Death of an Art Historian

Death is the greatest leveler. One cannot perhaps claim more than six feet of earth to sum up his life. Maxims are many: none comes with too many possessions and none goes with too many. You come alone and go alone. You come crying and go making others cry. Great seers say that life is just an interim period or even a dream. To know the reality one has to go beyond the mundane life. In life truth is always deferred. And may be only in death the truth is affirmed. Has anyone seen death as an orgasmic moment of realization?

An intimation that mournfully communicates the departing of a friendly soul from the earth suddenly takes you to the cliff of that realization and you realize that life is nothing, a big nothing. One is reminded of Shakespearean wisdom: Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Dawning of this wisdom is momentary and fleeting but like orgasmic bliss it comes back once in a while, either when one is drunken high with ego or when someone busts it with a needle sharp smile.

Departing of a friend elevates one to a philosophical plane and there one confronts one’s own death as Bergman’s protagonists sees Death and plays a game of chess with him. The deferred truth of a closure becomes perceivable for a while, transporting one’s self into a frozen frame of eternity, where imagined remembrances, floral tributes and pure rivulets of tears are demanded but not assured. This lack of assurance sends a chill throughout the spine for how one could imagine oneself be gone un-mourned, un-remembered and negated.

Obituaries are, putting it in less cynical and most forthright words, the fields of self mourning. Condolence meetings are the platforms where we lament on our own death. In the frozen frame of a photograph, we see the eternal youth of the departed, confident and smiling. We are left to decay here. His place is assured in the vacuum that he has created in the space by his passing away. Arundhati Roy, in her monumental work, God of Small Things says, when a person dies, he leaves a void in the atmosphere in his shape. We are the forced occupants of these voids, waiting to be called, rotting in the drudgery of daily lives. In condolence we celebrate not our lives, but our deaths. A fearful longing for the unknown and a carnival of the living ghosts.
 
Deepak Bhattacharya passed away. He belonged to our tribe of art historians and art writers. If artists permit, he belonged to that sphere also. I knew him as a name in three Xerox copies. He had written a three part article on the works of Somnath Hore, Chittoprasad and Zain-ul-Abdeen. During early 1990s, as an art history student I came across these three articles and all what I know about Chittoprasad and Zain-ul-Abdeen tilldate is based on these articles. Deepak Bhattacharya was a small but significant byline for me till I heard the news of his untimely demise on 23rd June 2007.

I was traveling with the sculptor, K.S.Radhakrishnan, when I got a text message from a friend informing Deepak Bhattacharya’s death. I softly told the news to K.S.Radhakrishnan for I knew that he was closely linked to the Santiniketan tribe of artists and scholars and it would have obviously disturbed him. Radhakrishnan was silent for a long time. Then he said, “Life is nothing, Johny.”

From Radhakrishnan I could gather more about Deepak Bhattacharya. Deepak did not want to conquer the world of fame and name. He was so involved with the teaching at the Art History Department, Kalabhavana, Sanitiniketan. He wanted to purchase a computer for department. He knew well that if he had gone through the proper channel, the computer would have come once the sanctioned model had become an item in the Jurassic park. So he asked Radhakrishnan to contribute a small sculpture, which Radha did readily. Deepak, within no time found a buyer for it and the next week the department got a new computer.

Deepak cherished a small dream; a dream to become a painter, may be not a painter who was valued by square feet. He painted those images, in Radha’s words, “only he could have painted.” He had a different inner world, where he deemed the oral tradition of teaching as the best. His inner world was inhabited by people and incidents, which he never wanted to put in black and white. Chandrima Bhattacharya, his partner and artist, of late has become a highly sought after artist. Things were happening and secrets were unfolding but there was a curtain call; an absurd kind.

May be I am mourning my death here. What would people write about me or think about me once I cease to exist? May be I want my death to be mourned by many and my contributions to be written about. But the word ‘Nothing’ is always there. Six feet of earth and smoke. While walking down towards the parking lot at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, I asked Radha, “What were we doing at 2.30 pm, when Deepak breathed his last? Were we having lunch or were we driving towards Mumbai Airport? Did we see a void forming in the air?” It was quite Lacanian a question. And in his jumbo sized Scorpio SUV, we sat in silence. And Deepak was with us till I got down on the way.