Still Dancing Alone

Sixty years after he began painting, Jatin Das stays true to his original style as a recent exhibition in Mumbai showed

- Chinki Sinha

That’s the only narrative behind the figures in motion on canvas. The million lines have been drawn for no particular reason. It is all human angst, poetic endeavour and metaphors of life. “How can I compress my 60 years of work in an interview?” asks Jatin Das in the context of what he calls his “homecoming”, an exhibition that generated a great deal of interest and just ended at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai.

In his studio in Mehrauli in Delhi, there are old photo frames of himself, his daughter and his son. In a corner, ten hats are hanging on the wall. His mobile phone isn’t a smartphone. And his studio is stuck in a time warp but he is against judgement.”Don’t call me a nostalgist just because there is a landline phone that comes from another era,” he says.