Smoke and fire

All this while I have been trying to muster the courage to sit and write about my memories of this wonderful lady called Indru Bhatia.Indru ...

All this while I have been trying to muster the courage to sit and write about my memories of this wonderful lady called Indru Bhatia.

Indru was known in the studio pottery circle as 8216;the master of smoked firing8217;. Normally, one would think that fire and smoke have their own ways, and only a little can be done by the potter to control it. But it seemed that Indru could actually command her way and get those amazingly beautiful patterns on her clay pebbles. I had seen some in a show in Delhi.

I met her about five months back while I was visiting Mumbai. I was on vacation with a friend who was also a potter. We took an appointment with her and she, most enthusiastically, agreed to meet us. While planning our day we had considered it just a courtesy call.

We went to her studio at Colaba. It was a cozy place, which she shared with her daughter, a weaver trained in UK. We started chatting about how Indru got interested in pottery. She joined Ray Meeker and Deborah Smith in Pondicherry. After having learnt the basics, she worked on her own for a while. Very soon she realised that glaze ware was not her way of expression.

Though she was convinced with the medium of clay, it had to be something unglazed 8212; softer and nearer to nature. She visited UK and USA and met potters working in smoked firing techniques. She found the concept very fascinating. Back home she started her experiments with smoked ware. She had a lot to discover, she said, since not many people had worked on this technique in the country. And one thing she repeatedly said was that she was in a hurry; she had no time to waste.

We got so engrossed in the discussion that we lost track of time. Over the last few years, Indru had developed a series of smoked fired clay stones. She called them meditation stones. Each one of them was hand made and had lovely colours ranging from bright orange to soft pink, calcium white to jet black.

It was a few weeks back when I went to Mumbai again and this time it was a short business trip. I called Indru and she immediately recognised me. I was surprised because we had never spoken on the phone and she had no idea about my plans to be in Mumbai at that time. She said she was busy preparing for a show at Mumbai. I asked her to bring a show to Delhi, too. That was when she observed, 8216;Rahul, after all I am running against time!8217; I wondered why she was saying that. She seemed fine. She told me that she had made a pebble for me and invited me for a cup of coffee at her studio the next day.

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Indru passed away in her sleep that night. Her daughter sent the pebble that she had made for me. Now it is a priceless piece in my collection.