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BANGALORE,
KARNATAKA
Brushing away
Pain
Painting
helps a woman cope with the trauma of 55 surgeries
By
Stephen David
On
Independence day, the raj bhavan in Bangalore will hold an art exhibition.
It will be special because it is Karnataka Governor Rama Devi's tribute
to an artist who still sees colour even when the rainbow has long vanished
from her life. Echoing the thoughts of many, an awed Sarala Krishnamurthy,
officer on special duty to the governor, almost whispers, "It is
a revelation that these pictures come from someone who has been through
such intense pain for so many years."
 Sharada
Raju, the artist being feted, has certainly not enjoyed too many happy
moments in life. At 40, she lives on morphine injections and a pacemaker.
But through it all, Sharada continues to paint. She has painted with a
drip needle inserted into one arm. Once she had a heart attack while painting.
She has even finished a painting in the run up to a heart surgery. "My
paint brush is the most effective painkiller," she says as she applies
gold leaf to a Tanjore painting at her house, Deepanjali, a stone's throw
from the Bangalore Palace.
The painter's
troubles started almost a decade after her marriage in 1977. Still childless,
she got pregnant. But it turned out a case of ectopic (out of womb) pregnancy.
Doctors were forced to perform a hysterectomy, taking away forever her
ability to conceive. That was only the beginning. Within a year, she had
to undergo 29 surgeries, including 19 gynaecology-related microsurgeries.
Then abdominal cancer was diagnosed. Soon after, she suffered a mild heart
attack.
By 1990,
pain and disappointment had almost robbed Sharada of her will to live.
She had been married when she was 17. Now she was 30, childless, and very,
very ill. Then she remembered a childhood wish. "I had always dreamt
of becoming a doctor, dancer or an artist," she recalls. Bharatnatyam
was her first choice, but her frail body was obviously not up to it. Medical
studies, too, were ruled out. So, she took up painting.
Sharada
was inspired by Subramanya Raju, an artist at the Mysore Palace and president
of the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishat, who was an expert in Tanjore and
Mysore- style paintings. Raju was too old to teach her so his son Master
Krishnanda Raju taught her at home. Her first painting was a picture of
Lord Ganesha on canvas the size of Reader's Digest magazine. Now she has
in her oeuvre nearly 600 paintings, including those of Ram and Krishna
and about 200 of the elephant-headed God. The senior Raju was impressed.
In a testimonial written five years ago, he described her as an "accomplished
artist". He added, "What is special is that these fine works
were created during her protracted illness associated with agonising pain
over many years. She is a yogi whose only ambition is to touch the reassuring
hand of God through devotion and works of arts." Governor Rama Devi
also chose an exhibition of Sharada's works at the inauguration of a kalyana
mandapam built by her father.
When Sharada
is not painting gods, she does miniatures of birds and portraits of women
and elephants on old Jaipur stamp papers. All her paintings are done with
natural vegetable and earth colours she makes herself. Her studio, where
she spends most of her time, is a room on the first floor of her house,
next to her bedroom. The studios shelves are lined with books on painting,
literature and Hindu mythology -- a subject that has greatly interested
her -- besides hundreds of brushes and Winsor and Newton watercolours.
Though people
have not been any kinder to her than the gods (she was once fitted with
a used pacemaker at a hospital she refuses to name) her reaction to humanity
is tempered with understanding. Her dream is to open a museum of paintings
where "I can teach the sick and handicapped people to forget their
pain through painting". "Life is a mixture of pain and joy and
it is up to each individual to find the joy and forget the sorrow,"
she says. "I chose painting to forget the pain. Others can make their
own choices." The effect of the morphine injection lasts just four
hours. The palliative effect of painting lasts longer. Long enough to
touch her heart and the hearts of others.
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Don't
ask for more funds, demand the right to collect, INDIA TODAY Associate
Editor V. Shankar Aiyar writes to Chandrababu Naidu in 
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