The Time Of My Life - Kalighat

When I said I was visiting Kolkata as the guest of DithiMukherjee, a friend of mine said: If you have Dithi to show you around Kolkata, what more could you ask for? And indeed I am not exaggerating when I say that for so many of us here in the South of India, Dithi epitomizes Kolkata. It is from her blog that I learnt everything about the great city, its Gods and Bengali culture. 

When I drew this picture of Kali above in 2012, from one of Dithi's photographs, I wished I could see Kolkata in real through Dithi’s eyes and experience all that inspired her so. Then one day that dream came true when she quite simply read my mind and intuitively led me towards all that I wanted to experience with her characteristic warmth, enthusiasm, generosity and love. We had a lot of fun and we were in sync. I was shown contrasts and nuances, colonial past and colorful present, I was made to taste the best of foods in the most unusual of places and my sweet tooth was pampered and indulged like never before. 

They say people who love to eat are the best people and whoever said that was most definitely talking about Bengalis! Get two Bengalis together and tell them I am a visitor, they will get into a heated debate on the best places to take me and what to feed me. I totally understand their passion now and I can only look back on my stay in Kolkata with the happiest of memories thanks to my lovely Bengali host.

These are some of Dithi’s beautiful paintings. You can see what I mean when I say that this is the essence of Kolkata.

Both images top and bottom courtesy of Dithi Mukherjee

It was from images like those above that I learned about a place called Kalighat; not a village outside the city as I once thought, but in the city itself. On my first evening, I was taken there for that unforgettable  magical walk through the streets of Kalighat at night and I visited there again the next morning. While I was not gasping at everything around me, I actually managed some images. Here are the better ones, but they are only a shallow reflection of the actual experience -

Sweet shops everywhere selling offering to the Goddess Kali

I was taken inside the temple to see the Goddess

Devotees queue up outside the temple

Life in the surroundings

Everyone knows that beautiful red and green house in Kalighat

My very first kulhad chai. The kulhad smelled of the fresh earth with which it was made. The chai was excellent. 

A ride back home in an old yellow Amby! It was a bit like sitting inside a World War II tank as it trundled through Kolkata roads, but it reminded me of childhood and the only car many of us knew then and who would have thought there were so many of those still around? This too is part of the Kolkata experience.

My favourite picture of Dithi and me :)

I feel this blog post does not do justice to my experiences in Kalighat, there was so much more, much much more which I am quite simply unable to express effectively.That is how saturated I am by the memories. I know something will eventually manifest themselves in paintings and illustrations, they always do, but until then and since I am totally and utterly shameless, I am adding below a few links to some posts in Artnlight where Vineeta documents her experiences of Kolkata and Kalighat so beautifully through her pictures and words. Do pause to take a look -

KOLKATA >

KALIGHAT >

MORE KALIGHAT>

A Walk through Kumortuli

If I thought that the walk through Kalighat at night was an experience I would remember for a lifetime, then I was in for a surprise because there was Kumortuli as well. Unlike the lifeless solemn Ganeshas wrapped up in plastic before their moment of celebration in the South, these sculptures as you can see were most definitely alive, they jumped out at me from the most unexpected of places, waving their arms, teasing and taunting me by sticking out their tongues as they posed for my camera.

These pictures on my blog are but an outline of the day I spent there. There was a stall which sold Googni, peas cooked in lamb broth served with soft fresh bread (who knew?), I got interviewed by a TV crew just after I enthusiastically polished off a bowl of this and was finishing off with chai. As we walked past we saw a pile of bricks with the name PRIYA molded into them.I stared at dozens and dozens of tiny shops with brightly colored doorways where artisans made what they make best,shopkeepers sold chai, barbers shaved hair...the place, like everything else in Kolkata hummed and buzzed with life. 

Here below, those faces that belong to another era and those saris which have timeless color combinations -

The patchwork house all divided up -

And lastly the omnipresent Ganga -

And with these I finally finish my long overdue Kolkata posts from my visit there two years ago. The overflowing memories are enough to fill a decade worth of visual stimulation all packed into 4 dense and exciting days. What I've shown here is just a drop from the ocean of colour and life that I saw, and each element that made up that drop was unforgettable, fascinating and enriching.

Also see:
Shantiniketan
Kolkata
Santhal Village

Ruined Versailles

I thought of the faraway time when we made love and all of life was still ahead of us - and of all those years since, impalpable, as if dissolved into thin air. I knew that the return trip is the real journey, when it floods the days that follow, so much so that it creates the prolonged sensation of one time getting lost in another, of one space losing itself in another. Images are superimposed on one another- a secret alchemy, a depth of field in which our shadows seem more real than ourselves. That is where the truth of the voyage lies. The hardest thing, then, is having to get up with nowhere to go. 
                                                                                       ~ Michele Lesbre, The Red Sofa

These crumbling havelis of Kolkata still continue to haunt my dreams...

Also see:
Kolkata
Shantiniketan
A Walk through a Santhal Village

The Bong Detective

I was feeling very blue since there were no sketching jaunts outside Bangalore this weekend, when the doorbell rang and I was delivered the latest copy of The Indian Quarterly (IQ) Magazine.

Here is my illustration for Calcutta Noir, where I had to illustrate a Bengali woman addicted to detective novels who eventually ends up solving a murder. I have depicted the protagonist engrossed in a detective story in a Kolkata tram and a scene from what she is reading taking place in the tram window behind her.
To show that the background is her imagination, I have done it in moody colour as appropriate to the story she is reading while the rest of the illustration is in black and white. To bridge imagination with the reality of the story, I have shown a cloud from the coloured scene making its way into the black and white one.

I was asked to do this illustration right at the beginning of the year, before I had barely recovered from the cacophony of a New Year party. Voices with strange South-Indian accents were ringing in my ears, weird psychedelic lights flashed in circles behind my eyes, drunken men carrying a sofa knocked around the insides of my skull, bad memories of fruit flavoured beer I had been plied with haunted my dreams and I was still freaking over the contents of my 2014 horoscope when the curt and coldly professional art-director sent me a mail saying 'Kindly complete this in three days'. Trams! Electric wires! Kolkata! Three Days! If that wasn't bad enough, I swear with my hand on my heart that drawing electric wires across the sky is the most daunting feat I have ever accomplished in my entire career as an illustrator. As any illustrator who has attempted this will know, it is like running full speed across a tightrope with your heart between your teeth. It can make or break all your hard work in creating the illustration. By the time I finished this picture, my hands were shaking with nervousness and my teeth were chattering with excess caffeine...

But it is done! And over with! And published!
Abbah!
Now I need some more morning filter coffee.