AGNEEPATH REDUX

Born in 1974, he passed school from St Thomas’ High School, Howrah, graduated from Vidyasagar College, Kolkata and mastered in Geography from Calcutta University in 1997.

After many a jobs as teacher in School / College, Registering Officer, he joined as a police man in 2005. His talent is manifacet: an elocutionist, writer, poet, craftsman. You name it, he did it. He pursued acting with the esteemed group ‘Rangakarmee’. He photographed & directed a docu-flim, Metal Slaves’ based on the small scale metal works of Howrah. Two of his graduate-level text books published by Navodaya Publications are a rage with students all over West Bengal & Bangladesh. Work on the third is on.

However, his passion is painting. He indulged in it whenever his heart prevailed over his mind & the bristles of his brush smeared magic on canvas. Ask him how he manages these in his hectic schedule & he will reply two words: “multi-tasking’ & ‘time- management’.

In his words -“One of my earliest inspirations were the visual of a huge face of the Shiva drawn on a railway platform with coins falling over it. Waiting for the local train, I used to watch a couple of street artists painting those with a flourish. And, how blue those Shivas were! I haven’t seen such Shivas since. The platforms have changed.

At the Calcutta Book Fair, as a toddler, I used to stand at the back of those potrait artists and learn how mirror images of faces can appear on plain white paper.

The eye opener to World Painting came in the form of a series published in the ’80s in the Bangla Magazine ‘Desh’. It was called “Punascho Paris” (Post script Paris) written by Nirode Majumder. I got to know the Impressionists, the Cubists, the Surrealists, et al. Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Paul Gaugin, Toulouse Lautrec came bombing my head. Then came Hussain-Raza-Souza-Ara and the Bengal school of Ramkinkar, Nandalal, Abanindranath and Binode Bihari. And, of course, my favourite Mario Miranda with his inimitable style!

There is perhaps no teacher from my school days whose caricature cannot be found in any of my copy books. I believe in the famous Oscar Wilde saying: “Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.”