'I feel sick the day I am not painting'

'That secularism in India is at risk is alarming for someone like me. I'm born secular,' Anjolie Ela Menon, the well-known painter, tells Pavan Lall.

There still exists a preference for face-to-face meetings as opposed to video calls, I learn, when Anjolie Ela Menon tells me on the telephone that she will only meet me after June 15, but in person at her home in New Delhi.

That's exactly where I find myself a few days after, visiting her at her apartment in Nizamuddin East.

Once inside, I'm greeted by Menon, petite in a printed silk maroon tunic, paired with pearls and her trademark bindi.

Smiling and possessed of warm, intelligent eyes, which seem like they can turn hard in a second were the need to arise, she ushers me into her living room, past a half-complete canvas that lies perched on two chairs that serve as an easel. On the wall is a large Ram Kumar.

Artworks abound all over the house, some by her, some of Christian icons collected from travels in England, Sparta and Russia, and others by masters like Ram Kumar and M F Husain.

I walk past an oil painting of a bare-breasted South Indian woman adorned in gold -- it was created by her in collaboration with a Tanjore artist -- before I am seated in the living room opposite another of her works, featuring her husband and other family members.

How has the lockdown been for her, I ask. "It's been terrible because I can't go to my studio, which is in the basti in Nizamuddin, and there's a lot of cases there," I'm told in a voice that shows no sign of aging or world-weariness.

"Also, both my husband and I had the virus. We were asymptomatic but I had it for about a month last year."

Menon, 81, notices my curiosity and says almost as if on cue, "I feel sick the day I am not painting."

Originally from Burnpur, West Bengal, she was born to a half American mother and a Bengali father, a doctor.

After studying at Lawrence School, Lovedale, in Tamil Nadu, she attended Miranda College.

Her mother wanted her to go to Oxford and become a writer, but school and the chance to start painting in her early teens at Lovedale set her course for art.

Menon started out as an athlete in school, running track and throwing the shot put before she got swept up by art, courtesy Sushil Mukherjee, her art teacher in school -- a renaissance man who played the flute, produced plays and shared books on western art with her.

Later, Husain took on that mantle, helping her with her first exhibition at 72 Lodi Estate (now the address of Alliance Française de Delhi), even making the stands himself.

Menon's work has been described as melancholic and figurative, far removed from abstract expressionism.

"My work is not didactic but yes, it does have strains of melancholy," she says.

The critique of being too figurative is, however, not true if one were to mention it to her.

"There have been various phases in my work where I have not only done paintings but also objects, windows, a lot of kitsch and even computer-enabled images, decades ago," she mentions.

I've been offered coffee and Menon uses a French Press to brew it, and pours a cup out.

I walk up to receive it and am told that I can place it on the granite table.

"It's dog-proof, child-proof, and baby-proof," she says. To which I retort, "Journalists can be slightly more dangerous than all three," and am rewarded with laughter, as she takes a sip of water.

Menon's journey has been different from other women artists from India, such as Amrita Sher-Gil (Hungarian-Indian) and Arpita Singh, who are recognised for their figurative works, among others.

She was driven by European Christian influences and often used hard surfaces such as Masonite to create her work on.

Unlike most artists in the country today, Menon is outspoken on matters of national politics, social affairs and her idea of realpolitik.

That's been demonstrated time and again, and I ask what she thinks of the government's handling of the pandemic.

"They handled it pretty badly. The deaths from Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh are being under-reported by some six-eight times, which is absolutely shocking. It has led to us being pariahs worldwide. No country now wants to let us in," she says. "The biggest shock was bodies floating in the Ganga."

She goes on: "That secularism in India is at risk is alarming for someone like me. I'm born secular, my grandmother was American, my father was Indian and my aunts married Christians and Muslims, and we have everyone in the family... Parsis, Sikhs, maybe save for Jewish descent."

Her husband is a retired navy admiral and they have two sons, one an architect and another working on blockchain.

There are four grandchildren and also Chloe, her boxer for whom there was a birthday party along with other dogs, cake and all.

Is Menon a feminist, and more importantly, what does the word mean to her?

"The balance between the sexes is what makes the world go round, which is to say we don't have to be somebody who's uncomfortable with our identity to be a feminist, or somebody who is a hater of men."

She clarifies that she does believe in the principle of feminism for all her more unfortunate sisters.

By that she means that gender equality is extremely important to continue to paint a picture of society.

"All my male peer group artists have wives who make chai for them and promote them in the media. I have a wonderful husband, but I also look after him," she says light-heartedly.

Today, each of her paintings costs as much as a luxury car would; so what does money mean to her? "I have gone through phases of extreme poverty. I lived in France on bread and cheese, and in Sparta on oranges and spinach. And when married, spent years in Russia where we never got our salary on time and there was never enough to eat; so I tend to be a little thrifty. The big amounts mean nothing to me -- they are just numbers on paper."

Indian art has boomed in the last two years, with prices going through the roof.

"I'd say they are huge prices for the eight great big daddies of art, and maybe one should wait one's turn in the queue," she says.

Of course, not that Menon is eating bread and cheese anymore.

Now fancy cooking, which she likes, is a hobby. Her top three favourites? "I make a very good stroganoff, a Burmese khow suey, and a Bengali malai prawn curry."

I interrupt, "Isn't the last one a sedative?" Menon laughs, and I fire off one last question.

"What's the secret to good cooking?" To that she says, "Like in life, it's almost always what the sauce is made up of."

Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com