I always remember her as the person who gave me first break in television way back in 1978.
I always remember her as the person who gave me first break in television way back in 1978. She was producing a programme on Kerala before it became God’s own country and showcasing some dance forms from the state. The set was complete with plastic plantain trees propped up in terracotta pots and other such faux props that characterised Doordarshan’s visual imagery those days! She told me to wear a south Indian saree. Out of the three silk sarees I owned I wore the more colourful one: a kumkum red and lemon yellow checked Kanjivaram that was a hand me down from my mother. It took me so many retakes to do the piece to camera that I still remember the first few lines of the script! Over the years I lost touch with her but kept hearing about her laudable growth in stature and knowledge as a highly respected and regarded dance scholar.
And he too was a producer with Doordarshan and I recall him as a rather brooding, moody sort of person, whose fame as a poet was entwined with his persona of an aesthetic television person. With a deep and husky voice, he had a fan following of his own. Very different from each other in persona and their art, in their own way they both were making their art mark on the television of those times. Recently when Vidushi Sharon Lowen told me about the ongoing exhibition of his paintings, I was surprised and I asked her again if it was the same person.
The art power couple of those days when even the term was not coined: I am talking about Kamalini Dutt and Kuber Dutt.This story is as much about her as it is about him. He might have been the creator of the paintings created during a highly creative and charged phase at the fag end of his life, but it is she who has walked many extra miles to bring the works to be shown in a gallery, battling a debilitating arthritis herself physically and many bridges emotionally.
“Around 2000 Kuber got the impulse to paint and he painted like a man possessed till his death in 2011, not using too many sophisticated tools or colours, for he was impatient to share his agony, dissent, resistance as an extension to the written word for it was poetry and prose that were his chosen medium for over 40 years. For me to take the decision to show case his work, make primary selections from hundreds of paintings itself was a journey,” she says with her eyes reflecting each emotion as the mind flits back and forth in time.
The paintings are from different phases of the mind for his journey in art began from where he had reached as a writer and poet for there is little that is gauche. The colour palette is elegant, the immediacy of his expression is palpable, as is the imagery. There is little pre-occupation with the human form. Most of it is abstract and the layering of colours speak of many artistic paths traversed.
Like a true custodian she has looked after the works and shared the directness, the unusual imagery, the angst of the artist’s work and life with commendable distancing and seriousness. In a way she is like a rishi who kept putting away an insect who was trying bite him saying that his dharma is biting and mine is to not to kill it. So I am merely doing my duty. It takes one huge spiritual journey to come to this point. For her own part her contribution as a person who archived India’s music and dance history for Doordarshan itself was formidable, but as a scholar who nurtured many dancers and other scholars, training many rasikas to experience the arts is highly appreciable.
A purist herself she strived to keep the arts centre-stage and all this without wanting to be in the limelight. I feel that many of the arts have survived because there are a few people like her. I was very moved when she said what do you do with a beautiful flower Pluck it Throw harsh light on it No. You nurture it, shield it so that lives for a little while longer It is this living on a little longer with purity is all that makes life’s vicissitudes worth it
Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi
@yahoo.com
