I could never decide whether it was my association with people of art world or my repeated visits to monumental sculptures of the Jain period at Gwalior Fort that made me so restless that I could sense something creeping within me to burst open with an impetuous urgency. For what? I did not know.

My life till then had been hammed in by the affectionate rigidities of my mother Smt. Awadh Kishori Bhatnagar, a traditional painter yet with a mind surprisingly free from bondage, an original feminist with a burning zeal to equip her children with all that had been denied to her.

Our temperament, mood and feelings at least in part are governed by our hormone spitting endocrines the intensity of which may be determined by our heredity and our environment.

I am not sure what it was, but my mind was eager to devour all that which I could lay my hands on. Besides Ramayana & Geeta, Munshi Premchand, Nirala, Sharat Chandra & scores of detective novels were readily available at home. Impulsively then I decided to be an artist and got admitted at the Fine Arts College, Gwalior. Fortunately I had some of the finest artists as teachers like L S Rajput & Madan Bhatnagar and outsiders like Rudra Hanzi of Padma Vidyalaya, Gwalior. Unfortunately these were also of the same kind and in general an atmosphere of intimidation prevailed. Teachers made arguments to stifle independent thinking among students. They discouraged any critical analysis.

In retrospect I Feel that the main stimulus to my work had been the raised eye-brows, wide eye-stares, shrugs, grunts and non-verbal signals communicating an emotional vibrations. Those days arguments having logical base or reasoning were important to me. Today I am thankful to them for they provided recurrent stimulus to introspect, rethink & assert myself. However at that time the non accommodative atmosphere in the college increased day by day. One day in disgust I tore up my paintings and left formal education in arts for good. I never regret this decision which subsequently proved to be instrumental in the evolution of myself as an artist.

Next few years were strenuous. No college, no friends - only visits to public library and idling at home. I wanted to fly absolutely free from the responsibilities. Yet to satisfy my parents I entered in medical college and attained even a PG degree in applied medicine with ease.

I met my first sculpture friend, Robin David, in early sixties. The urge to devote life for art grew stronger day by day. I used to work at Kala Vithika (now Tansen Art Gallery, Gwalior) during my free time coping with summer hot winds and dirt, making concerted effort at becoming a sculptor, gazing admiringly at stones, at flying birds in sky and Gwalior Fort for hours together. In my general mood of heightened romanticism, faraway from the realities of life carving life out of stones became a kind of obsession. Stones filled my dreams. The other influence of those days was Vimal Kumar, the painter and curator of Kala Vithika, a person who strived to organize art at Gwalior, uniting the local artists.

In 1978 I opted Bastar for my posting as a doctor. I wanted to be with nature. Me and Mr. Kapani, the then Commisioner of Bastar tracked south Abhujmand (not north) starting from two different points. Perhaps we were the first to go in those dense forests. Rythms of bison horn Mariyas drums and dancing innocent semi-nude tribal girls filled me with an exalted state of mind occupied with poetic frenzy and trance. I enjoyed this rustic & vagabond life in the most primitive tribal area in my state.

Those days I had ample opportunity to meet and talk to J Swaminathan. He was busy erecting the image of tribal India at Bharat Bhawan, Bhopal. We used to have long night sittings and discussed many issues. He, Shriknahde and many other sculptors also came to Bastar, and Vishwaranjan was also there.

To me a deep relationship, a shared personality and an emotional involvement with the stones is the only and most important factor. Of course sometimes it is a state of antagonism with pseudo aliveness of some difficult stones that keeps me bound with them.

Whenever I work on my stones I act on my blind whims of any given moment, but without evading the reality. It is always a moment of pleasure when you breakthrough many barriers erected between you and your stones and reach out to see the moments it tales as free as your vision. My work is a forceful, healthy and romantic flight of a muscular flying bird, out of a rock, and rough rock; a spontaneous projection of perhaps myself.