In memory of our Amrita, the legend

Hungary and India have two common icons. First, someone who is noted in academic circles though somewhat little known outside: the scholar Korosi Csoma Sandor, better known as Csoma de Koros. His connection with the Himalaya was strong and intimate. He travelled and lived in Ladakh and was perhaps the first European to visit and write about Zanskar. In 1827, he moved to the secluded monastic village of Kanum, in today’s district of Kinnaur, where he lived for more than three years. A tradition, though unverifiable, maintains that while going through the ancient manuscripts at Kanum, his hands would freeze in winter’s bitter cold and often had to be prised open. Among his many accomplishments was the first Tibetan-English dictionary. The second person is someone many of us know about: Amrita Sher-Gil, whose Hungarian mother, Marie Antoinette Gottesmann, was an opera singer. The father was Umrao Singh Sher-Gil of Majitha — who apart from an aristocratic lineage, was one of the pioneers of photography in India, especially portraits.

We all like our little place in the sun. Even if this comes from an all-too distant and a rather wobbly hook to hang one’s claim to fame. For the moment, it comes from the flimsy fact that the venerable Amrita Sher-Gil and I share the same date of birth, in late January. That priceless nugget was pointed out a couple of years back when the Liszt Institute of the Hungarian Embassy to India was holding a celebration of the artist’s work. During the course of conversation with the institute’s director, one learnt that they did not have access to an absolutely wonderful copy of the long-gone art magazine, The Usha. In undivided Punjab, this was published by the Panjab Literary League from Lahore. Brilliant, but short-lived, the magazine was edited by HL Prasher and DR Chaudhri.

The issue of August 1942 was devoted to the remarkable Amrita Sher-Gil who, in her short life, was to impact the art of India and even overhaul some of it. As I have the treasure, one was only too happy to make a copy and send it to the institute, which I’m sure must have put it to better use than it loitering on my bookshelves.

On December 5, 1942, Amrita passed away at the age of 28. Barely three days before this, she and one of the editors of The Usha, HL Prasher, had met. She was full of laughter and ‘was talking merrily’. She discussed her forthcoming exhibition. Someone suggested that if she really wanted to enjoy the remarks made by visitors to her exhibitions, she should come in disguise and remain incognito. Amrita liked the idea, but the problem was: “What disguise should she choose?” Prasher, tongue in cheek, suggested that she should come dressed as a young Sikh, complete with a turban, moustache and a beard. A pair of spectacles could be thrown in for good measure. That did not happen.

Amrita’s parents were in Shimla when a telegram arrived saying that their daughter was very ill. Umrao Singh and Antoinette rushed up to the Summer Hill post office, which was a bare couple of hundred yards from their house, and set up a trunk call to Lahore. At night, another telegram was delivered saying that Amrita had passed away. A heartbroken Umrao Singh Sher-Gil wrote on the death of his daughter: “During those 10 days (after Amrita’s death), I often gazed on a watercolour miniature of the Kangra School which Amrita had left on the mantelpiece. It represented a young woman, walking gaily with head averted, oblivious of two deadly snakes lying right in the pathway in front of her. It seemed to me that it symbolised the last phase of her own life in coming to Lahore with buoyant hopes, not aware of death which lurked for her there.”

After completing the first draft of this piece, one put it aside and started looking for something more on The Usha. Instead, one ended up going down one of the Internet’s wormholes to arrive at a crater on the planet Mercury. In 2016, the International Astronomical Union named it in honour of Amrita Sher-Gil. This piece of information led to a revision of what one had written and then, one could not but help continuing along a road that had found a bifurcation. Whenever I am in Delhi, among the few things one tries to do, is visit the National Museum of Modern Art. In the old wing, housed in Jaipur House, one is partial to two galleries where I spend most of my time. The first is dedicated to the work of Nicholas Roerich where the Himalaya resonate in their multiple depths of landscape and spirituality. The second is the series of rooms that hold the works of Amrita Sher-Gil. Perhaps I’m a year too late in writing this piece. The year 2024 marked 111 years of Amrita’s birth. That, if one were to go by our observance of centenaries and other time-markers, may have been a better moment. Let me put this down to a non-marker for someone who needs no marker. The legacy is enough.

— The writer is an author based in Shimla