The romance with art continues…

Gujral my have been pushed into silence by fate, but it was his choice to return to it after he realised that the cacophony of worldly sounds—which he could hear after a cochlear implant—did not suit his sensibilities. He got the implant removed a couple of years ago. “I did not like what I heard and decided to go back to my own world,” he smiles, sipping coffee at his red-brick home in Delhi, as wife Kiran looks on. A trained artist, she decided to become, what Gujral terms, his “best critic”, instead of painting her own works. She became an interface between him and the world outside and a supporter in the unconventional path he paved for himself as an artist. 

For instance, while others in the art fraternity were reluctant to experiment, Gujral dabbled in varied mediums—paper collage, ceramics and even burnt wood sculptures, which he took to after observing the colourful embers yielded by wood fire. “I always wanted to try new things. Many artists prefer to play safe by following a style already accepted by the market but I look for constant reinvention,” says the artist, who has even won international laurels as an architect. He built a palace for the Saudi royal family during the reign of the late King Faisal. He even designed the domed, red-brick Belgian embassy in Delhi. It won him the honour of being the only non-Belgian architect to be bestowed with the Belgian government’s Order of the Crown award. Gujral calls his tryst with architecture ‘accidental’. “A friend casually asked me if I could design buildings and I immediately thought, ‘Why not!’,” he recalls. 

Challenges failed to intimidate Gujral, even when he was a student at the JJ school of Art. He refused to accept the vocabulary promoted by the Progressive Artists Group that attracted the likes of SH Raza, FN Souza, Jehangir Sabavala and MF Husain. “I could not relate to the Western techniques adapted by the group,” he recalls. So, he gleaned Indian mythology and history to search for modernism. His inclination towards Indian history is reflected in his works on the Partition and colonialism, the most celebrated one of which is Shatranj ke Khiladi that depicted indifferent rulers enjoying themselves even as their subjects are left to misery. “I have often used art to express my experiences,” says the Padma Vibhushan recipient.  

And as his tryst continued, Gujral’s experiences also inspired his children to follow creative pursuits. While son Mohit is a renowned architect, daughter Alpana took to jewellery designing and the youngest Raseel is an interior designer. “They were brought up in an environment dominated by art and the choices were natural,” says the doting father. “They are all doing well,” chips in Kiran, as Gujral’s eyes light up when one mentions the Navratna Haar that he designed with Alpana for an exhibition last year. “Both of us were equally involved in the conceptualisation,” he points out.

The familial talk is not complete without any reference to Inder Gujral, the former prime minister and to Satish his elder brother. “He has been a constant support,” asserts Gujral. The excitement is palatable, as he goes down memory lane to recall how Inder typed out a list of dos and don’ts on how to behave in western society, when Satish was embarking on a voyage to Mexico on a scholarship in 1952. “He told me to clean the bathroom and to save money by renting a room without a bathroom, because the ones with bathroom were expensive,” he quips, adding, “I followed every instruction.”

There was advice about love too. When Satish posted a letter to Inder expressing the desire to marry a girl whom he had met on the ship, the elder brother simply wrote back saying, “Romances developed on a ship don’t last the voyage”. “He was right,” smiles Satish. His romance with art, however, lasted a lifetime. “The day I stop spending time on art I’ll die,” he states. Wife Kiran makes the slight correction, as she says, “He will want to die.”