Flex Mentallo

I look forward to that! [font:Times New Roman]OK, here goes: Even before my university art school daze, I was impressed by the realism of Dutch masters (Rembrandt, Pieter de Hooch, especially Vermeer), the bizarre portraits of faces within objects created by Giuseppe Arcimboldo and the vibrant interpretation of French impressionists such as Manet & Pisarro and post-impressionists like Seurat. Surrealism and speculative SF is where my own speculations would finally focus, but more on that later. Alas, I've never warmed to more abstract explorations even though appreciating the imaginative efforts of contemporary artists to break down compositions into their most primal, basic elements. Johannes Vermeer... Giuseppe Arcimboldo... Eduard Manet... Camille Pisarro... George Seurat (pointillism) Next, the inspiration of science fiction & fantasy... [/font] Thanks for posting these Cat! Some of my favourite artists as well! Hoping you will show us more and say a little about why these artists interest you so much?

Nice book for such an impatient . Hee hee - that word was grandad, wasnt it?

My Song This song of mine will wind its music around you, my child, like the fond arms of love. The song of mine will touch your forehead like a kiss of blessing. When you are alone it will sit by your side and whisper in your ear, when you are in the crowd it will fence you about with aloofness. My song will be like a pair of wings to your dreams, it will transport your heart to the verge of the unknown. It will be like the faithful star overhead when dark night is over your road. My song will sit in the pupils of your eyes, and will carry your sight into the heart of things. And when my voice is silenced in death, my song will speak in your living heart.

Hard Times Music is silenced, the dark descending slowly Has stripped unending skies of all companions. Weariness grips your limbs and within the locked horizons Dumbly ring the bells of hugely gathering fears. Still, O bird, O sightless bird, Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings. It's not melodious woodlands but the leaps and falls Of an ocean's drowsy booming, Not a grove bedecked with flowers but a tumult flecked with foam. Where is the shore that stored your buds and leaves? Where the nest and the branch's hold? Still, O bird, my sightless bird, Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings. Stretching in front of you the night's immensity Hides the western hill where sleeps the distant sun; Still with bated breath the world is counting time and swimming Across the shoreless dark a crescent moon Has thinly just appeared upon the dim horizon. --But O my bird, O sightless bird, Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings. From upper skies the stars with pointing fingers Intently watch your course and death's impatience Lashes at you from the deeps in swirling waves ; And sad entreaties line the farthest shore With hands outstretched and crooning ' Come, O come ! ' Still, O bird, O sightless bird, Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings. All that is past: your fears and loves and hopes ; All that is lost: your words and lamentation ; No longer yours a home nor a bed composed of flowers. For wings are all you have, and the sky's broadening countryard, And the dawn steeped in darkness, lacking all direction. Dear bird, my sightless bird, Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings

This is the photo of Mohan that appears on every village household wall on the anniversary of his death This is a sketch based on a worn out photograph of his funeral This is Rabindranath Tagore The Child Angel Let your life come amongst them like a flame of light, my child, unflickering and pure, and delight them into silence. They are cruel in their greed and their envy, their words are like hidden knives thirsting for blood. Go and stand amidst their scowling hearts, my child, and let your gentle eyes fall upon them like the forgiving peace of the evening over the strife of the day. Let them see your face, my child, and thus know the meaning of all things, let them love you and love each other. Come and take your seat in the bosom of the limitless, my child. At sunrise open and raise your heart like a blossoming flower, and at sunset bend your head and in silence complete the worship of the day.

Michael, care to comment on the hammer & sickle in this pic? Dan West Bengal was for many years a communist state. Under the British, Bengal had the huge economic advantage over nearly every other state in India because it was heavily industrialised. An advantage it quickly lost. When India became independent in 1947, Bengal was literally torn apart by religious strife. The eastern half separated and became East Pakistan, later Bangladesh. In 1977 the communists came to power in what had become known as West Bengal, and their symbols festooned village walls everywhere for a generation and probably still do. They have recently been ousted from power. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13374646 Two further points come to mind. One is that Bonhooghly is a low caste Muslim village, founded by refugees fleeing the atrocities in Calcutta in 1947. My friend Ashraf told me how he and his family had to find there way out of Calcutta while the city was rioting. They had no baggage, and nowhere to go. In the end they only travelled 10 miles to reach relative safety. The second is that Nirmal was not a Moslem. He was a Brahmo - essentially a high caste Hindu, of a specific elite who served the British as high ranking civil servants. Nirmal's elocution was consequently pure BBC English. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmo_Samaj India's greatest contemporary poet, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, shared the same lineage. http://www.historytoday.com/hugh-tinker/death-rabindranath-tagore "The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence." I will dig out one of his poems - they are quite wonderful!

I just love these!

You're most welcome Joshua! Thanks for the kind words!

