When we met for the first time, there was a luminaries’ gathering on a retreat in the intention of Goa to save “democracy in India”. We did such work in those distant days of the 70s. Goa was still an unexplained destination. The dancer, poet, historian, political activist, odd freedom fighter, were one of each. Manohar Malgakar lived in the novelist Goa and was our informal host to search the state amidst long sessions in the conference table.
Till then Krishne Khanna was well known. That was when he is still a beautiful man; In Pakistan, her Lylpur with a fresh pink color from her childhood, a thick switch of hair falling on her forehead, a secret smile was playing on her ripe lips.
When he finally said, we heard. “Don’t forget us,” they said ” Leela Out of this ancient place, we should not forget to live! “In that one moment we forgot who we were.
Khanna was the band-master of every world he entered. In the same way as a red and gold brass button Bandwallus His paintings emerged from their canvas in the 1980s played their trumpets through marriage, parade, political rallies and funerals. He marched on his own music.
Road quarter
They may be asked to reflect the trajectory of their lives. In his autobiography, My life time: memories, anecdotes, long talkIn a childhood in Lyalpur, now Faisalabad in Pakistan, and then East-Bhajan in Lahore, followed by a very privileged schooling on Rudyard Kipling Scholarship at Imperial Service College in 1940, after a very privileged schooling, Khanna explained how his father would eat a piece of fruit on the table. “He will almost attack the fruit and to see that he needs to be cut strategically, where his teeth need to be drowned in the fruit, to see that she looks at this, she will be set in some kind of suction, together, so that a drop of juice wandered …” She found a second house in Shimla.
My life time: memories, anecdotes, long talk
“I remember my interview with top brass at Grindlaz Bank,” Khanna says with the same mischievous smile. “It was a formal dinner with full tableware and cutlery which included a marrow spoon. When he served a marrow bone, I used a marrow spoon as I did in my school days in England.” He joined Grindle in 1948.
Khanna’s Bombay Chapter
By then he met Renu Chatterjee and later married her. She belonged to an equally prestigious family. His brother PC Chatterjee is considered a doctor of Indian broadcasting and has written several books on this subject.
When he moved to Bombay, the artist in Khanna started hanging in suits. His 1950 painting, News of Gandhiji’s deathÉmigré art connoisseur from Europe, attracted the attention of Rudolf von Leden. Von Leden went to anoint a mixed cabel of artists who used to put Bombay as it was known as runners in front of Indian art after independence.
As Khanna recently described the influence of von Leden in a biography: “He belonged to a generation of Amar … He never said, but he was a voter of beauty and was not given to hold him tightly, was a very open mind that discussed [more] lively. ,
Krishman Khanna Newspaper reader (2008, oil on canvas)
Another immortal Homi Bhabha, being a scientific as well as a great collector. As head of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), he bought one of Khanna’s paintings for ₹ 225 in the late 1940s. He created an exceptionally presentation collection of art, which decorated the walls of TIFR. He started a trend for corporate collectors to discover and create a renaissance of Indian art in all his diverse expression.
‘He never stopped becoming an artist’
In the early 1950s, Khannas came to Chennai, where his daughter Rasika was learning Bharatanatyam, and cultural advisor of USIS (US Consulate General) S. Met Krishnan. Khanna’s first single show was in USIS in 1955. Subsequently, he was depicted a great mural on the maritime glory of the cholas for the newly created ITC Chola Hotel. The same mural now brightens the walls of ITC Grand Chola.
Khanna’s relationship with ITC Velcomgroup Hotels long ago was fulfilled with a wonderful series of pictures decorating the Foreer of the Grand Maurya Hotel in New Delhi. called Great processionEach panel tells the story in the shining colors of people’s daily life in our world. It connects stories with Jatak Birds and animals as elegant as those who appear in our short tradition, on road corners and albums.
Great procession
Photo Credit: Courtesy @ItcMaurya
When I met the mines again after several years, it was in one of the ITC Hotels Traveling ‘Art Camps’, organized by Monisha Mukundan. Namstaye The magazine at that time. He had a gift to create a vivid collage of artists with various affiliation with other craft people and writers. It was a movable camp from New Delhi, Agra, Jaipur. Khanna may have been a group’s doctor, but he never stopped becoming an artist who was sitting on a paper scroll with his pastels and conte crayons, who drawn with all the power of a four -year -old child.
When Renu and I stopped to bargain for a necklace of beaten silver being sold outside in a market, Khanna laughing and said: “How special is, you want your freedom, but want to be locked in chains everywhere!”
We have still bought a silver chain.
The author is a Chennai-based critic and cultural commentator.
Published – June 20, 2025 03:10 pm IST
