Offtrack: Chennai: Lust for Life

Krishnamurthy says her latest paintings are symbols of Thanksgiving to god for granting her a second chance to live a life of creativity.

Krishnamurthy says her latest paintings are symbols of Thanksgiving to god for granting her a second chance to live a life of creativity.

Padma Krishnamurthy, like all parents, wanted to give her son and daughter-in-law a gift they would treasure all their lives. It was after all a special occasion, their wedding anniversary in 1998. "It struck me that I could try a portrait of my four-year-old grandson," she recalls. But this was easier said than done. Incapacitated in 1990 by a stroke that left her completely paralysed down the left side of her body, 69-year-old Krishnamurthy knew it would be a task well nigh impossible.

But disciplining her body to co-ordinate with her mind, she worked day and night on the portrait to capture the liveliness and that twinkle of mischief in her grandson's eyes. Her strenuous effort paid off after more than a month. "I can say it was my grandson who actually pulled me out of the darkness that had crept into my life," says Krishnamurthy proudly.

For all those frustrating years since the stroke, Krishnamurthy's bright world of colours had virtually descended into darkness. The portrait was her first tenuous grip on the passion that had driven her life. Every day after that, she sat down for four hours to unleash the creativity which had been denied expression. Over the next eight months, Krishnamurthy produced a series of over 30 paintings.

The entire series, "A Divine Thought -- Flowers for the Deities", in gouache, oil and acrylic venerate the flowers of worship. "Every painting was a thanksgiving to the Almighty who had given me a second chance at my creative life," she declares. They capture the life and tell a tale of common south Indian household flowers like the parijath, tulsi and the oleander, and at the same time incorporate the deity they consecrate.

Even as a child Krishnamurthy had a touch of the muse in her fingers. She sketched the picturesque landscapes of Simla, where her father was posted as financial adviser to the then British government. When the family moved to Madras in the 1940s, she received formal painting classes from Susheel Kumar Mukherjee who had been trained at Santiniketan. Soon enough, she was winning special awards for her paintings. In 1964, at Wellington near Ooty, where her air force officer husband M.B. Krishnamurthy was posted at the Staff College, Krishnamurthy's art found new expression.

Portraits, landscapes, caricatures -- Krishnamurthy never restricted herself to any particular genre. She simply captured the beauty of life, movement and energy that she saw around her. In those eight years at Wellington, Krishnamurthy held 10 shows and managed to sell all her paintings. And considering that it was the '60s, when art was not the commercial business that it is today, Krishnamurthy managed very well, raking in more than Rs 2 lakh for them.

In 1990, she lost body coordination due to the stroke. A year after, she lost her husband. But declining all help from her son's family, Krishnamurthy courageously picked up the threads and started life anew. An active woman -- she had trained for Wimbledon alongside Ramanathan Krishnan in the 1940s -- she wasn't about to give up on life. She managed to sit up, walk short distances -- and pick up a paint brush. says Bhagawan Chavan, an artist: "I have seen her paintings before and after her stroke. She has not let her disability affect her work in any way. In fact I can seen a new maturity in her ideas and style now. And her mastery over water colours is amazing." Adds cardiologist V. Jinadas: "I have never seen a patient like her in my life. Her zeal for painting is astonishing. Anyone else would have given up on life by now or would be constantly cribbing about things. But not Padma. If she has recovered to this extent, it's all because of her will power."

With an exhibition to be held at Chennai's Chola Sheraton between April 6 and 9, Krishnamurthy has indeed come a long way since 1990. But what's most important for her is that her misfortune was the path to an inner peace of mind. She believes that God has been more than generous with her -- the stroke she suffered was just a tiny pebble that He dropped her way. She only made sure that it didn't turn into a stumbling block.