The Epilogue

As an illustrator for the Communist Party of India’s (CPI) magazines, People’s War and People’s Age, Chittaprosad was sent to cover the famine and he extensively toured Bengal, sometimes covering upto 25 villages in 10 days. He travelled on boats, walked to abandoned villages, visited hospitals, destitute homes and the paras of untouchables. His grim and sober reports recorded politics, hunger and disease as he exposed rice black marketeers and retold stories of families torn apart in one of the most tumultuous periods of the last century, just as he saw it. When some of those works appeared in a slim book titled Hungry Bengal, they were burnt by an insecure government to stem the threat of rising popular anger.

Along the way history also forgot to pay its dues to this important image-maker who covered such significant events of our time as the Telangana uprising in 1946 and the Chittagong movement (he took to puppet-making at a later stage in life). But no one ever attempted to compile his works, and today they lie scattered across Shantiniketan, various galleries, auction houses and rich homes.

In sharp contrast to the sentimental romanticism of the Bengal School of Art, Chittaprosad—a self-taught artist who was denied admission to the Government College of Art and Shantiniketan for his close association with the Marxists—reported the famine with a depth that could only have been driven by conviction. Other than Zainul Abedin, the Shilparcharya, who became the principal of Dacca Art College, and Somnath Hore, a disciple of the artist, few have represented reality with such candour.

His observations, like his bold drawings, were incisive—be it the sketch of a granary he’d found after passing through 15 villages, or a girl he observed one night at a hospital in Shreenagar, standing in a corner waiting for her ‘‘long dead’’ mother.

At times he was blunt (‘‘Syphilis was coming out of her face’’), but mostly he was interested in the tiniest details (‘‘The 60 families of Chaukbazar, Chinsura, Hooghly… worst sufferers… Golam Hossain suffering from TB and daughter dies of measles—income 1/4 daily, party member’’). For relief, he painted a rich man’s home with voyeuristic delight. On a new house built by one Shyamaprasad, he sketched and wrote: ‘‘Both sides of the room furnished with new mattress, pillows and tables and chairs. (think before publishing about trespassing act!)’’

Chittaprosad adopted traditional motifs and chose to make linocut drawings a symbol of his patriotism. As a member of the Indian Performance Theatre Association, he travelled to Chittagong to cover the 1943 peasant uprising, where, upon request by a party organiser, he illustrated several posters. And there in the middle of a rice field, Chittaprosad held his first exhibition, pasted on bamboo mats and propped up by bamboo stilts. In his diary, he wrote, ‘‘I had a doubt that rural people would understand the riddles of art… but the village spectators understood everything clearly and in great agitation they had been discussing things amongst themselves.’’

In the last years of his life, Chittaprosad felt ‘‘dejected and cheated’’. According to Gargi Mukherji, Chittaprosad’s niece, he was never paid for his original drawings for movies like Do Bigha Zameen. ‘‘Many bigwigs used to come to his house to get illustrations done but never returned to pay,’’ says Mukherji.

There’s also little information about how Chittaprosad managed to survive without a regular source of income. His youngest sister, Gauri Chatterji, used to visit him three times a year to look after him and ‘‘stock up on food’’. He, according to the family, received a small royalty from the Prague National Museum, which was the first institution to take a step towards building a collection of his work.

Chittaprosad enjoyed his ‘‘big cup of black coffee’’ while painting, which he did till the last days of his life. At Ruby Terrace, the artist’s now derelict Mumbai residence—his home after leaving Kolkata in 1946—he fed overgrown weeds and loaves of bread to the mole rats in the garden so they wouldn’t eat his works.

However, a belated attempt is being made to piece together his life and works. Chittaprosad’s family, after a squabble over his legacy, finally sold his artworks to Ashis Anand, of Delhi Art Gallery. ‘‘Chittaprosad’s story would bring tears to anybody’s eyes,’’ says Anand, who also commissioned a book on him. The author of the biography is Sanjay Malik, an art history professor at Shantiniketan. ‘‘Chittaprosad stood out because he used his brand of realism to the best effect to acknowledge reality,’’ says Malik.

When Chittaprosad became gravely ill with bronchial asthma, Gauri brought him to Kolkata. She held an exhibition of her brother’s works at Kolkata’s Writer’s Building every year on his death anniversary till she died in the late ’90s. Before his death, Chittaprosad reportedly told her that ‘‘if she can’t keep the works, she must throw them in the Ganga’’. Chittaprosad died on November 13, 1978.

The obituary in Ganashakti, the mouthpiece of the CPI, read: ‘‘Chittaprosad dies at the age of 65, in Calcutta, Shishu Mangal Hospital. He was a member of the Communist Party. He was unmarried.’’