To all families, like his own which suffered the ravages of the Partition, the accumulation of family and community narratives, of loss and survival became like a bank of stories, shared and adapted over the years. It was partition that drove the first wedge of displacement and deep anxiety into everyday experience of many young Indians growing in the Punjab but for Krishen, the actual sense of displacement came much earlier during his schooling in England at the Imperial Services College. When war broke out, shelling and air raids became a part of the student’s experience. He returned to Sultan and then joined the Government College at Lahore where he studied English literature. The violent displacement from their home was compounded with Krishen’s need to seek work. He befriended the artists who made up the core of the Progressive Artists Group – Husain, Souza and Raza with his appointment at the Grindlays Bank. From the late 1940’s, he began to exhibit his work at the Bombay Art Society and exhibited with the Progressives at the Jehangir Art Gallery in 1951 following his invitation to their show in 1949. Krishen’s banking career that spanned the decade of the 1950s at the Madras and Kapur represents another idyllic period of a family of young children, and his growing fascination for Indian classical music, which he introduced as a subject in his paintings. He also did several paintings on the subjects of death and displacement and revealed the first indication to paint subjects from myth and history. In a critical decision to become a full-time painter and to abandon his career as a banker, he came to Delhi in the early 1960s with a family of three small children and his wife Renu and lived for several years with his parents.