LIFE'S SCRIPT ON CANVAS

One of India's significant modernists, Shanti Dave moved from figuration to abstraction in encaustic, a technique that few have dared to dabble in.

- Abhilasha Ojha

Back in the 1960s when Shanti Dave, one of India’s leading modernists, reached London for work from the US, he realised that he had run out of money. Frantically, he reached out to F. N. Souza, India’s enfant terrible, who was, at the time, living there, and borrowed cash from him. “Souza ne badi madad kari (Souza helped me a lot),” says Dave sir (I’ll call him ‘sir’ in deference to his age, he is 91-years-old), still remembering the gesture of his fellow artist. Dave sir’s conversations are nostalgic—living with Mohan Samant in New York when his passport, air tickets, and other belongings got stolen; forming a bond of friendship with author Ved Mehta in the US (“Ved bhi acha dost bann gaya tha mera (Ved also became a good friend of mine”).