Atal Bihari Vajpayee: Mumbai sculptor remembers a friend

The cement bust is kept at Sathe’s house in Kalyan. (Express photo/Deepak Joshi)

WHEN SADASHIV Sathe was working on live-sculpting a bust of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the hours seemed like a perfect concert, he says. “Like a jugalbandi of a flute and sarod.”

Sathe (92), a sculptor who has won many laurels, remembers that day in 1984 perfectly well. “It was possibly the only live sculpture of Vajpayee. He gave me the sitting only because we were friends… The sitting took place in the Matunga residence of Ved Prakash Goyal, on his (Vajpayee’s) 60th birthday. I had requested him years earlier, and he had promised that whenever time permitted, he would call for me,” says Sathe, who was then 59 years old.

The call, as promised, came on December 24, 1984. “He told me he had a few hours on the morning of December 25. I rushed to the Goyal household around 9.30 am,” says Sathe, who started his sculpture by 10.30 am.

“It was completed by lunchtime… Throughout the two-and-a-half hours, Vajpayee kept reciting poetry. I kept at my work. It was a peaceful morning and the result is here,” he recounts.

The life-like bust of cement adorns a proud corner of the Sathe house in Kalyan, a far suburb of Mumbai. “He wasn’t just a great leader. I am one of the fortunate ones who can say we were friends first,” says Sathe.

Like all great friendships, this one had an interesting beginning. “I was a member of the RSS for years. I had gone to Nagpur to finish work on a statue, when I had to urgently get to Delhi, where I lived. The party member who looked after train reservations, managed to get me a first class coupe seat, where Vajpayee was my co-passenger. From Nagpur to Delhi, we spoke endlessly on multiple topics, and discovered that we had several shared interests, including the love of art forms. We departed as friends,” Sathe says.

Those days, Vajpayee stayed in a house with other unmarried MPs. He would read poems by the masters for his roommates and also cook small meals. “It was quite a mehfil,” Sathe remembers.

Sathe last met Vajpayee when he was the Prime Minister. “He loved the Shivaji statue I had made in front of the Gateway of India. I had gifted him a miniature. He asked me to come to his house, the Prime Minister’s house, and find a spot where the miniature could be kept. He then took me in his car to the Parliament,” Sathe says.

“That was the last time I met my friend.”

The cement bust of Vajpayee is one of many feathers in Sathe’s cap. “Our families dealt with idol-making for Ganesh Chaturthi. That’s where I got into sculpting. I was one of the 25 students of the sculpting batch at JJ School of Arts between 1944 and 1948. I tried my hand as a commercial artist, worked with V Shantaram. But I just knew that it wasn’t my calling,” he says.

The Shivaji statue in front of the Gateway of India was a turning point of Sathe’s career. “I started my career with the country’s first Gandhi statue, in Delhi. But when Yashwantrao Chavan, who Vajpayee introduced me to, called me for the 18-feet Shivaji statue, I knew I had managed to make something out of myself,” he says.

Sathe, who last sculpted a statue some years ago, had also done live sculpting for Lord Mountbatten and Prince Philip, along with other Indian personalities. “I have sculpted approximately 200 statues. I believe art should flow. I have experimented with my art, and I hope generations to come continue experimenting. Unless we push limits, how will art grow?”