Artist Manjunath Kamath holds a laughing mirror to Delhi without keeping a straight face. He paints Delhi life with humour that would make a clown cry, any cynic giggle and a ‘pakka’ Dilliwala laugh out loud at the growing familiarity. He won’t whine like most of us to tell how miserable everyone, including Delhi’s stray dogs, feels on the flooded roads during the monsoon. He’d rather show an Ambassador car drowning on a Delhi road, and stray dogs sitting on the Amby’s roof, refusing to jump off. Laughing at troubles is an art Delhi taught Kamath. He says, “When I was jobless in Delhi in the late 90s, my friends and I would spend time at a dhaba near Mandi House. We had no money to pay for snacks and tea. To keep our account running and the tea flowing, everyone would tell the dhaba waala lies. The friend from the National School of Drama would boast that he got an offer from Subhash Ghai. Artists would say they got offers to display work at a Mumbai gallery,” he says. It was all fake, going to be real.
Today, Kamath uses the “old” to laugh at the “new”. The humour on his canvas is becoming sharper and darker. The canvas is becoming emptier in the centre. Everything seems to be falling outward, and away. He says, “Today, everyone in Delhi is struggling to be something. A mall is the best place to see the change. People are trying to fit into clothes they are awkward in. They are always struggling to know how to behave. Earlier, we would hear people say ‘wah’ for something they like. Now people say ‘wow’ louder for things they don’t like. I enjoy watching all that.”
The artist came to Delhi from Mysore, his hometown, in the late 90s to find work. “I had only `200 to last a month. I had one meal a day and realised I won’t be able to afford even travelling by bus. So, I would walk from Mandi House to Laxmi Nagar and back in search of work to save money for food,” he says. Friend and now well-known artist G R Iranna lent him a sweater to face the winter. Kamath enjoyed the hardships.
Walking miles in Delhi’s heat helped the artist melt the ice between him and the city. Kamath uses the “high” in art to take on the “low”. A climber grows out of a wash basin; daily-life objects and symbols sprout from the climber’s twirling ends over the wall. Elephants walk into drawing rooms and rooms full of women, sofas, men, bathtubs and plastic mugs. A man flashes a torch on the roof in a dark room, waiting for the electricity supply to resume. The man is Kamath. It’s a room in Vasant Kunj. He lives with his family and paints at his studio in another flat in the same locality. The comfort trickled in gradually, thanks to the art boom. “The art boom was something unbelievable. I got `70,000 for a work. Boom. I didn’t know what to do with it... I didn’t buy designer wear like others. I took the middle path.”
His collection of traditional Indian dolls and idols of gods and goddesses is growing. He stays away from Hauz Khas Village because of its commotion. Instead, he walks into the Lodi Garden with his wife and children in his free time.