Narendra Kumar Pingolia did not want to be a labourer like his father. When the 2015 batch left the hallowed precincts of College of Art in Delhi last month, Pingolia was a sculptor. With his batchmate Mohan, from the Painting section, Pingolia was also passing out of another institution — a windowless room in JJ Colony (Phase II) in Nangloi in west Delhi, where art teacher Rangamma Kaul has been drilling painting and sculpture lessons into slum children for more than three decades and turning them into emerging artists. The children of vegetable vendors, chappal-makers, factory hands, sweepers, drivers and petty craftsmen now attend fine art schools such as College of Art and universities such as Jamia Millia Islamia, win Bal Shree and Nehru awards, work as teachers and designers and occupy a growing space in Delhi’s commercial art scene. Called Bal Bhavan Kendra, the school has sent around 25 students to College of Art alone in 30 years. SN Lahiri, Principal of College of Art, puts the achievement in perspective: “Getting into College of Art is very difficult, surviving here is more so. There were 2,000 applications for 280 seats this year. You have to work very hard,” he says. College of Art’s older alumni include names of international repute such as Paresh Maity, Rameshwar Broota and Gogi Saroj Pal. There are other students from humble backgrounds but these are individual instances of triumph. At present, six students of Bal Bhavan Kendra are enrolled in BFA disciplines at College of Art. The first of Kaul’s students to graduate from the college was Sharwan Kumar, 44, Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Applied Arts, 1995, whose parents worked in brick kilns and as an MCD rajmistri. “When I came to this area, there was no sign of art. I used to go door to door to ask people to send their children to me to learn drawing and painting and they would say kaagaz kala karna hai? I would be told that colouring pages was not going to put food on the table,” says Kaul. Today, Bal Bhavan Kendra buzzes with children of all ages — the little ones sit in cramped rows in the room, whose walls are covered with watercolours or pencil sketches of gods, freedom fighters, dolphins and landscapes, while the older boys and girls paint on tables or on the floor in a balcony and more confident seniors spread themselves before walls, covering these with faces and figures, including a graffiti of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. The atmosphere is electric with concentration; many of the students have fought with their families to spend time with art rather than earn a living. Kaul, aided by her former students — among them Bhupinder Singh (also a College of Art graduate) — since she suffered a stroke a few years ago, insists on practice and perfection. “We have been allotted only this room but we also use the balcony and the boundary walls and every space we can find,” says Kaul, who grew up in a children’s NGO called SOS Village and studied Bachelor of Fine Arts at Banaras Hindu University, before dropping out to teach “slum children who had no idea about art”. The school runs on funds from a few NGOs as well as donations from tourists, but the roof can’t keep the rain out during the monsoon. Many of Kaul’s students have moved up the ladder and out of the slum, thanks to art. Kumar, who makes murals, paintings and ceramics commercially as well as works on commissions at Pragati Maidan pavilions, lives in a house built on one of his two plots of land in Najafgarh. “I didn’t know the ABC of art but Rangamma ma’am would say, ‘Sharwan, do it like this, do it like that’ and, slowly, I began to learn what art was,” says Kumar, who has no artist in his family. Pingolia found his fire in the school. “When I went for art competitions, I wanted to be first. The atmosphere is such that when one student does well, the rest of us want to do better,” he says. He stayed awake nights perfecting his lines. When he was told that the four-year course at College of Art would cost Rs 4 lakh — in fees, art material and miscellaneous expenditure — Pingolia raised the amount by teaching and as an artist on hire. Mohan, on the other hand, made portraits at parties. Both want to enroll for Masters in Fine Arts. “There are students from a variety of backgrounds; art has space for everybody,” says Lahiri, adding that College of Art is “a prime institute in South East Asia”. Kaul could say the same for her one-room centre.
