The visual always fascinated me. As I grew up, I slowly realized that we not only see through our eyes, but also from the heart. Feeling is living. Beauty is Understanding. I was overwhelmed by the harmony of creation. My youth was one rapturous communion with nature. The ecstasy is gone but fragments of its memory, still, at times, shimmer, to give a sudden insight. My paintings are such fragments. Yes, they are fragments because my life is so.
Moments hold me in their thrall, each in its own way. Only when they release me I come out of my stupor. I have not been able to arrange my moments in a row so my paintings too do not fall in a line. They have been lived one by one, as if, that was all then to live for. The others did not exist to relate to and build a theme.

In my early adolescence I did pencil drawings during my holidays and was quite fascinated with them. But then I did not do much till I graduated. While I was still studying in the Allahabad University I joined painting classes run by one Mr. Singhal. He used to teach the Bengal School style of water-colour wash painting. The process was quite elaborate. We had to apply very dilute colours that would be hardly visible till quite a few layers were applied. Next day before starting the painting, it was immersed in a bucket of water for five minutes, then drained off by holding up one corner. Only after this procedure would we start applying very thin washes of colour again. I was quite pleased with my first painting. It is with my friend and even now after fifty years its colours have not faded even slightly. The dip in the bucket and application of thin washes ensured that there were no coarse grains of paint and the colours penetrated the paper deeply.

However, it took several days to finish a painting as there was little scope for spontaneity. The immediacy was lost. More so, figures, faces, eyes, fingers and poses were stereotyped.
After a few paintings I asked Mr. Singhal to teach me oils. I told him that there is beautiful country-side around my home and an excursion could be arranged there. He agreed. He listed the materials that I should buy. We settled beside the Belan river with the hills in the background. That was my first oil painting. It was on paper.

I was a bit disappointed with the outcome. Anyway, I had started. I later revisited my village and painted the Belan River again. This painting I have kept with me all these years not because it is very good but because of my emotional attachment to the Belan. I painted a scene of the McPherson Lake near my home in Allahabad city. A few more original paintings followed, then it was mostly complying with the requests of relatives and friends of copying some photograph or painting. This was in the early to mid-fifties.