Folk Art - Madhubani

Folk art is a fascinating subject: how people of different cultures see themselves and their world in different ways - and yet with a good deal of similarity.
The folk art of Madhubani in North Bihar has been practised for generations by the womenfolk in painting the walls of their humble dwellings at times of seasonal festivities. But it is only in the last fifty or sixty years that Madhubani art has broken out of its regional limits and has come to be accepted all over India and the world as a most interesting art form.
Even today, it is the women  who mostly do the paintings - now done on handmade paper for easy access by all - poring over their work for days, first with the rough outline and then filling in all the imagined images of gods and goddesses that populate their belief systems.

Vibrant primary colours of blue, red, yellow mark out the Madhubani paintings as do the detailed ornamentation of their favourite, Lord Krishna, in his many moods,  at times playing his flute, at times herding cows, with Radha, his consort, waiting in a bower of flowering plants or on a swing. In the midst of the stylization, there are different visualizations, different moods, that makes Madhubani paintings so interesting.

Kolkata - College Street Coffee House

Coffee parlours are to be found in many places  in Kolkata, They offer a variety of flavours to match most tastes. But for the "regulars" - and   I mean regulars who would go to the same place day in and day out - it is the College Street Coffee House that stands out leagues ahead. Housed in what was once the Albert Hall (named after the Prince Consort to Queen Victoria) right in the middle of academia with the Sanskrit College on one side and the Presidency College on the other, with the Calcutta University and the Calcutta Medical College a short distance away, it was here that the students of all hues and interests thronged in their spare time away from the classes and library work.
Approached by an ancient winding staircase, the Coffee House became a focal point for informal debate, discussions, assignments for generations of students for the last eighty or ninety years. Completely unprepossessing, the drab and dingy place provided that essential ingredient for a vibrant student life - freedom: freedom to say what you like, as you like, feel what you like - provided you don't really hurt the feelings of some one else.

A bit of the Coffee House remains with one all the time, once one has sat at a table there, whether one is now working in Australia or in Canada, whether one is forty or seventy. For it is part of one's growing up.

Konarak Sun Temple in Odisha

Konarak, or more correctly, "Konark", or the Place of the Sun, in Odisha was one of the first places of historical interest  that I visited over the last fifty years or so.It was way back in 1967. There are three sun temples in India, these being Konarak near the temple town of Puri in Odisha, at Modhera in Gujarat and at Martand in Kashmir. The great Sun Temple at Konarak fascinated me not only for its great size but, equally, for the intricacy of its carvings. The marvelous sculpted wheels of the "Chariot of the Sun", as the temple resembles, are masterpieces, as are the finely carved figures of dancers.

But for an inveterate nature lover such as myself, it was the wondrous frieze of elephants right at the bottom of the structure that completely fascinated me. For possibly one hundred metres this frieze runs around the base of the Konarak temple, each metre depicting elephants in different poses and postures, in the most natural way that told of the long association of the sculptors with the elephants and their ways. It is not only great art, but a study in natural history.