Modernist as narrator

Twenty-five years ago, interviewing Krishen Khanna at his studio in Garhi, he'd remarked about his passion: "Art is a possessive mistress; she can be a bitch."

The editor of the magazine, Patwant Singh's Design, had coyly changed the expression to a series of squiggles used, in comicbooks, to express anger, and I'd always wondered afterwards whether Khanna had resented it. A quarter of a century later, the painter doesn't remember the interview, but he's as meticulous about his choice of words and phrases.

"I like to choose my words, to pick them carefully," he says; "language shouldn't come from a void, it must express something clearly and cleanly."

Khanna, one book old, would like to write, but can't seem to make the time for it, and will not write simply because "I have a lot to say". Which is also why he is a slow, if disciplined and regular, painter.

"Unlike a lot of my painter friends, who are very able," he hastens to assure you, "I like to linger over my paintings, not only at the point of thinking but also making changes as I work on them."

Krishen Khanna was born in what is now Pakistan, and educated in London "" which, at least in part, is responsible for both his Western modernism in art, and certainly for the biblical subjects that pepper his works.

It's not something Khanna himself might agree with though, since he's also painted a great deal, especially recently, from the Mahabharata.

"Several of these paintings deal with Draupadi," he explains, "but for me it is not an espousal of the female cause per se, even though great indignities were done to her."

He's quick to defend his particular narrative style. "I think a lot of life is narrative," he laughs. But more seriously: "I'm very fearful of what goes under the title of metaphysical, and therefore abstract, art. I like to be bound down, at least to an extent, to take the world around you "" not hawking it, because there's ample scope for manipulation within it."

He says art itself is "a very impure activity because it's all inclusive. I like to keep my windows very open as it leads to all kinds of richness, rather than being exclusive."

Khanna was trained to think of a corporate job, one that he found in Grindlays Bank "which was offered on the basis of the old school tie", and which he retained for 14 years.

When he did quit it to join his friends in Bombay's Progressive Movement, "I knew I was launching into a career where there wasn't much money. That group of friends, it was like if they couldn't paint, they would die That is the core difference between painters of that generation and now. We never talked about money, we lived as we could. Of course, I was more privileged than the others as I had a job, even though I had to learn to lead two lives."

Khanna, who turned 80 this week, is embarrassed by the fortune in rising prices that art "" as certainly his paintings "" are now attracting.

"It's quite a dilemma," he says, "I'm not quite sure that I love it." The artist who is known for painting his surroundings "" chief among them itinerant labourers, or bandwallahs, though his social and political voice has ranged from Che Guevara to Christ to the anti-war series on army generals "" says it is values that must count above any mercenary qualities.

"You can increase the number of your cars, or airconditioners, or buy a larger refrigerator, but ultimately you live by a certain set of values. For instance, I don't want to aircondition my studio, though I'm asked to; I like a little bit of sweat."

If he's a little sceptical of rising prices, he's also anguished about other artists (or collectors) wanting to eliminate intermediaries or galleries from the process of buying art.

As for wanting to sell to the highest bidder, he protests: "Collectors, friends, have been buying my work, supporting me for years. I can't say boo to the goose now for some extra money." Or, as he explains it, "My upbringing wouldn't allow it." Amen.