Colors of the Daily Lives of People in Our World. It combines the tales from the Jataka Of birds and animals as elegantly as that that appear in our miniature tradition, on street corners and albums.

The great procession
Photo Credit: Courtesy @Itcmaurya

When I met the Khannas Again Many Years Later, it was at one of the itc hotels’ Traveling ‘Art Camps’ Organized by Monisha Mukundan, the editor of Namaste Magazine at the time. She had the gift of creating a vivid collage of artists from different affiliation with other crafts people and writers. It was a moveable camp from new delhi, to agra, to jaipur in stages. Khanna may have been the doyen of the group but he never stopped being an artist who sat at his scroll of paper with his pastels and conte crayons driving with all the vigor-or-old.

When Renu and I Stopped to Bargain for a necklet of beated silver being sold outside at a market, Khanna laughed and said: “How typical, you ladies want your freedom but are evrying to bee locking in in Chains! ”

We still bough the silver chain.

The writer is a Chennai-Based Critic and Cultural Commentator.

Published – June 20, 2025 03:10 pm IST