Yesterday I saw the list of art exhibitions listed & wondered the Manikandan Punnackal listed there was the same old Manikandan I knew from school.He could have been....very easily.The guy was exhibiting murals, in the kerala mural tradition.the picture showed a woman smiling, on her back on a small wooden kayak.she lay in the background of thick water weed, the leaves curling into the kayak, almost touching her curly unbound hair.
The guy I knew was the son of my physics lab assistant, not really what you would call well placed, even in those days.but the son was extraordinary.He won every competition in the vicinity, school level, state level, national level all of it.I had to wait for the guy to pass out before I could win the coveted first position.
The father believed in his son, that he could work magic for all of them.so he asked around & found NID, the school of Design nobody in my school had even heard about.It was a difficult place to get into,with an annual intake of less than 100 people in a country of millions.he managed to get through. we the small time brush workers of the school were elated.looked like painting could actually get you somewhere.
years passed by, I tried the NID entrance & did not get through, settled for the lesser NIFT.Graduated, worked for a while & then got into NID for a post graduate degree.There I heard of the guy again.He did not do too well there, he chose a technical branch that did not suit him, he did not find the programme easy to get thru, probably never painted again.I never saw him again.
But the exhibition ad made me look him up today.
No it wasn't the same guy.It was a much younger chap, educated in mural painting.his work was beautiful.The guy I thought it was was in a corporate job somewhere in bangalore, married & father of one.The cover picture was that of the smiling family, set in a wood panelled urban Indian apartment background.He looked happy, He was living the middle class Indian dream.
