👀 Some kind of serendipity

#196 | This reminded me of you

Do you ever find yourself talking to someone who’s no longer part of your life? Not about all the dramatic stuff that made you part ways. Just mundane, everyday things you used to share with them when you were close.

“You would have liked this film about textiles from South India.”

“We could have made this lamb burger together – the recipe looks deceptively simple.”

“I would have sent you this new song I heard today – it mirrors the way you said you feel about empty night skies.”

Sentences like these pop into my head now and then. I try to shoo them away. But sometimes they’re adamant about staying, so I write a Just One Thing about them.

…

Last week I went to an exhibition of postcards painted by Nandalal Bose, the legendary artist whose work signalled a new era in Modern Indian art. 

A pupil of Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal is credited for forging a unique style that combined traditional ideas with contemporary sensibilities. 

His postcards, many of which featured line drawings in black, were on display at the Akar Prakaar gallery in Kolkata. 

As I walked from one postcard to the next, I marvelled at his ability to capture the subtle but pulsating motions of daily village life within the 14 cm × 9 cm canvas. 

I didn’t know then what village he had depicted with those black ink lines. (The gallery did not do a thorough job of labelling the artworks). I didn’t know where those huts were, those trees, those people hard at work. 

And then I came to a display case with a decades-old edition of The Hindustan Times. On the front page was an article about Nandalal’s drawings and a short excerpt about the time he spent in that village he drew in his postcards.

Now I finally knew the name of the village. And I’ve heard this name before. From someone who’s no longer a part of my life. Someone who used to own (or perhaps still owns) a house in that village that they wanted to sell off, but nobody would buy. 

“There’s nothing in that place”, they would say, and I’d imagine a soulless row of grey-blue buildings, hapless trees and formless streets as they went on about how stressful it was to keep maintaining the house. 

I never told them that I wanted to visit. Just to see how bland it was. And also because I wanted to know them inside out. Ah well. 

Back to Nandalal. 

Thanks to him, I finally got to take a trip to that village. Even if it was in a different time, through different eyes. 

And instead of telling the person who’s no longer in my life, I’m telling you – 

You’ve got to see Nandalal’s work. I think you will really appreciate the way he shaded the leaves on that palm tree. 

Proiti