Raja and his terracotta plates....

After a tiring week of flying I found myself on a train heading to Shantiniketan with a friend. As the defecated city landscape waned, green paddy fields, little huts and nature in all its bounty emerged. It is said Maharishi Debendranath Tagore found the town Bhubandanga peaceful, hence named it Shantiniketan and at a time in my life where peace was what I was searching, I found myself in a town that promised it. As I walked with the rusty red earth beneath my feet, I looked around with immense pleasure in my heart. There were huge banyan trees that had children swinging from it, students cycling on the roads with green foliage all around. I was in Rabindranath Tagore’s haven of art and literature, a precious relic of our Indian history which still survives and carries on the Patha Bhavana legacy of Tagore’s school of ideals.

But this blog is not about Tagore instead about a chance encounter I had with an artist at a studio in Shantiniketan. After taking in the sights and sounds of the famous Kala Bhavan and meeting various young artists who are paving their way into the art world, I was in absolute awe. Here I was meeting free thinkers amalgamating what they were taught with their individual thoughts to create a new impression in the Indian art scene. We were invited to their studio to look at their works. Huge canvases were on display as a testament of the artist’s sweat and hard-work, from tea-stained pixel art to modern contemporary art, all trying to state its creators mind. Bound by the limits of my understanding I started moving through each artist’s station taking in all that was displayed. Then in one corner I saw Mr Raja aka Rajendra Kumar Pradhan deeply engrossed in his work. Holding a brush,his hand steadily moved across his blue painting, I watched him work silently too scared to disturb a man engrossed in his art. Beside him there were certain terracotta plates that caught my eye. Now, images do not change the world, but they certainly provoke reactions in people and I was completely taken in by what I saw--beautiful images depicting scenes from the epic battle of Mahabharata, Maa Durga standing in all her glory, her multiple hands all stretched out radiating ‘shakti’(powerful strength),our Indian gods, goddesses, warriors and demons of yore all sketched and posing in circular plates of clay. I waited as its maker silently looked up at us from his work and stood to greet us with his hands folded into a 'namaste'. I instead reached out and shook Raja’s hand and decided that kriya kalash had to display this artist’s work. We are dealing with artifacts and terracotta plates made by this shantiniketan artist needed a larger audience. So here I am writing about Raja and his painted plates. If my readers like these plates kindly contact us at kriyakalash@gmail.com.