 The span of his prolific work parallels the history of independent India. A gamut of social experiences blended with his own passionate expression as a sensitive seeker, a painter, a sculptor, an architect, a writer, a man of many talents and even greater resolve. Satish Gujral, one of modern India's greatest artists. Born in pre-partition West Punjab in 1925, an accident that injured his leg also left him stone deaf at the tender age of eight. A series of surgeries for his leg further confined him to his bed and turned his early life into a living nightmare. I'm asking the question about my childhood. The answer that filled myself is if I really had a childhood. At 13, Satish got admission to the Mayo School of Arts in Lahore to study applied arts. The multiplicity of training that he was exposed to had a lasting impact on his art and molded him into a painter who also sculpts and builds. There are very few who have been tutored as closely as he has been. I mean, he can draw. Very few people can. I mean, amongst contemporary painters now, I think there are very few who can really draw, who understand drawing the way it should be understood. By early 1947, the freedom struggle had reached its peak. The British Empire finally gave in to the demand for independence and quit India. Though not at anguish, a partition followed. Satish experienced partition at close quarters and those images of brutality and inhumanity left an indelible impression on him. I witnessed killing, murder, rape. I painted the man suffering. And people of those days adopted me as their artist. One of his strongest early periods is the works that were devoted to the pathos, anguish that he as an individual and we as a nation experienced as a result of this division. Satish's partition series drew a lot of critical acclaim and led him to getting a scholarship to study muralism in Mexico. It was with Diego Rivera and Securos, the most well acclaimed mural artists, that Gujral learnt the basics of public art. With his newfound confidence, Gujral returned to India and was commissioned to do a portrait of La La Lajpatrae, a film fighter popularly known as the Lion of Punjab. This brought him to the notice of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, but also brought a new ray of light into his life. Kiran. After I married him, Kiran became my bridge with life. She interpreted everything that was said. Having lost the reason to frustrate my happiness began. Impelled by a sense of contributing to the growth of the nation, Gujral turned towards public art. This marked the end of his partition phase, catapulting him into a series of mural projects that furthered his preoccupation with architecture and space. At every phase and every stage, the constant need to tamper with success, to not take it as something to be complacent about or to get comfortable in. In the late 1970s, Gujral began to get restless again. Much against advice from all his friends, he decided to open a new vista of creativity and try his hand at architecture. In 1984, Gujral was invited to design the Belgian Embassy in New Delhi. This assignment held enormous challenges that were compounded by an accident on-site that led to another series of leg surgeries and a near amputation. He had that spirit that I've taken on a commitment. I had to see it through. He treated it like a baby. He was fighting against all odds of other people in the profession saying, how can an artist pull off an architectural story? And he did. At this juncture, the Indian economy started to boom and the nation was being shaped by rapid globalization. Indian contemporary art was attracting international attention. The auctioning of Indian art by auction houses gave it a further stamp of international recognition and announced its worldwide arrival. When you see cultures through the window of art, there's a huge binding factor which is the essence of art and civilizations which are bereft of art, they have no fragrance. Satish Gujral, an artist who embodies the quintessential image of artistic struggle, an artist who emerges a winner despite all his handicaps. Social content has permeated his work for years lived through calamities and worked in the face of extreme adversities. No single medium has been able to bind him because, like his spirit, his art flows freely without being restrained by any barriers. Now it's just his joy of living and being alive and if you see his work, it's like you don't think it's an 85-year-old man painting. I think he's just full of the surety-beaver to live and to be well.