Roundabout | The vagabond who realised his artistic dreams

Sidharth, a well-known artist, looks back at the rough and tumble of his college days in the city with the smile of one who has come through

The odds were always against Sidharth, yet he managed to follow his passion for art and is now a well-known artist. His life is the stuff of legends.

Sidharth, who was born in Ludhiana’s Bassian village to a family with limited means, inherited his love for colours from his mother (HT PHOTO)

Forced to quit school after Class 9, Sidharth, who goes by his first name, has been the recipient of a doctor of literature degree from Punjabi University, Patiala, along with several awards and honours. The most recent being an award from the Pracheen Kala Kendra.

He has been felicitated by the Dalai Lama, whom Sidharth met as a young man while he was learning Thangka painting in Mcleodganj.

Born in Ludhiana’s Bassian village to a family with limited means, Sidharth inherited his love for colours from his mother. Looking back, Sidharth recalls, “My mother would look for natural colours to paint papier-mâché bowls. She would go to flowering trees and gather fallen blooms of different hues as she hummed a tune.”

These were the colours that triumphed over the greys of their frugal existence.

After quitting the village school, Sidharth chose to work in a commercial art shop. However, his artistic dreams could not cope with ruthless commerce, and he moved to Dharamshala to learn the traditional Tibetan arts.

It was an encounter with the legendry MS Randhawa in 1976 that changed his life. Randhawa, a bureaucrat, and art and culture promoter, told him about the art college in Chandigarh, and had him enrolled, paying the initial fee himself.

“I did not have a school leaving certificate, but a concession was made on the condition that I would complete my schooling privately.”

In the city of dreams

Enrolling in college was not the end of his troubles, but the beginning of many more. Unable to pay the hostel fee, he was often on the roads – sleeping in the open, or sharing the chowkidar’s quarters.

“However, several friendships came my way. I can never forget the warmth of my college senior, Raj Kumar, who not only kept the doors of his room open for me, but also let me run an account with his dhabawala to ensure that I did not go hungry,” he says. Listening about his vagabond days, one is left spellbound by his pursuit of art, literature, and also an unrequited love from a comely senior in college. Sidharth always was and remains a storyteller.

He looks back at his tribulations not in anger, but in the characteristic folk humour of one who has been there, seen it all, but lived every moment with artistic intensity. Sometimes, fact and fantasy overlap in his narrative, but that is also part of his creative journey.

Soon, he became a cult figure with younger artists, poets, professors, photographers, and journalists regularly visiting his room, and studio in Karoran village.

When he left college after five years of study, it was without a diploma because of his participation in student agitations and inability to get his Class-9 certificate, though he cleared his Class 10 examination privately. Not one to be bitter, he recalls, “I am glad things happened this way, for if all had gone well then I would have perhaps become a village school art teacher, and would have been content with it!.”

My acquaintance with Sidharth of many seasons started as late as 1981 on the day he decided to leave this city of ours with just the bus fare in his pocket and a sketch of a beautiful tree of life with a sparrow gazing at it, which he gave to me.

And that was to lead to a long friendship of one crazy person to another and mercifully it continues still.

Delhi O’ Delhi

Delhi was not waiting for Sidharth with open arms and he struggled with hunger, humiliation and heartbreaks, moving from one small assignment to another, but the big bad city has not the persistent pettiness of small towns and here came the environment for the Bassian boy to slowly and steadily move into his own and also take his talent forward. Rest is history as he has triumphed his way through life and art, and has found a supportive partner in Devangi, who is an artist and interior decorator.Their daughter, Gaurja, is studying theatre music in Goldsmith University, London. The Dalai Lama says the world needs less success stories and technocrats and more storytellers and lovers, and the Sidharths of our times are an embodiment of the same.

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