NathanPursuing His Dreams
Mahanandia felt so trapped that in the end, he made a decision to run away from his home so that he could fulfill his need to work as an artist. He had just 55 rupees which would equal to about 84 cents, for the purpose of traveling to Santiniketan to sign up at the Visva-Bharati University. The course ended up being too expensive and he could not even afford it.
A Passionate Heart
Someone then advised him to go back home so that he can study art at the Khallikote College of Art and Crafts in Odisha. This would be advantageous because the school admitted high-performing students for free. The young and zealous Mahanandia soon shifted to Delhi to enroll at the College of Art to study Fine Arts back in 1971. He never expected that fate would intervene and change his life.
The Vagabond Artist
Life was not so great in the city of so much hustle and bustle. To survive, Mahanandia would paint pictures on the street. The police would then strip all of his art, taking him to the station. This would occur quite frequently. Mahanandia did not mind all this because at least he got some food and a roof over his head when the police took him in.
Gaining Popularity
Mahanandia was really caught in between wither giving up or going forward with his life. But it was during these years that he would meet someone who would make him a better human being. Since he continued painting and sketching all over town, his name soon grew popular. Before long, he was drawing not just ordinary people but even politicians and public figures.
Valentina Tereshkova
Even the newspapers caught on to Mahanandia’s artistic abilities and started to write articles about him. They would often write about how much he strived to get to Delhi so as to study art. He even drew the then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Vice President B. D. Jatti, and even cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. He was slowly beginning to gain more popularity.
On The News
When Tereshkova got an invitation from Gandhi to visit India, Mahanandia sneaked in and found himself standing next to cosmonaut. She was friendly enough to invite him to the Parliamentary Club by the Indo-Soviet Society. He drew 10 of her portraits there. He was splashed across the news for this and the rest, as you say, was history.