A feast at Andretta

Vikramdeep Johal

CAN we get something to eat here?” This was our point-blank query when we reached the Sobha Singh art gallery and museum at Andretta. On the road for over five hours, we had long exhausted our food supplies. Our bellies were growling madly for some grub.

The receptionist quickly gauged that we were just ordinary tourists, not art connoisseurs. “There’s a family in the neighbourhood that offers meals at a reasonable price, but it will take half an hour,” she said. We placed an order in the blink of an eye. “In the meantime, you can take a round of the gallery,” she suggested. That made perfect sense to me and the three ladies in the age group of 7-71 — my daughter, wife and mother.

For the next 30 minutes or so, Sobha Singh almost made us forget our hunger pangs. We already had framed prints of his most famous works back home, be it Sohni-Mahiwal, Guru Nanak, Guru Gobind Singh or Omar Khayyam. It were his lesser-known portraits of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Lord Rama and Krishna that captured our attention. Being a mere mortal, I wondered which of these paintings had been made on an empty stomach. Wisely, I didn’t embarrass the guide with this weird question.

After a close look at the legend’s well-preserved room, it was time for a well-deserved lunch. A museum staffer took us to a house nearby. The owner, a retired police officer, welcomed us with a broad smile and led us to a small, stuffy room. The damp walls were adorned, not surprisingly, with two works of the great artist. Another painting, showing a panoramic view of the valley, was perhaps made by someone in the family. Then, like a breath of fresh air, a girl glided into the room. She wished us all and laid the table in a jiffy. She was cheerful and strikingly beautiful. It was hard to take my eyes off her face, even when the steaming-hot food arrived. I wanted to know whether she was a budding painter herself, but kept mum. She wasn’t even born, I thought, when Sobha Singh died over 30 years ago. Had she been around during the master’s days, who knows he might have immortalised this Kangra beauty on canvas. That honour had been bestowed by him on other girls, who had probably become wizened grandmothers by now.

The meal was simple (kale chane and paneer bhurji), but delicious and fulfilling. After an exchange of pleasantries, we made the payment and took our leave. The ladies were all praise for the family’s hospitality, while I marvelled at the way life and art, the real and the surreal, had joined hands to make it an unforgettable experience. I felt satiated — in every sense of the word.