My Teacher
Hidden Treasures With Pinaki Barua
Kausik Mukhopadhyay (Mumbai)
Pinakida (Pinaki Barua) joined printmaking department of Rabindra Bharati University at the end of our second year. We already heard that he left IIT to join Kalabhavan and he is a Buddhist. He had completed his Masters from Kalabhavan recently. When looking back, he might have been a few years older than us. When we first met him he had short crop hair, slim but well-built and with narrow eyes which made him look unlike a Bengali. He wore jeans and a bush shirt. Unlike other professors he made an impression of being one of us. At that time the Faculty of Visual Art at Rabindra Bharati University was in a turmoil of change. The student union had demanded a change from the three years course to an integrated five years course. Though most of the professors and the alumni were in favour of the change the proposal was moving very slowly through the university bureaucracy. The course was suggested by KG Subramaniyan and without much understanding, that was enough for us. As an active member of the Student Union we threw our weight behind it. So a lot of time was spent in meetings and rallies than in the studio. The first interaction in the studio with Pinakida was for a life-drawing class. He took us through a journey of representation of human figures from Egypt and Mohenjo Daro to cubism and beyond. The whole of life study as we knew so far became unhinged. I think because of Pinakida, I took printmaking as my specialisation in third year.
Discovering hidden treasures in Chitpur with Pinaki Barua
So far our Printmaking department didn’t have many facilities. Pinakida first started with acquiring etching and Litho presses. The Chitpur area of Kolkata was full of old presses where it was possible to find, old etching and litho presses, the owner would be happy to sell. I don’t know how our HOD Baghda (Harikrishna Baghdad) managed the fund from squabbling departments trying to grab funds, but there was money. With Pinakida we got involved in the search. Searching for these presses with a history of hundred years, hidden in the gullies of north Kolkata was like going back in time. There were machines made in England or Germany sitting in a dark suffocating room just to be emancipated. We needed to find the best one that fitted our budget. Later when I was doing my masters in Kala Bhavana I delved into the Lithographs made by these presses during the late 19th and early 20th centuries for my thesis.
After a lot of searching we zeroed down on two presses. A truck delivered the presses to the ground floor of the college building. Our printmaking department was on the 2nd floor. It would take a long time to get the presses, which was by now dismantled, to the department if we waited for official formalities for organising the move. Instead under the guidance of Pinakida we tied bamboos to the large cast iron frames and hauled them up to the 2nd floor. They were cast iron frames, heavy rollers, large iron beds and litho stones. Then come the task of putting them together. First each part had to be cleaned off the grease and grime that had accumulated on them, over the years. Individual parts were cleaned, oiled and re-assembled. Pinakida was knowledgeable about piecing them together again. This was an exciting and a novel experience for us as students, creating a bond between us and a sense of belonging. Our sense of responsibility would find us keeping the studio space clean and maintaining the equipment.
Preparing ground and ink
So we started with making the ground. When working on a zinc plate for etching, a brown layer of ground (mixture of beeswax, resin and bitumen) is layered with a roller on the zinc plate to make it an acid resistant surface. A sharp pointed needle is used to render a drawing, removing the ground exposing the zinc. Placed in an acid bath the exposed metal is corroded creating etched marks on the plate. Later ink would be rubbed into these gorges & print would appear as we rolled the plate through the press. Experimenting with the ingredients in different proportions was a game for us to reach varied outcomes. Nothing could ever go wrong! Pinakida was very meticulous about teaching the technique of each process. Each step was clearly explained with its scientific reason behind it. With no etching ink in the market at that time we tried our hand at this too. Pinakida would bring various black powders and different viscosity of linseed oils to try various kinds of ink. Once we mixed carbon black with strand oil (very thicken form of linseed oil) and made an almost solid lump of black ink.
Nourishment for the artist soul.
10 o’clock every morning would see the adda with Dharmada ( Darmanarain Dasgupta) Parthada (Parthapratem Deb) from painting department and with Bagda and Pinakida and all of us students crowding around for large table and having tea made in the department. I think we learned a lot about art and life from those addas.
A friend & my guide
When Pinakida went for trekking he would do a lot of photography in black and white. Goutam Modak (from Government college of Arts and Craft) and I used to go out during our vacations to sketch. Once we planned to visit Odisha. It might be that we decided to go to Odisha after hearing about Pinakida’s plan to visit Odisha!
Gautam and I were going to Bhubaneswar and Konark. Pinakida was doing a much larger tour of various districts of Odisha. We decided to meet up at Konark. We reached Konark from Bhubaneswar and Pinakida came from somewhere else. We found ourselves stranded with nowhere to put up! Our plan was to stay for 3 or 4 nights. Fortunately, we chanced to meet a Bengali Sadhu who put us up at a temple (Durga Mandir) where he was living.
It was a RCC construction, having a temple sanctorum and a room. After offloading our backpacks, we headed to the Konark Sun temple. Chandrabhaga beach was three kilometres away and Gautam & I sketched, while Pinakida photographed with his SLR.As we settled on the ground and started sketching a fisherman settlement Pinakida told us just how important it was to understand the people, their life, how their shelter was structured rather than just capturing the visuals of the settlement blindly. Today I find myself leading my first year architecture students in the same logic for their study tour! Right after completing my MFA from Shantiniketan & returning to Kolkata, after many years in institutions, I suddenly found me clueless in this world. This is when Pinakida let me teach small children in his Sunday institution for kids at his home. Eventually I got a fellowship & left for Kanoria Center to Ahmedabad...
Santiniketan
From Ahmedabad I moved to Mumbai. Pinakida left Rabindra Bharati University, with much protest from the students and joined Kalabhavan, Santiniketan. I met him whenever I went to Santiniketan. Suddenly I heard that Pinakida was suffering from amnesia, a non-curable brain degenerative disease. Next time I went to Santiniketan I went to Kala Bhavana to look for him. I met other professors and everyone said he might not recognise me. Suddenly there was a hand on my shoulder. I turned round and Pinakida was standing there, eye sparkling with recognition.
That’s the last time I met him.