Unless we believe in reincarnations and rebirths, we all have one life to live. And we try our level best to live it to the fullest. Blessed are those who have things going their way right from the time their throat uttered the first wail.
But what about those who are handicapped not just by the environment in which they were born but also due to unexpected circumstances? There are many who have wilted under the sheer pressure of the same, but some, a very few to be precise, have towered above their problems and emerged winners.
Life’s winners aren’t the ones
who stroll down Easy Street
Till they find a pot of gold
right there beneath their feet.
They’re the ones who work and whistle,
yes, even though it rains;
They’re the ones who walk on bravely
in spite of all their pains;
They’re the ones who climb each
mountain, though
It’s ever so steep and rough.
Yes, they’re the ones - the real true winners
They’re made of life’s finest stuff!
The person in reference here is the multi-faceted genius Satish Gujral, the internationally renowned painter, sculptor, muralist, architect, and interior designer.
I had met him in 1999 when he had just released his book, A Brush With Life. Sitting in front of him was an experience by itself. Satish Gujral was ‘recovering’ from his many-decades old ‘silence’ through the means of a machine. Yet, to quote him, “your words are still so hazy”. He went through his life’s experiences in garbled language and was ably aided by his wife, the charming Kiran.
It was my misfortune that I could not find the time to read A Brush With Life then. It was only in the summers of 2002, having come to Mumbai to visit my younger brother did I go through the pages of this extremely inspiring book.
Born in that part of Punjab, which is now in Pakistan in 1925, Satish Gujral, through an unfortunate accident in childhood, lost his hearing and became entombed in horrific silence.
The book, an autobiography, poignantly captures the artist’s efforts to come to terms with this trauma. There were many episodes in his life when he was the target not just of ridicule but also of rejection because of his handicap. Two episodes from the book come to mind right now.
Satish Gujral and Kiran had decided to marry each other. But Dr. Ramnath, Kiran’s father could not come to terms with his daughter’s decision. How could a normal girl agree to marry an artist (this variety has always been considered to be bohemian), and a deaf one at that? The other incident is even more ironic. In order to help her husband, Kiran took up a job, where some of her colleagues considered her to be easy prey. Their argument was that the wife of a physically handicapped person could not be happy and would be looking out for distractions outside her home.
Satish Gujral has also written about the changing socio-political scenario, created candid character sketches of painters like Amrita Shergil and of course, his contemporary, and once-upon-a-time friend, MF Hussain. Indira Gandhi comes in for an evaluation, while his elder brother and Former Indian Prime Minister, Inder Kumar Gujral is fondly spoken of in many pages of this admirable work edited by Khushwant Singh.
Simple, and straight from the heart, the book is an honest account of a remarkable man’s life in his own words, without any undue literary and semantic acrobatics. And this perhaps is the biggest strength of the book.
Friends, do get hold of a copy of this book. It is not worth a miss.