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Post 60, turn to dormant talent

Retirement is not the end, but the beginning of a new phase, Mr &Mrs. N. Sukumaran prove. The doctor-engineer couple tells PRIYADARSSHINI SHARMA how painting consumes their life

FOLLOW YOUR HEART K.N. Rema completing the Gitopadesom and Dr. N. Sukumaran filling post retirement hours in different shades of colours

Strange bedfellows: prescribing medicines and painting, constructing buildings and painting. This rather unusual palette belongs to Dr. and Mrs. N. Sukumaran who, being a professional doctor and engineer respectively, are pursuing post-retirement, an all-consuming hobby, painting. Immense joy and satisfaction is what the pensioners are receiving now. Retire from work and not from life, says a popular ad and this couple is doing exactly that.

K.N. Rema, after working for 37 years in the Cochin Port Trust and being the first woman chief engineer had hitherto no time to take up the brush. Between building, "so many godowns, open berths, Mattancherry wharf, administrative block to the Port office and bridges, I could never find time to paint. In 1981 the cover of Femina with Mrs. Indira Gandhi's picture on it inspired me. I painted that in oil." After which Rema got busy with work and home and began painting only after retirement, and that was, five years ago. In perfect conjugal harmony, the busy doctor too took semi-retirement and began pursuing his long-standing desire of painting and photography.

"You see that painting on the wall," he points to a longish landscape of snow-clad peaks. "That one I painted when we built this house and the wall was bare. Why should I buy a painting when I can do one? I have always wanted to paint and even while studying medicine we have to do a lot of pathology diagrams, of blood vessels, of tumours," he says in true clinical humour.

So, keen photography and its translation on to the canvas forms Dr. Sukumaran's opus of 15 works. Frangipani, Anthuriums, portraits of his grandchildren, National Geographic covers, and Time magazine covers have all been reproduced artistically in oils. Like the many shades of his works his medical and artistic identities too thrive side by side.

The doctor in him comes to the fore as he talks about the paintings hung in the rooms of his house, which was earlier, a hospital. "You know this was the children's ward, this the nurse's duty room and we paint in two different rooms."

Rema, too is now revelling in her art with time on her hands. They have no domestic help. They do the chores themselves, and the house is spic and span. "I finish the housework by 11 am and begin painting. In fact we both paint in the afternoons at the same time in different rooms. After some time we see how much the other has progressed and offer critical comments. This way we paint together but never on the same canvas," says Rema, who has completed 33 art works. "Our techniques are very different. Rema uses watercolours, oil on pastels while I do only oils. She uses only the watercolour brush, the fine one as she goes into details. I use bold and broad strokes," says the doctor and shows his wife's latest work in progress, `Gitopadesham', which she has been at for the past three months. "You see, this painting is so fine in detailing that even the horses are bejewelled," explains Rema with a smile. She has reproduced many works of Ravi Varma and an amazing lifelike pencil sketch of M.S. Subbulakshmi, which has pride of place in their bedroom.

"We are not in to sale of our paintings. In fact Rema has made portraits of her friend's mother and presented it to her. We gift paintings. We have been asked to keep our paintings for sale but we are not interested. People are not doing such kind of painting these days .It is only a professional art scene now. We have not learnt painting formally. This is only a passion, a hobby. Among the doctors in the city, Dr. Paulose Chacko, the orthopaedist, is a very good painter," reveals Dr. Sukumaran.

So no post retirement blues for the couple. No time hanging on their hands, no longing, lingering look at the past, no harking back, no career moves and no call of duty as such, the couple have finally found time to follow their heart and paint: A heart that's sensitive to the sights and sounds around as expressed in a painting done by the doctor.

"Long ago the Matrubhumi carried a picture of an adivasi woman with a child. I was so taken up by the comment and the expression that I painted it," says the doctor and shows the work of an old woman yearning for the past while the child's eyes are all agog with hope for the future. "Eyes and expressions in them are difficult to paint," says the doc, who was in government service for 10 years before starting his own practice.

At 65, the couple is celebrating life in many shades, shades that till now were hidden in the heat and dust of day-to-day living. The doctor rightly diagnoses about their artistic tryst. "Imagine if we did not understand each other's need to paint. If a couple has a common interest half the problem is solved." Yes with professions as different as medicine and engineering, with dispensing wellness and constructing fishing harbour it is this common canvas of art that's brought the retired couple endless satisfaction in their twilight years, in their beautiful home in Puthuvype.

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