My first interaction with art

It all started when I was a child of maybe three years of age and what I am narrating is one of my first memories of art...Hailing from a very well known,rich and powerful business family of Punjab, luxury was all but a necessity and money was nothing more than a means of squandering in unnecessary indulgences.My Grandfather was a man with a vision and assisted by two sons and two daughters, lived in this village in Punjab called Jalandhar where he ruled the state with an iron hand and from where he dispatched all his offsprings to the finest places in Europe to study but when they returned rural life was not what they could cope with so a place in Delhi was sought and we moved to Delhi to a house in GK 1.

One cold summer afternoon I was playing with my Grand dad when all hell broke lose.My Tayaji was being yelled at by my Bhua and Grannny as to how he had wasted money and picked up trash and come and blaming it on his lack of responsibility as he was unmarried...for the amount of money spent the family could have gone for a vacation to The Palace Hotel in Srinagar and come and I still remember my Tayaji explaining as to how the wall sized monstrous paintings he had bought were very pretty and how they would make the house look alive and nice and that everyone could still go for a vacation and come and that he hadn't put the company money to bad use.

There was a monstrous painting of a coconut tree with a round dot that looked like a sun,a girl selling flowers,a woman carrying fish, a chariot with funny looking entities and a woman playing the veena,one more jumble of entities and a blue something I still havent deciphered...

I was on my grandfathers shoulders at that time when he walked upto my granny to calm her down and explain to her that my Tayaji had come from America and art was a necessity in the homes there and that it was only money spent but this was India and we needed to bargain to get the right price as eventually it was just decoration.I sat on his shoulders, enjoying the chaos and clapping at my Tayaji who stood rather sheepishly realising that he had overpaid for his blunder while everyone seemingly calmed down with my grand dads intervention.The seven paintings found place in each of the bed rooms completely destroying the walls with their size while a large one landed up to cover the entire wall of the Drawing room...As a child I remember growing up seeing them in the rooms and playing around them and deciding that once I was old enough to read the name of the artist I would send him a letter saying that he was no good and should stop painting.That was my first judgement as an art critic...and the works were by Mr. MF Hussain and still adorn the walls of the house:)))

My first judgement had failed and the man started a new era for Indian art...