KALADY : Artists have borne the brunt of the recent deluge. Paintings, sculptures and other valuable artifacts in the personal collection of many artists were irreparably damaged in the flood. Saju Thuruthil, head, department of mural painting, Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, is one such victim. The recent flood washed away in its wake his works of 30 years of painstaking effort. According to Saju, his house was Kerala’s first residential art gallery.
“I built it as a temple of murals. A place where people interested in learning about and doing murals could converge without any inhibitions. It was a novel concept,” he said. Today, however, the destruction wrought by the deluge has left him devastated. “Some very old paintings that I had gathered over the past 30 or so years along with the ones that I had toiled over for more than a year to finish have been lost. It is not the monetary part of the loss that makes me emotionally wrung. An 80-year-old painting done by my teacher and gifted to me has been destroyed,” he said.
“Now my gallery looks more like a ghost house. The walls bereft of the murals look forlorn. I have no idea how I am going to replace them. However, I am happy that the scroll paintings that I and my students had slogged over for a year have escaped the deluge with minor damages,” he said. He had even done murals on furniture. “Only bits and pieces remain of them. The entire house had been built to be a gallery with live installations,” he said.