Hundred is the reigning monarch among numbers. In the growing-up years, it plays hide and seek in school corridors. You chase it while sitting up nights studying geometry and life, determined to entice it to make its announcement of your brilliance on answer sheets. It parades around with the surname centum, teasing your grades. It takes hard work, luck, and a sane mind to tame it enough to elevate you as the topper of the class.
Any cricket fan would tell you what a hundred means to them. They hold it close to their hearts amid a heated match and lovingly call it a century. The landmark score can make a superhero of any batsman. Meanwhile, a hundred years mark the turn of an era. And when danger beckons, we reach out to frantically dial the number to call for help.
In our journey through life, however, the number remains unattainable for most of us. Only a lucky few have lived to tell the tale of a hundred years of existence. The world of Indian art is all set to proudly celebrate the life and times of Krishen Khanna, who turns 100 on July 5th.
Born in 1925 at Faisalabad in Pakistan, Krishen Khanna made sense of the partition, which uprooted him from the land he called home and brought him to Shimla in 1947, through his visual narratives. For 14 long years, he balanced a job at the Grindlays Bank along with his art practice. During this time, he befriended the members of the Progressive Artists’ Group and began to exhibit his works in their exhibitions. His first painting was sold in the late 1940s for Rs 225, an unbelievable amount today. In 1953, he was transferred to Chennai (then Madras), where his introduction to classical dance and Carnatic music inspired him to make the Musician series. It was in Chennai, too, that he had his first solo exhibition in 1955. Finally, in 1961, he decided to put down his papers and pursue a career in art. It is said that Khanna found his artist friends — MF Hussain, Bal Chhabda, and Gaitonde outside the bank’s gates on his last day, ready to welcome him into a new life of liberation.
And what a spectacular life it has been ever since. His figurative style slowly evolved into poetic abstraction. His works were a portrayal of fragments of time that depicted social issues, political commentaries, urban life, and the human lives he witnessed on the streets. In the 1980’s the Bandwalla became a recurring theme in his works, with the iconic bandsmen of Delhi painted in their trademark red uniforms with brass buttons. In his Truck series, he portrayed the truck as a metaphor for the advancement in technology at the cost of rotting value systems. He has also used religious symbolism in several works, influenced by stories from the Bible.
Awarded with a Padma Bhushan in 2011, Krishen Khanna refuses to rest on his laurels and continues to contribute to the contemporary world of art — a firm reminder to us all that a hundred becomes remarkably meaningful when purpose is added to the years.