May 25, 1998

An artist brightens the jail in which he lives under the shadow of death.

By Rohit Parihar

The dark walls of A prison seldom inspire creativity. It is not surprising, therefore, that the only work of art till now at the Central Jail at Jaipur is a painting done during the British rule, which rather grimly shows prisoners being flogged. The jail authorities surmise that the painting was by a convict. But walk down the dank corridors today, and you will find cheerful portraits of great names in Indian history -- Maharana Pratap, Rabindranath Tagore, B.R.Ambedkar. The man behind them: the 26-year-old Subhash Chand Bhardwaj.

There is a rapt expression on Bhardwaj's face as he adds the final touches to another painting. The dank prison cell with its fading light seems to be a perfect foil for the vibrant colours which almost leap out of the canvas. And well they might, for they are the only colours in Bhardwaj's life; he has been condemned to death for raping and killing a 10-year-old girl.

Till Mr Hyde emerged, Bhardwaj looked ahead to a promising career as an artist. Having lost his mother when five years old, he was 14 when his father, a postal department employee, sent him to Delhi to learn painting from a friend. Though away from the cocoon of his home, Bhardwaj's resilience helped him to cope with his isolation. Soon, he had his own shop, rather prosaically named Bharat Cards, at Kotputli. A brush with colours soon became a passion. Until the day when his most repulsive longing made itself manifest. The consequent internment drained his life of all its colour.

Arrested in 1991, the trial court sentenced him in 1993 to death by hanging. He was moved from the small Behror jail and lodged in a secluded ward at the Jaipur Central Jail with 20 others. In the gloomy confines of his cell, Bhardwaj awaited a decision on his clemency plea. As death row inhabitants are exempt from work, he did little but brood about a future gone dreadfully wrong. However, not one to be put down for long, he used all the ingenuity at his command to collect scraps of paper and sketch and draw on them.

Four years later, life took one of its unpredictable turns. Shankar Lal, guard of the death penalty ward, aware of Bhardwaj's skill with colours, sought permission from the jail authorities to allow the inmate on death row to paint a portrait of his wife who had died some time ago. Bhardwaj says he was "thrilled to have brush and colours after six years". Benign fate again seemed to intervene in his favour when Arun Duggar, director-cum-IG prisons, asked him to paint portraits of Mahatma Gandhi, Vivekananda and Maharana Pratap on the prison auditorium's walls.

There were some rumblings. A few jail officials felt that prisoners facing death should be kept in isolation. Duggar feels otherwise. "Bhardwaj has been convicted for a grave crime,'' he says bluntly, "but irrespective of it, or what happens to him finally, I wanted to exploit his talent because I was sure that it would help change his attitude towards life.'' Kavita Srivastva, joint secretary of the state branch of the Peoples' Union for Civil Liberties, agrees: "A convict guilty of any crime should be given an opportunity to rethink.'' And Duggar adds, "What is wrong in asking him to beautify the surroundings in which he and other inmates live?''

While Bhardwaj found in painting a welcome diversion, the wheels of justice kept spinning inexorably. In December 1995, when a division bench gave a contradictory judgments, Bhardwaj's case was referred to a third judge, who favoured commuting the death sentence into life imprisonment. The state is to shortly appeal to the Supreme Court against this verdict.

Life is now not all paint and colour for Bhardwaj. When he was taken out of his isolation, he was told to learn carpentry. "I am not keen to do anything else but paint,'' he says. The jail authorities, however, have rules on their side. So Bhardwaj paints but rarely now. Painting uninterruptedly is something he will be able do only if freedom beckons.

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