OBIT: Vishal Joshi spirals into another world

Saurabh Tankha

I promise the next time I’m in Delhi, bhaiya, after the coronavirus leaves us for good, I’ll surely drop home for lunch. Also, I’ve done a painting for you which I need to hand over. Bye! Till we meet…

A next that was never to happen. Never did I, in my wildest dreams, had expected that these would be the last few words I would hear from Vishal Joshi, my most favourite and closest artist friend. In fact, he was family. Late last night, I got to know from another close artist friend Nawal Kishore that Vishal had succumbed to the deadly virus which he, during our last conversation, mentioned about a month back. The virus didn’t leave us for good but Vishal, you did.

There was this strange but strong bond I shared with this humble artist-filmmaker-photographer-writer whom I had met for the first time at Shridharani Art Gallery, Triveni Kala Sangam around five years back. He was holding a solo painting exhibition of his works titled The Worthy Opponents, a series on the life and times of kings and I was accompanying my wife who was covering it for the daily newspaper she was working with. We just got talking – on art, colours, relationships, spirituality, life and more. That conversation lasted for over two hours, and made us friends for life.

When and how did this meeting turn into a bond of friendship was something both of us never realised? Actually, it was something we never delved into it but both of us knew well, as did our respective wives and kids, that this was one big family in the making. When I had objected to his 14-year-old artist son, Parth, calling me ‘uncle’, he had taken no time to decide that I’ll forever be his ‘kaka’. “I would want him to stay with your family during vacations and learn about your culture, your traditions, your food. Similarly, your daughters must come over and stay with us in Vadodara,” he had said. I hope I’m able to convince Trupti (his wife) and Parth to come and spend some days with us here…

The master artist’s signature style was abstract works in spirals. “Spiral is not a form but a journey of developing my own language – of communication and of science and logics,” I remember Vishal telling me at one of his exhibitions at IIC’s Art Gallery in New Delhi. “Spirals can be seen in every aspect of Nature. We see the form in vast galaxies, the tides of oceans, the winds, structures of DNA, seashells…” he had added. Spiral, to this Indore College of Art graduate, was not a form but a journey of developing his own language. A journey which he has now undertaken, perhaps to develop a language unknown to all of us.

But Vishal will live with us, forever… in our heart and in our mind.

Goodbye, dost! Will miss you, surely…