Flex Mentallo

And it soon became very clear that we shared the same values.

We talked for some time with its founder, Bappadithya.

Here in a quiet lane is the office of Prantakatha, an NGO which works with young people.

By the time they returned from honeymoon I had only a few days left. For years, Purnabha and I had talked about his interest in NGO's. He had volunteered for one voluntary agency that rehabilitated prostitutes for example. His ultimate goal was to set up one of his own. I suggested that maybe we should visit a local NGO with a view to exploring links with Arc, Purnabha acting as a go between. He said he knew of twelve NGO's that might serve that purpose, so I asked him to pick one. As a result we went to Ballygunge in South Kolkata.

And soon Honi will be dancing on the new house roof...

I named her Honi.

But every child is given an 'unofficial' birth name as well as the one that goes on their birth certificate. Tuku asked me to unofficially name her child.

I had just missed her daughter's birth in 2006.

For almost a decade I had been helping her to build a house (and the land it sat upon) that would serve as a dance school. She and her husband had poured every rupee they had into its construction. The costs had spiraled - and I promise you, never was a dyed in the wool comic collector's resolve more repeatedly tested! (Buy a commode rather than a comic book? Whatever next?) But I finally managed to send her the last of what she needed - for a tube well - just last week.

Those I did obtain were mainly from close friends, such as Tuku, who I have known since she was younger than her daughter is now.

I traveled widely in search of these but found their makers understandably reluctant to sell them.

They are 'true' handicrafts, made to be used.

More interestingly perhaps, village women recycle worn out saris, stitching them together to make blankets known as 'kantha'.

These examples from the nineteenth century are on display in the Kolkata Museum.

Such embroideries are actually part of an ancient tradition, which this enterprise had revived in the village.

This would nurture a connection of sorts, but I was still dissatisfied. (Though as you will see, that was to dramatically change before I left a week later!)

If we can market these successfully, we can invest in more, thus helping the enterprise to flourish.

So I obtained a number of those for our community gallery back in the UK

This man, Sattar, had engaged a group of village women in social enterprise, to produce these glorious embroideries.

However, I was still doggedly pursuing my goal to meaningfully connect it to Arc, the arts and health organization of which I'm CEO in the UK. Ten years on, I had yet to win the battle of hearts and minds. But I had an idea.

They were no longer looking to the next generation of young people to carry the torch, which is what had made it so vibrant in the past. This was once a well stocked charitable dispensary.

Nirmal would have loathed the very idea of an 'institute'. He had said to me many times that he felt establishing a centre had been the worst mistake he'd ever made. 'I transformed a vibrant youth movement into a banana republic.' Where then, if no longer here, was that vibrancy and commitment to be found? I was still looking...

It even has a Headmaster. However something has been lost of the original spirit that established it.

Paddyfield School had now become 'The Captain Nirmal Sen Gupta Memorial Institute'.

Meanwhile, I had a number of missions to take care of...