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“The courtyard was my drawing book. My legs were weak but my hands were strong”

Art united Aloke Kumar Ghosh (56) and his wife Kirti Ghosh (55) when they were fellow students at Viswa Bharati University, Santiniketan. But art was deep-rooted in Aloke ever since he was a toddler growing up in West Bengal’s Jalpaiguri district.
 
Aloke, whose right leg was affected by polio at six months, belonged to an agricultural family. There was a large angan (unpaved, mud courtyard) in front of their house. When Aloke was around four, every morning his mother Milan Ghosh would pick him up and plonk him on the angan while she went about her chores. He would pluck a stick from the broom made of coconut fronds and start drawing in the mud. After he’d finished a drawing he would crawl ahead to begin the next one. When Milan came to fetch him for a bath and lunch, he would have reached the middle of the angan. After lunch she would place him exactly where he had left off, and by evening the entire angan would be filled with drawings. “I drew and drew from sunup till sundown,” he narrates. “We didn’t have fancy toys like kids these days. The angan was my world. You could call it the drawing book of my life.”
 
A master used to come home to teach his seven siblings. Milan tried to make him sit alongside and learn, but after learning the rudiments of reading and writing he went back to drawing in the courtyard. One day, when he was 12 or so, he had an epiphany: “I don’t know if it was god speaking or my inner voice but something told me, get up, get up or you will become part of this mud.” Determined to stand on his feet, Aloke practised every day, falling down repeatedly but persevering. His family got him bamboo crutches and later took him to doctors in Kolkata for treatment until, slowly but steadily, he started walking without support.
 
Aloke’s parents decided to enrol him in a nearby school but he did not attend classes, so they hired a tutor at home. After passing tenth standard he decided to go to Santiniketan because whoever came home and saw his art would tell him to go there for further studies. His parents were reluctant to send their teenager, who had only just learnt to walk independently, on such a long journey alone, but he was determined. The first time he applied he was rejected because he hadn’t passed 12th standard. The second time around he got lucky.
 
“I have had some of my best moments in Santiniketan,” Aloke recalls. “I had a wonderful circle of friends who helped me a lot and were my strength.” He spent seven years there, doing his Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and then his Masters, specialising in wood and stone sculpture (“though my legs were weak, I had a lot of strength in my hands”). Santiniketan was also where he met Kirti. They had both chosen the same specialisation and shared the same studio – sculpture.
 
Kirti, originally from Chhattisgarh, did her BA in Fine Arts from Khairagarh. She was the only girl in her batch who chose to specialise in sculpting – her teachers told her it was tough for women as it involved a lot of heavy lifting, but she loved it. Her father made sure all four of his children were interested in the arts. After Kirti graduated he encouraged her to apply to Santiniketan since it’s a premier institution offering a Masters in sculpting, but she hesitated at first: “I was reluctant to go out of my comfort zone. I told my father, how will I survive there, I’m vegetarian and they eat fish, and they speak Bangla which I don’t know!”
 
Being studio-partners meant Aloke and Kirti had to work closely together. Initially they couldn’t communicate as he didn’t speak Hindi but they gradually taught each other their mother tongues. In the second year they realised they were fond of each other but were too shy to show it. Kirti remembers how in their final year, one night while they were returning from dinner, she on foot and he on his cycle, he asked her what her plans were for the future. She said, find a job, maybe have an exhibition of her art. And then he asked if they could become life partners. She said they could but her parents might not agree because of their caste differences, not to mention the issue with his leg.
 
As she had predicted, Kirti’s parents were disapproving but Aloke’s parents Prabhat and Milan Ghosh welcomed Kirti as their own. “My in-laws have always treated me like a daughter,” she says. “When complications developed during my pregnancy, I stayed with them and they took such good care of me.” While she was pregnant, Prabhat used to read to her stories from the Mahabharata and Ramayana. She was fascinated by Pradyumna, god Krishna’s son, and decided that if she had a boy she would give him the name Praduman.
 
Aloke joined The Scindia School in Gwalior as an art teacher in 1996. After he married Kirti in ’97 she too started teaching art in the School. She took a break when Praduman was born in ’99 and resumed work when he was old enough. Her parents thawed, unable to stay away from their grandson, and broken ties were renewed. Praduman is in the Merchant Navy and is stationed in New Zealand now.
 
The couple go to school and return home together. Over the weekend Aloke likes gardening, wood carving, cooking and helping in household chores. Kirti praises him for his patience, and adds: “He helps me with everything at home and supports me mentally and physically in everything I do.”