Hyderabad: On the lawn of Rajniketan, paintings and sketches stand at different angles as they attract the light of overhead lights on Sunday.
Between these spaces, the dialogue simply flows and breaks for a mouthful of wood or instrumental music in the background. There are more than 200 paintings and sketches in the exhibition on the open-air terrace.
The site is spread across three levels and leads to the hills. Aqua, ink drawings and digital compositions fill the space, each piece carries a trace of a man moving in medicine, animation, heritage and technology, and carries all three together.
On the eve of his 60th birthday, Dr. Neeraj Raj stands in his work, laughter breaking through his words, just as old classmates point to portraits.
“We used to only see him painting the whole place. He sat on the second last bench and always sketched,” Devendra Surana said.
The 1982 Hyderabad public schools batches gathered in front of the walls of sketches and faces, both belonging to 82 batches.
Another partner said: “When he graduated from college, he began to master its creativity, especially animation, especially animation.
His school’s art teacher R. Subhash Babu stood nearby. Dr. Raj recalls: “Every time I went to class, I would take art classes with him and later he would solve the problem in the staff room.”
Legacy activist and Intach Hyderabad convener P. Anuradha Reddy carries the city heritage map created by Dr. Neeraj in 1996.
“He was a revolutionary,” she said. “We didn’t always understand his advice, but we supported him because he had the smartest ideas. He even made this map for Intach,” she said.
Then, she began pointing to a painting by Purdah Gate since 2003.
“It’s not going well now. A bus hit it after a while,” she said. “Look here. It’s different from now.”
Similarly, another visitor standing in front of the public garden with a body of water said: “The water of Husseingar used to flow here and then into Musi. Now everything is dry.”
Hyderabad’s city sketchers place themselves in different locations throughout the site. One perched on the roof and the other perched between the easels, while several on the hills climbed up the hill.
Srihari Akkiraju, the highest member of the Sketchers Club, spent two months drawing New York sketches and drawing a hundred paintings with his buildings and streets. His focus remains on the exhibition.
“Whenever we meet and try to capture the full mood of this place, we do live paintings,” he said.
A small group of people gathered around VR headphones next to a 3D Charminar painting. The headphones bring the audience to the artwork itself.
The first thing they saw was Charminar. Turn left, the Mecca Mosque appears, followed by the surrounding heritage structure. A painting has become something to enter, explore and experience.
