Perhaps it’s a cliché to say that Aishwarya Rai is every man’s dream girl but there is always an iota of truth in every stereotype. Which is why one isn’t surprised when a man as astute as Ratan Parimoor—one of the founder members of the Art History Department at the esteemed Maharaja Sayaji Rao University—-decides to go pop and dedicate an entire show at the Jehangir Art Gallery to Rai. The artist has envisioned her as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Raja Ravi Verma’s Saraswati and has dedicated several canvases to her various filmic avatars. It’s the 71-year-old’s first solo in 9 years. “I figured out a mathematical calculation which helped me reproduce Aishwarya’s face several times. One where the distance between the nose and forehead is the same as the distance from her nose to her chin, however I found that from her eyebrows to the top of her head is a larger distance,” observes Parimoor who studied painting under N S Bendre. Unfortunately, his muse is quite unaware of all this time spent calculating the proportions of her face and did not make it for the opening despite being invited. “I heard she is busy with Jodhaa Akbar, maybe when she is freer?” he adds wistfully. Well, if M F Husain can eulogise Madhuri Dixit, then why can’t Parimoor do the same for Aishwarya?
