Artist breaks barriers, paints with single arm

NEW DELHI: As a child, Shreekant Dubey wanted nothing more than to stand tall in an olive green army uniform as an officer of rank. Just like his father did, he says. The dream ended in 1983 when an accident forced doctors to amputate his right arm, but his drive didn't. He followed his second passion to the end, and now effortlessly wields a brush as he paints with his left arm.
He recalls the accident like it happened yesterday. ""I was in a field in Ghazipur, near Benaras, and saw a wire laying there. I picked it up to go under it, not knowing that thousands of volts of electricity were passing through it,"" he says. He describes the black burn marks on his hand, boils on both his feet, and him not being able to move his fingers afterwards, but there's not a hint of self-pity in his voice.
"I was scared, and doctors didn't even tell me they were going to amputate my arm. I saw after the operation," he continues. It took six months of mental and physical rehabilitation at the hospital, and another few at home, but he finally began to learn how to use his left hand. Today there's a sparkle in his eyes as he talks of painting ten hours a day, making perfectly round rotis, and driving his two-wheeler.
"When I decided to take art after the incident, the teacher said no as he didn't think I could do it. He didn't want the name of his class to go down,"he says. But refusing to accept no for an answer, he not only convinced the teacher to let him take the class, he also went on to pursuing a Masters in Fine Art in Benaras. Apart from a massive number of paintings to his credit, and a large work-in-progress mural covering an entire wall in his home art studio, he also has thousands of sketches - over 75kg worth of paper - that he has been making since 1994.