When Clint was barely six months old, his parents M T Joseph and Chinnamma noticed curiously perfect circles on the floor of their apartment at Thevara. To their surprise, they found that their baby, who would crawl on his belly with stones in his hand, had effected the masterpiece quite effortlessly!
It has been 29 years since the wonder child bade adieu to the world, yet, sitting in the midst of his stunningly impressive illustrations and paintings, listening to the little anecdotes narrated by his parents, it would almost seem that the little master would come in any minute through the door, crayons and drawing sheets in hand. The young prodigy, who has left behind some 25,000 works, is remembered again, with a book based on his short but beautiful life. ‘A Brief Hour of Beauty’, authored by Ammu Nair, was released in Kochi on Friday.
Flipping through the pages of the book that has included some rare pictures of Clint, Joseph says in a fond voice, “I used to call Clint, ‘mon,’ which though meaning son, is also short for monster!. This was because he could be quite naughty at times, though polite and calm for most part,” the proud father reminisces.
Hearing the story of Clint would make it obvious to anyone that he was special in more ways than one, and that there was a touch of something divine about his entire existence.
He started reading when he was just one-and-a-half years old, and the characters that he read and heard about from the stories that his parents told, became the muses for his work.
Clint’s amazing sense of humour is evident from his works, like the picture of little Krishna feeding Ganapathi and another of the elephant-headed god eating chicken fry.
“Ganapathi was his favourite subject, of whom he had drawn at least 300 sketches and paintings. He used to earnestly ask me to pray for him to grow a trunk like Ganapathi, so he could sketch faster. At one point, I was actually afraid that he may just sprout a trunk!” recollects his mother Chinnamma, even as she gazes at his spectacular work.
The child was also an avid reader, with ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ and ‘Robinson Crusoe’ figuring in his reading list. “He requested for bedtime stories, and when our stock was over, we had to narrate our dreams. Sometimes I even made up dreams,” Chinnamma says. The gifted child evidently had the temperament of an artist, and sometimes, he would stop drawing if not in the mood, she adds.
George, who worked with Central Institute of Fisheries Technology and Chinnamma, a homemaker, used to take Clint for plenty of outings, where nothing escaped the sharp observation of the little genius. The temples at Eloor, his mother’s home, the elephants, epic characters, vehicles, all got transferred onto his canvas.
When Clint died in 1983, television was still a novelty, yet the boy who never witnessed moving pictures, managed to draw his subjects, especially animals, with surprising precision, relying only on his imagination.
A plethora of such nuggets have been included in Ammu Nair’s book. A surprising element of ‘A Brief Hour of Beauty’ is that the author had known him as a child. “We are family friends, and Clint had drawn Ammu’s picture too,” says Joseph. Joseph and Chinnamma reside at Journalists’ Colony, Kaloor, in Kochi.
Artist M V Devan released the book by handing over a copy to Prof M K Sanu. Sebastian Paul presided over the function which was attended by T Kaladharan, K M Roy, Jayashree Sukumaran and P P Mathew.