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‘Amrita and Victor’, a story about art and love
Author, screenwriter and veteran journalist Ashwini Bhatnagar, launched his 18th book ‘Amrita and Victor’, a biography of Hungarian-Indian painter Amrita Sher-Gil, at the Confederation of Indian Industry, on Saturday evening
Author, screenwriter and veteran journalist Ashwini Bhatnagar, launched his 18th book ‘Amrita and Victor’, a biography of Hungarian-Indian painter Amrita Sher-Gil, at the Confederation of Indian Industry, on Saturday evening.
“Amrita was a woman who simply had to express herself,” he said during his interview about the book at the event.
During his tête-à-tête about the book with special guest Vandana Sehgal, principal and dean of faculty of architecture and planning at Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University, he said that the book had been 20 years in the making, ever since he started his research on Sher-Gil after a conversation he had with the late Khushwant Singh in Chandigarh.
Having already been a fan of the arts, he was familiar with Amrita Sher-Gil’s works and set out to make himself more intimate with her life and works, which has now been released in the form of his latest composition, ‘Amrita and Victor’.
The chief guest at the event was Brij Lal, member of Rajya Sabha and chairman of parliamentary committee on home affairs. Lal is himself a writer and shared a close relationship with Bhatnagar since their youth. He shared anecdotes and congratulated the author in his opening address. “His worldliness is reflected in his books,” he said.
The book was launched by Lal, Bhatnagar, Sehgal, former chairman of CII, current vice-chairperson of CII, and Gaurav Prakash of Universal Booksellers. The audience was filled with literature and art enthusiasts, journalists and authors.
Throughout the conversation about the book with Sehgal, Bhatnagar stressed on the unique, rebellious and righteous personality that Sher-Gil held.
“Her technique was European, but her sensibilities were Indian,” he said of her art pieces, recalling how she was influenced by the Ajanta and Ellora caves in Maharashtra - “She writes so lyrically about the silence and motifs in the caves,” he recalled. He stressed heavily on the relationship and deep understanding she shared with her spouse Victor Egan, where each gave the freedom to the other to live their lives out according to their wills and not tether each other by constraints of a typical romantic relationship - all of which he has described in the book.
According to Bhatnagar, society at large today is still battling the stereotypes of women’s roles in the world and the nuances of morality, whereas women such as Sher-Gil had battled and overcome them over a decade ago. He said that Sher-Gil was less concerned with morality but more so with ethics, and her husband was the epitome of a modern, empathetic man who prioritised his partner’s desires and choices over what was expected of them.
“She spoke five languages at the age of 18 and had won three medals for her art in Europe, which at the time was unheard of for a woman her age,” Bhatnagar said.