And then the following year something remarkable happened, something miraculous, that transformed Mohan's tragic death, and it was thanks to the Jesuits of St Xavier’s College. Because of Nirmal's teaching, Bablu and many of the other young men had been able to attend St Xavier’s. (Bear in mind that prior to Nirmal's intervention they had had no schooling, and little prospect of it at all; leave alone at such an establishment. Yet today Bablu manages a bank.) Calcutta is close to the borders with Bangladesh, and every year the Jesuits would recruit ex-pupils as volunteers to give aid to flooded villages, including cholera vaccinations, building earthworks, and so forth. It was noteworthy to the priests how dedicated, hard working and well organised were the young men from Bonhooghly. "What’s your secret?" they enquired of the young men. They answered, "Nirmal Sen Gupta - our Sir." The story came tumbling out - of Nirmal, Meera and Mohan, of Mohan's death, and Mohan's dream, that one day Nirmal would have a proper school, rather than the roofless shack by the side of a paddy field, where it all began in 1968. Apparently the priests offered there and then to finance the building of Dhanked Vidyalaya. The roof was being finished when I first visited in February 1982. It carries another name above the entrance: "The Mohan Ghosh Charitable Dispensary." "Death comes to all But great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold." George Fabricius

Nirmal recalled that during the monsoon of 1978, a friend had come over from Karachi with some rupees to donate to the school. It was not a fortune - less than $100, but would buy much needed clothing for many children. And as was Nirmal's custom by this time, he gave the funds into Mohan's safe keeping. Like Nirmal, Mohan also lived in Elaichi. And so that night he began cycling along that selfsame road Nirmal and I were on 7 years later. And when we came to the fork in the road by Bonbibi's Grove, Nirmal suddenly stopped walking. Shining his torch ahead he said In that familiar, matter of act way he had, "And when Mohan reached this spot, a young man he knew hailed him from behind a bush. Mohan dismounted, and while thus engaged was hit over the head with an iron bar wielded by an accomplice. "Here is the culvert where they hid the murder weapon...and here is the bush behind which they hid the body, where it was discovered the following morning by a young girl who instantly recognised Mohan, terribly disfigured though he was, because he had been giving her free English lessons. "When the hue and cry went up, hundreds of people came to the scene. Bablu (Mohan's best friend who a decade before had been the first child Nirmal had ever taught) approached the body and weeping, tenderly cradled his friend's bloodied head in his arms." At that point, time went backwards. I was standing in the same place, on the same night of the year seven years too late, but I realised I had become part of the story...

Then at 10.00pm we would walk by torchlight back along the road. On these journeys Nirmal would tell me stories - astonishing, mind blowing, hilarious stories, all told in the same laconic, undemonstrative manner. One evening in October I noticed photos of a young man appear throughout the village. "That is Mohan" he told me. The legendary Mohan Ghosh, who had championed Nirmal's cause though only a young student himself, finessing ingenious schemes to sell schoolbooks to schools direct from the wholesaler, thus making sufficient funds to buy essentially free books for the children of Dhanked. Mohan, who had been the future; Mohan who should have been my lifelong friend. Nirmal told me this as we walked back through the village, past the shops, through the outskirts, skirting the brick fields, now eerie in the darkness, where distantly could be heard the mournful songs of the indentured, in despair of ever seeing their homes again.

By evening I was ready to drop, but Nirmal, 40 years my senior, yet seemed tireless. Back we would go to Dhanked - in Bengali Paddyfield School is Dhanked Vidyalaya. Evenings were more lighthearted and playful. I introduced a luminous Frisbee that was great success.

They were so poor that the volunteers from Dhanked instituted a food programme to hand out free rice.

At 10.00am we would go deeper into the village and sometimes beyond. Hogulkuria for instance, a remote village that had converted to Christianity, and was desperately, desperately poor.

This is because these were the children whose parents could not afford to send them to a proper school. Instead they had to fetch water from the well, make cow chapattis from dung to make fires with, and a hundred other chores. Nirmal's mission was to reach the children other educators’ couldn’t reach.

And so to Paddy Field School, where lessons would begin before 6am.

Past the tiny shops of School Mart

Through the outskirts of Bonhooghly, where by now a dozen ragged children have joined us, the smaller ones hiding for warmth under Nirmal's shawl

And various roadside shrines

Past the great sheltering Banyan Tree

Along past the brick fields (worked from dawn to dusk by indentured villagers from the other side of India)

Across the dry river bed where the Ganges had coursed only a few years before, and was now cultivated land (Note: the original sketch used here is only about the size of a postage stamp!)

Every day during this long visit, we would rise well before dawn and walk the Elaichi-Bonhooghly road, picking up children as we walked, past the biscuit factory, out past Bonbibi's grove (a mysterious mound supposedly sacred to a local forest goddess, where dacoits waylaid and murdered travellers a hundred years before)

The Death of Mohan Ghosh Scroll forward seven years to 1985. I am sharing Nirmal's tiny house. He sleeps in the bed in the single upper room, I more precariously on a wooden palette at the foot of the bed. One night in his sleep I hear Nirmal distinctly say "The king is dead!"