Jorhat, Sept. 6: Ratumoni Das’s legs do not support him but he is not without help.
For more than 10 years this 34-year-old painter, who suffers from a condition called knock knees and cannot travel without his mother’s help, has been trying to eke out a living by teaching children art in Tezpur.
Finally, Numaligarh Refinery Limited has eased his sufferings by constructing a studio-cum-classroom recently at his house so that he does not have to go out anymore.
“I am indebted to Numaligarh Refinery for building this classroom-cum-studio for me. Now I don’t have to go to any school or rent a room to teach my students,” Das said.
Previously, he rented a classroom at a girls’ school in Tezpur to take art classes. But very often he failed to pay the rent because of the low fees of only Rs 50, which he charges from his students per month.
“The previous headmistress was not so demanding but with a change in the head of the school recently, I was forced to leave,” he said.
The manager of Numaligarh Refinery Limited’s corporate social responsibility, Pranab Kumar Sharma, said when they heard about the plight of Das they decided to build him a studio.
“We heard that he was somehow managing a living by teaching a few students in a small room in his house. His mother was also growing old and it was increasingly getting difficult for her to accompany him and help him up and down rickshaws if he had to go out and teach,” Sharma said.
Das rues that the government had not helped him in any way. “Even Bhupen Hazarika wrote a plea for me that the government should help me way back in 1995 but nothing happened,” he said.
“I had invited Bhupen Hazarkia when he was here in Tezpur during a visit. At that time I had no formal training in fine arts but drew his portrait by sticking cotton strips to matchsticks and using them as brushes. Bhupenda was so impressed that he wrote a comment and also appealed to the government to do something to help me. I still show this around but in vain,” Das said.
In 1996, Das enrolled in the JSK College of Fine Arts in Tezpur and considers Debo Kumar Das his guru.
Later, his teachers and well-wishers arranged for him to stay at Srimanta Sankaradeva Kalakshetra in Guwahati and learn modern art from Dilip Tamuly.
He also held painting exhibitions in Guwahati, New Delhi and innumerable times at Tezpur.
He recently conducted a national art workshop in Guwahati along with other resource persons and a drawing of his life titled, Journey, drew praises from other artists.
But exhibitions and workshops do not pay and paintings don’t sell, at least, not in Tezpur, he said.
His school, which offers a bachelor in fine arts degree, is affiliated to the Sarva Bhara-tiya Sangeet and Sanskritik Parishad in Bengal and is his only means of income.