Prisoners' paintings capture flights of fantasy

MUMBAI: In these recessionary times, it's hard to imagine a sunshine world where Mahatma Gandhi gives you a thumbs up or a Kathakali dancer blissfully smokes a hookah. But for someone like Baby John Parker, who has been oblivious to the world outside the Arthur Road Jail for years, such flights of imagination mean freedom. Not very long ago, Parker, an undertrial, used the forbidding stone floor of his dingy cell as a drawing board and quickly translated his visions into charcoal sketches.
The charcoal came from child psychologist Kavita Shivdasani, who is organising an exhibition of paintings by undertrials called `Art from behind bars'.The idea of this exhibition struck Shivdasani two years ago when she had taken a group of children to a jail on an educational outing. Here, she bumped into Parker, who answered her Hindi questions in English and came across as a "carefree, cool hero''.
Her idea to support Parkar's artistic talent received instant support from Udhav Kamble, inspector general of prisons, Maharashtra, who permitted her access to other jails in the state. It was in Pune's Yerawada Jail that she met convict Rahul Maruti More, a former signboard artist, whose cell was hung with landscapes painted by him. Though More's interest in art as a money-spinner frustrated her, she chose his series on women in various stages of make-up and titled it Shringar.
Later, while sifting through unending bundles of boring sketches made by undertrials at Nagpur jail, Shivdasani, who doesn't like "perfect paintings'' found talent at the bottom of the pile. Undertrial Lalita Gonogunta, an MA in fine arts from Bhopal, had drawn a series of charcoal illustrations reflective of the "morbid nature of her past'', using vermilion and turmeric to adorn the women in the sketches. Another interesting contribution came from Tatiana Bolomey in Byculla jail. The diary of mini-paintings of this French national is now framed and ready for the outside world.
The exhibition includes not just art from behind bars but also works from men who put them there. While on the prison trail, Shivdasani met Sanjay Sawant, a reticent 41-year-old whose ink sketches of heritage buildings caught her fancy. Some of them like the Mahim dargah were sketched in situ, braving noise and constant interruptions. Professionally, Sawant helped sketch faces of suspects when he was posted at the Nagpada control room. His protege constable Ganesh Sonurkar has painted under-construction buildings and Khajuraho figurines for the exhibition.
One rule that Shivdasani and her team (she was assisted by Nishant Shah and her students) followed faithfully was not to probe the background of the undertrial. "Every person deserves a second chance. We don't know and don't want to know why they are in prison,'' she says. The proceeds of the exhibition will go towards rehabilitating prisoners due for release.
Shivdasani's expectation, however, is more practical. "I want the paintings to sell.''
(The exhibition is on from March 25 to 31 at the Bajaj Art Gallery in Nariman Point)