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Krishen Khanna

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News Of Gandhiji's Death

I was a part of the Partition, and I saw what happenned in Punjab. I drew my impression of those days in the same manner as others wrote about them. For instance, there was this painting I did after the assassination of the Mahatma, where you have all these people standing around a traffic island in Delhi, reading newspapers. I probably drew a sketch at that point but the actual painting was done much later in Bombay (1950). I exhibited it at the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the Bombay Art Society at the Cowasji Jehangir Hall.


Image Bandwalla Practicing, oil on canvas, 1993. (91.7 Kbytes)

Bandwalla

I am moved by Chaplinesque situations which involve dual emotions. On the face of it, they can be very funny, even ridiculous. But there is a kind of pathos beneath it all. I see the bandwalla as a relic of the past appropriated by Punjabis and people in the North in general for their marriage processions and the like. On the one hand, we have uniforms which provide a kind of grandeur-- as well as anonymity-- to military personnel, while a different kind of uniform transforms the bandwalla into an amusing public entertainer.

Aunt Flossie Goes Home

I asked her "Where are you going auntie?" "I'm going home", she replied. "But this is your home, auntie", I countered. Nevertheless, Aunt Flossie left along with her husband, a retired DG of the Posts and Telegraph department, despite having spent her entire life in India.

Source: Interview with Krishen Khanna in Times of India, Bombay. Nov 29, 1995.


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