Jharna-Kala Anniversary

Today we are observing, celebrating, the 30th anniversary of my painting. It started in a hotel in Canada. Long live Canada! Right from the begin-ning, the one who inspired me immensely and totally is Ranjana the Great. (Applause) If she had not inspired me so wholeheartedly and worked for hours on the paintings every day in my house, then I would have given up then and there. I never thought I had the capacity to become an artist. For the sake of fun in India, I drew a few paintings. That was what you could say was a compulsory class.

Our family is for poetry. Our father wrote, they say, about 30 or 40 poems. Then my eldest brother Hriday wrote a few hundred or even a thousand. My brother Chitta wrote also quite a few hundred. My sister Lily wrote about 200, and Ahana wrote about 100 excellent, super-excellent poems. Then my brother Mantu wrote about 20. Only my eldest sister Arpita did not write poetry. But she has written me hundreds of letters, so it is my wish one day, from her ceaseless advice – on what I should do, what I should not do, and all her worries and anxieties – I will make a selection and set them to music.

So our family was born as a poetry-family, and I started writing poems when I had been in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram for perhaps three months. My brother Chitta taught me Bengali metres and encouraged me like anything. Then my Bengali teacher, Prabhakar Mukerjee, encouraged me unimaginably. Biren Palit, whose song we sing, Tomari Hok Joy, also encouraged me, and many more. Then I became a poet at the Ashram when I was 13 or 14 years old.