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