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Ratnakar Ojha -THE COLOURS OF MUSIC

That Ratnakar Ojha is unabashedly an Indian in spirit is proved by his exuberant use of colours. Using almost every hue in the spectrum, ranging from burning reds and passionate yellows, tastefully set off by turquoises, ultramarines and cobalt, he still manages to retain that sense of balance that is the hallmark of Basohli miniaturists. Not once does he kneel over the merely polychromatic. Lavanya, that is grace and harmony, is the keynote of these paintings.
Ojha displays a definite partiality for female form. The male comes in, a distant second, appearing in certain, slightly clichéd avatars, once as a blind boy, with his identifying white cane and again as a shehnai player, piping melodiously in to a foreground of musical instruments. ‘Alok’ as a painting departs from the norm, being far more graphically illustrative than the other works. It seems to depict the sad fate of education today, the child being overburdened not only by the heavy school bag he is carrying, but also by the confused bits of knowledge he is supposed to cram into his tiny, as yet undeveloped mind.
Ojha’s nayikas are young women, usually caught in an introspective mood, gazing pensively into space through dreamy, half closed eyes. Their slightly cross-eyed gaze, balanced by the ever so tiny rose bud lips, points to Ojha’s penchant for patternization. This fact is confirmed by the textures that keep cropping up, the dotted jaba, the striped kameezes and the multi coloured school bag being ample evidence.
The parrot, which appears in quite a few of the works, provides a key to the gentle melancholia of the female. The parrot, in Indian mythology has always been associated with Shringar. With its near human attributes of inquisitiveness and speech, and its multi coloured appearance, the parrot may well be symbolic of the absent lover. The mood is of Viraha, love in separation, but the colours still sing out passionately. Perhaps the lady is remembering happier times.
In another painting titled, ‘Girl, black Cat and yellow flower’, the lady sits demurely on a bright yellow upholstered divan, lazily stroking a bristling black cat with impassive yellow eyes. The same yellow appears again as an accent in the heavy flower that weighs down the slender neck of the woman. The brilliance of all this yellow which could have proved a strain on the eyes is beautifully balanced by the myriad shades of blue and green that merge gently into each other in the background.
The use of these animals and birds in conjunction with the nayaks also suggest the imagery of the ragamalas. Could Ojha be indicating the different musical moods through his repeated use of the parrot and the peacock? He maintains an enigmatic silence on that, preferring to let the imagination of the viewer do its bit. The peacock, in the ‘Mother and the Child’ makes an arresting abstract pattern against the white covered shoulder of the lady. The monkey on the other hand (in another painting) is barely indicated, appearing as a shadow through the glazed bar of the window. Ojha, like the Fauvists in the early part of this century, suggests light through his use of colours, rather than through sculptural modeling.

VEENA KOTIAN
Mumbai
March, 1997

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2004
36 x 27

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1987
36 x 27

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2006
61 x 61

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2007
61 x 61

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2005
122 x 46

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2005
122 x 46

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2006
76 x 76

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1995
18 x 13