(MS Sudhilal)
Perhaps he does not want this story to be told by me. But a
writer is always on the edge; he has to say. Writing is life and death rolled
into one; one saves the other. I believe artists have a life after death and I
also believe that artists have only a life after death. While living they are
in the process of dying. Some are in perpetual confinement, unable to perform
their best for they have already done their worst. Some get dragged into
performing the worst. They get confined for life. Luck saves them, perhaps
education. Judges are not always cruel. They let the artists sing a song, draw
portrait or do a jig and once impressed let them go. By the time they are out
of their prison rooms, times would have flown by. Looking at the mirror they
find their facial hairs grown thick, voice roughened, palm calloused and mind
hardened. Some may die many deaths at that moment itself. But some may see that
smiling face, that innocent face just before committing that perennial error
and decide to live a new life.
That is the life of MS Sudhilal put in nutshell. Yesterday
when I posted his picture with me I said that he had a story to tell. I had
demanded that the top art faculties in the country should invite him to be a
post graduate student. I thought of recounting his story to which I am privy
partially, at a later stage. The story is so compulsive that today I itself I
put into words. His story goes like this:
(Self Portrait)
He is MS Sudhilal. He hails from Kannur. His parents do
respectable government service. He has got a younger brother. When he came to
study in Trivandrum Fine Arts College sometime in 2006, he was all eighteen
years old. Shy and hesitant, he remained a silent student, picking up the
lessons from the preparatory classes that stressed more on artistic craft and
tried to learn the ways of the city. Trivandrum Fine Arts College, for the
students coming from the Malabar region is as strange and good as Delhi or
Baroda, perhaps more rigorous and challenging. They enter the gate of the
college as obedient youngsters and come out as rebellious artists. That has
been the history of it; but over a period of time it too has changed. Change is
perhaps fundamental to all changes.
Sudhilal spent his days trying his hands on drawing and clay
modeling and so on. And it was time for him to go for the vacation during the
Onam days. How happy he was to get back to his home. Something was however
brewing in the cauldrons of time. Sudhilal’s father had a tiff with some
youngsters in the neighborhood. Those were festival days and some were tippling
hard. Started off as a mere teasing the tiff reached a physical assault. Things
were settled for the day. But at night the guys came prepared. They came home
knocking violently at the door with clear intention to kill. They assaulted Sudhilal’s
father before his eyes. He responded as any self respecting and father loving
son would respond. He did not know that he had so much of power in him; the
power of his love for his father, the power of his righteousness and the power
of his morality.
(Sudhilal during student days)
Sudhilal counter attacked the boys. In the meanwhile, his
father stabbed one of them. He died two weeks later in hospital. Both father
and son were accused with murder and assault. When the case came to the court
both of them were sentenced for life. Pleas went thick, high and far. The judge
took pity to the young boy and allowed him to continue with his studies.
Sudhilal came to Fine Arts College in Trivandrum now as a jail bird. Many did
not know. He kept to himself. Prof. Ajayakumar was the Principal then. He
invited me to give a seminar there. “Your speech gave me confidence and the
fundamentals about art. It reassured me to continue with my studies,” Sudhilal
said. He was coming against me as I got down from a state transport bus. I did
not know who he was. He extended his hand towards me. I could see the smile in
his eyes and the benevolence in his face. Some kind of relationship that lives
through ages and lives. I held my hand out and held his for a long time.
The sun was throwing fire balls on our heads. There was no
shade to move into. But the heat of the moment could beat the heat of the sun.
It was soothing and transcending at once. I took him for another young facebook
friend, which he was. But then he spoke with the smile on his eyes and lips and
said the above words. As he said he finished his BFA from this college I just
asked him what he was going to do next. He said, a post graduation. He asked
about Delhi College/s. I said Baroda, Santiniketan and Hyderabad are better.
Perhaps I am biased. Then suddenly he said he was not working for a long time.
How long, I asked. Till October 2018. Goodness. What were you doing all these
days? I was in jail. I was not shocked but I felt a lot of love for him. He
narrated his story. We had forgotten that the sun was screaming at us to move.
I felt more love and care for him. I told him that he did the right thing. His
father had done the right thing. Sometimes killing someone looks so just. It
was happening at that moment.
(MS Sudhilal)
I am thirty now, Sudhilal said. ‘But that is not a problem
in our field, no?’ he asked me. I touched his shoulder and said, ‘No, you are
much better equipped to study art than many already in the art schools.’ Yes,
he said. I asked him whether he was still traumatic about the whole thing. He
said he had reconciled with the past and he has developed spiritual
inclinations. I said, ‘do not opt that spiritualism that makes you alien to
people.’ No sir, he said. I am in that spiritualism where I feel a lot for the
people around me. It was the right time for me to ask whether the guys who had
assaulted him and his father still around. They are still around, said
Sudhilal. But they too have now learned their lessons. Sudhilal’s father is in
the open jail still serving his life sentence. The family has learned to live
in truth and reality. I asked him to send me his images. ‘I have not painted
for long. And whatever I had done don’t look pretty now. I am going to start
now,’ Sudhilal said.
At that moment I knew that I did not need to see his works
done so far. What I want to see are the works that would come out from him now
onwards. He has an exceptional life experience. I had asked him whether he
tried to do painting in the jail. He said he couldn’t. He was just trying to
adjust his life there still appalled at the turn of events. Sudhilal needs to
study. Upon hearing his story a friend of mine spoke out the names like
‘Caravaggio’ and ‘Jean Genet’, who had crime and prison terms. Goa’s painter
Norman Tagore was once implicated of a crime that he had not done and had to
undergo prison term. Today Chintan Upadhyay is in jail for a crime which only
he knows whether he was a party or not. Here is a young man shining like a sun
after going through the fire test. He needs a post graduation, a career and
life. If Indian art institutions cannot give him that who else would?
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