The arrogance of the white space is a challenge to Jatin Das. And faced with this challenge, the blood in his vein flows through the tip of his finger to the nib of his pen. Years of living life to the hilt culminates in a line. "it's as if a musical note has escaped your fingers," says the artist conjuring a breakfast in his studio even as he prepares for a Roman interclude.

The reference to music is not casual. "the texture of the linear pleasure approximates poetic musicality like the high note pull of a taan in Indian classical music," Jatin could well expound as he plays a rendering of Mallikarjun on the music system. For sitting in a concert hall he can easily stretch the modulation of Bhimsen's voice into a linear graphic representation.

Jatin is not only capable of doing that, he has done it in his earlier days. Watching a dancer's hand etching into space he sketched that in the dark. He frequented the zoo to study the gait of animals, he sketched the flight of birds on botanical garden. In Konark or Khajuraho he's a student bewitched by the fantastic rhythm and lyrical stillness of carved stone. He did all this to understand the Brahma Rekha. "the key line is the key to the rhythmic structure in every body movement,"he says to explain his passion for the linear movement in space.

Now when confronted by the magnitude of unending space, countless lines float in Jatin's mindscape. They actualize out of nowhere. Or perhaps out of everywhere, every action, every movement, every moment in his passion filled-life.And they take over, the sweep, the turn, the twist of his brush. "The singular line flows.it has more energy, more purity, than embellishment with tone". The drawing draws itself, Jatin maintains.And why just drawing? Painting, etching, sculpting too. For "painting is also drawing and drawing is sculpting" he insists.

The line, in other words, is the lifebreadth of Jatin's art. It's supremacy is retained by the figures that stand as pure expression of energy. "No one knows better how the muscle is pelted to bones" a critic once wrote of these men and women of clay. Colour, when he dips his brush into, only enhances the dynamism of the line. The studio is a private space of the artist who jealously gaurds it against external forces.Only the chant of unadaorned men and women are permitted entry. Devoid of embellishments of ornamentation and architecture, shorn of references to time or place, these archetypal figures have no historical identity not geographical rooting. They are metaphoric: the sensuality of the human predicament is all that concerns Jatin.

And yet, a closer look reveals that when JATIN paints the Swahili women he met on a sojourn, they acquire the texture of African wood sculpture. The Indonesian exudes the grace a feel of a dance, the Kairali woman oozes the sexuality that's native to her soil. Such delectable dichotomy makes for the man Jatin Das. For, the man who will not paint factual figure packs his life with facts and figures.

Jatin Das, who ensures his anonymous expressive figures don't illustrate any aspect of human situation will walk the roads to raise the flag against cancer. He refuses to make a human statement through his vital forms but will speak against killing in Punjab and peace in Kashmir. The same person, who will not sentiments into his studio, will raise resources for the drought afflicted and adopt a cyclone devasted village. For the artist, there is so much pain in the life around him! But for the artist, the tragedies are only a source of energy. Leave it to Jatin, he will steal the energies of masters as much as of traditional arts, or of nature.

Where does this irrepressible zest for energy come from? "Mayurbhanj" would be Jatin's unambiguous reply. In that concern of the land where the cultures of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa merge their distinctions, he grew up under the watchful care of a headmaster who taught him to read, write, paint, make clay models, also practice yoga. Even at that tender age he was enriched by the liabrary, the museum, the zoo, the water bodies, the children's park, the women's society...all layed out under the dispensation of an enlightened raja. And, of course, there were the tribals with a culture so close to earth. Theirs too was a world shorn of embellishment, theirs too was the beauty of primodial.!

"That kind of energy, I didn't get anywahere except in Bombay when I was there," recounts Jatin. As a student of the J.J School of Art, he was required to submit ten sketches a day. But he raised his personal bar to 300 sketches. Buying newsprint at 50 paise a kg, he'd sketch even as he walked the five kilometers to his hostel.

Jatin has not ceased to be a student. On a recent visit to Calicut, he got off the aircraft and headed straight for the local ceramic factory. With some like-minded colleagues, he kneaded clay " for a new experience in art". Much as he di in Bhillai, when he sculpted the 30x30 installation, 'Flight of Steel', in welded steel. Or when he traced the Journey of India: From Mohenjodaro to Mahatma /Gandhi. Mounted on board, the 7x68ft canvas adorns the Parliament Annexe in New Delhi.

As the journey continues, Jatin comes to the conclusion that 'all the energies of the cosmos are inherent in the human body'. A guru may initiate you into it, but you have to listen to it for yourself, he believes. You must activate it by constant exposure, not by reading about it. "if you want your art to glow invest in life," Jatin is teaching you.

That, after all, is what life breathes into his line.

Ratnottama Sengupta