Flex Mentallo

Mohan Ghosh accompanied them on that evening walk in 1978. There happened to be an eclipse of the moon that night. As the moon turned red, Meera suddenly stopped and said "Someone will die!" No more was said, and they continued on their way. Then the monsoon came…

Incidentally, Meera had rescued the dog in this sketch from the gutter on the brink of death. It's name was Bulu, and it was quite, quite mad. The only people it never bit were Meera, and me.

I know that soon after their return to Calcutta following this camp, Nirmal and Meera were walking the road that leads to the village of Bonhooghly and Paddy Field School from Elaichi, where Nirmal kept a tiny house, but which had a very large verandah and a garden where Meera would do her lost wax casting every autumn. Her work is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London as well as collections around the world. in this sketch from 1985 she is working on a piece called "O beloved, I cannot see."

There is a photo of Nirmal from a previous camp in 1978, looking hale and hearty 3 years younger than when I first met him. In the photo is his lifelong friend, the sculptor Meera Mukherjee. What struck me forcibly on seeing this photo for the first time just a few days ago, is how youthful and energetic he appears, just three years before I met him. Then it struck me - the photo would have been taken at the height of summer - in India this is April and May, before the blessed monsoon falls in June.

As it happens, I had not been familiar with the Life of Father Hess - however, he would surely have been well-acquainted with the Jesuits of St Xaviers, so the two men would have had friends or acquaintances in common. I ti is interesting to speculate on whether these two ever met. If so they would have found they had a lot in common! Both men were teachers of physics. One of Nirmal's earliest forays into the village was on behalf of a charity called Science for Children. And I think they would have shared a similarly enlightened outlook about empowering young people to learn from their mistakes and make their own decisions. Having been given some links about Father Hess by Roger I though to look for some newspaper articles about Nirmal so I could send them to Roger in return. I couldnt find them - but to my amazement I found photos dating back to the Kasauli Art Camp I had attended in 1981, wher I first met Nirmal! Kasauli is a hill station in Himachal Pradesh high in the foothills of the Himalayas. In the late '70's and early 80's, international art camps were run there every summer. It seems photos taken during the camp have recently been posted by the camp organisers, after all these years! I had had no idea they were online and would not have found them if not for Roger. And there are even photos of the young student I was when I met him there. [i promise, I havent changed a bit!]

Of course I'm only one of thousands to hear the siren call of India, so there are thousands of lives to tell. Among them is the extraordinary story of Father George Hess and the De Nobili School. The author of the following passage, Rajat Bhatia, studied at De Nobili School from 1975: The Life of Father Hess The Early Life of Fr. Hess Father Hess was born on 10 October, 1919 in Bayonne, New Jersey to David and Julia Hess. His Father, was a self-made civil engineer and a consultant to JP Morgan. David Hess was also a close friend of Mr. Rayens, the Chairman of AT&T and in the good old days, the young George Hess would visit the estate of Mr. Rayens on Long Island with his parents. It was this privileged lifestyle that Father Hess gave up to make the journey to Bihar as a Jesuit in 1952. A Tribute to Father George A. Hess, S.J. Father Hess became a Jesuit in 1937. Several years before that he had weighed many professions including engineering, music, acting and decided upon aspiring to become a priest. The Jesuits with whom he came into close contact with in high school lead to his requesting permission to join them. He chose to come to India in 1952 because Jesuits from the Province which he joined were assigned to India rather than to any other country. It was the beginning of a memorable joumey that would eventually lead to Father Hess making India his own home. At his desk. In his own words “My reason for volunteering was that without doing so I would be shutting the door on a primary aspect of being a Jesuit, that of universal availability. When offered a choice between that and doctoral studies in Physics for which I showed high aptitude I pointed out that volunteering precluded the making of a choice.” With Mother Teresa He came to India in 1952 at the age of 32 at a time when India had just become independent from colonial rule in 1947. Today, 53 years later, Father Hess has lived longer in India than most Indians and continues to do yeoman work for our country and its people. During his seventeen long years as the Principal, Father Hess built De Nobili School into one of the finest educational institutions in India. The quality of education at De Nobili School, especially in the sciences, is borne out by the numerous engineers, doctors, army officers, air force pilots and business executives that have passed through the hallowed portals of De Nobili School. With the Pope John Paul II The selfless dedication of Father Hess to promoting education in India is borne out by the fact that in 1970, there was just one teacher at De Nobili School who had a Bachelors degree in Education and that was the Honorable Mr. Manik Midde. When Father Hess left De Nobili School in 1979, almost all our 80 teachers had received formal training in education and had graduated from the Loyola College of Education in Jamshedpur. Father Hess is now 92, and still working. After starting the Serendipity thread I received a pm from Roger, aka Weird Paper. Given my long time association with Nirmal, he wanted to know if I had met Father Hess, since I had related how Paddyfield School had been built with the aid of the Jesuits from St Xavier's College in Calcutta? As Roger told me "He is my late grandfather's first cousin, so I think that makes him my third cousin. I've never met him, as far as I know (unless it was as a small child), though my mom and her sister correspond with him."

But when I go there, it is life in the West that feels unreal...

Sometimes my times in the village seem like a dream...

Pat, I love your poems! Please post more if you feel inclined.

Jim I think your paintings are just great - in an earlier time you might have been painting covers for the pulps! Do you have more?

Recurring themes and motifs include shadows, mirrors, dreams, nightmares, miracles and visions, reflections and water. Corridors are tunnels into the past. A young girl hides in a wardrobe watching her mother stare into a mirror. In another image, she tries on her mother's wedding veil - or has it become a shroud? Dusty corridors store dust covered museum pieces - which are in fact veiled family portraits. A blithe young man crosses water, using the heads of floating children as stepping stones. Nirmal embarks in a dugout carrying the body of murdered Mohan - his son in all but name. People's reflections persist in the slow glass of mirrors long after the reflection was cast.. And so on.

His iconography has entered the collective unconscious of our culture. So I tend to prefer his less celebrated works. His painterly technique is not that hard to imitate, but that belies his originality. On reflection, I realise that he had quite a lot of influence on me during my student days. I think however the alienation in so much of my work was there all along. Alienation - in particular, a difficult childhood in a broken home, an alcoholic and abusive father - and most hauntingly for me, watching helplessly as my two youngest sisters, ten years my junior, lost their mother at around 7 years of age. Predictably, emotional abuse from a very young age shaped the adults they woud become - and while they both survived, the difficult journey they were forced to take towards adult life in some respects bypassed a proper childhood. After I left home to attend college - not realising I'd never come home except for brief visits on holidays - they largely managed the household. They are probably the chief motivation in choosing to work for the past 18 years in the field of mental health. I am still trying to rescue them. Here is a gallery of smaller studies spanning 20 years. They may be viewed as a series of ghost stories. My dead are included, but in some cases, it is the living who are depicted - revenants of persistent memories perhaps.

I for one would absolutely love to hear more about these three artists - they were among my boyhood heroes!