Kamala Rajan’s home in Bharathi Nagar is a small art gallery that houses the best of her work in recent years —ink, oil paint, Thanjavur style gold foil, and reused packaging material — the media that the 77-year-old uses are as diverse as her varied interests in life.
Mrs Rajan, who was born in 1940 in Salakkadu village near Manachanallur, has tried her hand at everything from poetry, short fiction, tailoring and costume jewellery along with her childhood passion for drawing.
“My mother would always stress on girls getting educated, even though she herself didn’t go to school,” recalls Mrs Rajan. “Her constant refrain was that women should study to be financially independent even after marriage. So my sisters and I got educated in a time when girls were not encouraged to attend school,” she says.
Varied interests
Her marriage to Kavirinadan SS Rajan (former principal and Tamil professor of Nehru Memorial College, Puthanampatti), in 1959 and the responsibility of raising four children put an end to her dreams of working full-time like her sisters, but the young Kamala remained invested in her love for the arts.
She credits her husband with supporting her childhood interest in painting, especially by introducing her to the Camlin poster colour tubes that were all the rage in the 1970s. Professor Rajan passed away in 1996.
An avid reader since her school days, she started writing poems, articles and short stories for Tamil magazines in 1975.
“My first piece was a poem in classical Tamil for a booklet published by Malaikottai Magalir Sangam. But other magazines wanted me to write something simpler, so I shifted to modern Tamil poetry,” says Mrs Rajan. “Vernacular magazines in those days used to be full of articles giving tips on home arts and relationship advice. This has changed over the years, but I still have to read at least one magazine a day,” she adds. Mrs Rajan’s eclectic taste reaches as far as motoring magazines and English novels.
City lover
In 2000, she decided to learn traditional Thanjavur painting from a master in Srirangam. Here too, she brought her unique style to the technique, by creating more realistic facial features. “But you cannot do everything on your own, you need to follow the teachers,” says Mrs Rajan. “This was the first time that I had attended a formal art course in my life, and I still cherish those days when I was healthy enough to hop on to a bus and go for class.” A permanent resident of Tiruchi since the early 1980s, Mrs Rajan has seen the city grow, from her days as a boarder at the Savitri Vidyasala Higher Secondary School in the 1950s until the present. “Watching the Cauvery in full flow is still one of my favourite views. I love Tiruchi,” she says.
Recently, her son Mahesh, an advocate, published a booklet of her drawings and writings titled Vannangalum-Yennangalum (Colours and Thoughts) to make her work better known outside the family circle.
In the course of our conversation, Mrs Rajan often ruminates on the changing family structure and social mores over the years. “I’d like to be reborn as a child of this generation and enjoy the life of comfort and convenience that we didn’t have in our day,” she says. “I’m very happy to see how many married men help out their wives with domestic chores these days. Men should be a stepping stone, not a stumbling block, to the success of the women in their lives.”
