Ashesh’s hands tremble violently as he passes Shilpa’s letter and the printout of Yogesh’s letter to Janaki. He sits looking at the stamp on the envelope with blank eyes, his face drained of colour. They’re beautiful, he thinks—the stamps. Vivid colours. Janaki finishes reading the letters. She takes the envelope that’s hanging limp from his hand and slips them into it. He gets up.

‘I’ll go for a walk.’

‘May I come?’

‘No.’ He turns to look at her. His eyes are hollow. He whispers, ‘Yes, please.’ The guilt of Yogesh’s death lies unbearably heavy on his shoulders. He will have to live with it. He grips Janaki’s hand tight.

36

For years now, Ashesh has held a solo show once every three years in September in the Jehangir Art Gallery at Kala Ghoda. He likes the human traffic that comes and goes there. He likes to listen in to what people are saying about his work. Their outspokenness keeps him grounded. He remembers most vividly the UP man who came one year trailing his veiled wife and four children behind him. He was showing off the glories of Mumbai to the rustics just up from the village. Looking curiously at his work, the woman had remarked from behind her veil in a thick UP accent, ‘What kind of pictures are these? No god-goddess, no buffalo-cow, no trees-flowers.’ The man, bred to the city, had cast an apologetic glance in Ashesh’s direction and scolded her. ‘Shut up, you village piece of nothing.’ Then added for Ashesh’s benefit, ‘These pictures fetch more thousand rupees than you can count.’ A high-pitched exclamation of astonishment had issued from behind the veil, after which there was silence. The wife had dutifully walked behind her husband like a docile cow. When they were leaving, she had whacked a child on the back for grinning at a painting.

Most of the unkind remarks he had heard belonged to his ‘abstract’ period. One year a group of municipal clerks had turned up to see his show. He had gathered that one of them had just treated the others to lunch at a nearby restaurant. They had sauntered over to the gallery afterwards, presumably to satisfy their cultural appetite. Not realizing Ashesh was the artist, they had stood right beside him exchanging brutal views on his work. One had said, ‘You know what? If we stuck paper on our stairwell walls we’ll get stuff like this by the evening.’ Another had said, ‘We could call the series “Spitting Image 1, 2” etc.’

They had slapped each other on the back and neighed in amusement. Ashesh smiled at having his knickers pulled off. Their reaction was understandable. How did his games with space, line, form and light touch their lives?