[Reader-list] Sixth Posting, Mithun Narayan Bose, I. Fellow, Sarai

[bangali_ mnb]

Landscapes and Others: Some Important Aspects of the Kolkata Rickshaw-Paintings 
   
   
  Many rickshaws of this city have many landscapes drawn behind them and it seems a common practice. But what is interesting is the depiction of the rural landscapes in particular in most of the cases. I felt much curiosity and thus I went many a time in the shanties or the makeshift rooms where most of my subjects do live to breathe their life in order to understand them properly and I have seen the helplessness they do suffer to use the rail lines as the mass lavatory and when their wives have to bathe in the road side taps in front of so many naked eyes. Thus the depiction of beautiful rural landscapes seems more interesting and I have found some insight about the subject.
   
  Almost every rickshaw pullers are from villages and naturally they have this rural connection but I felt that the memory of the bygone era, a mass nostalgia is being here to control the mind of these people. The intolerable difficulties they have to be taken as a part of everyday living and the lack of the sense of being as a social entity instead of the more steady flow of money is one of the curses of civilization and urbanization in throughout the world and Kolkata is no exception. But there is sense of losing and an indomitable urge to attain that life again instead of the clear knowledge that it can not be attained and the pathos it do generates in them is also present. Anyway, the dream retains. That is why I think the depiction of beautiful and neat and healthy landscapes of rural life or mountain springs with woods is one of the most recurring types among the Kolkata rickshaw paintings.
   
  I have found the landscapes with a river and a boat in particular in almost every landscape. In fact, a landscape is incomplete without a river with a boat and the boatman in it. The Geographic and Geological facts can sure be a reason and it had been known that many of my subjects traditionally were boatmen or fishermen when they or their forefathers stayed in their villages. So the realization of mine about the mass nostalgia seems stronger. Another source is there. 
   
  Some of these people had said that they had had the Baul songs in mind while depicting the pictures of stormy river or ocean and the boat with the helpless boatman. This Bhaba Samudram is nothing but the symbol of the life of the rickshaw puller. River and Ocean are two common symbols in every obscure religious cult of Bengal and many of my subjects are disciples of these cults, mainly Sahajiya Baishnabas and other. So the presence of subaltern is being felt in thus way on the rear side of rickshaws too.
   
   
  Very often it can be seen that an Urban landscape has been drawn on a rickshaw and if be it is surely the kind of pictures that do carry a sense of motion just as a picture of a moving train through skyscrapers or fast moving modern cars in four lane highways. Anyway it surely must be depiction of something which is more fast and fabulous than the vehicle the man drives. Thus it becomes a kind of wish fulfillment for the man and does give us a hint about the dream he nurtures in the deep of his heart.
   
   Other than these pictures are some which have urban connection simply have something grotesque in their nature. Thus the picture of 9/11 terror or a bus falling off a bridge is popular among these people. It has a nature of Folk-Journalism too. But it is a different topic and now it seems enough




.

 Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com