Inheriting a Country, Stroke by Stroke

As a West Bengali child in the 1980s, I received scores of Chinese folk tales translated into Bangla in Bangladesh—translations that linked not one but three countries through imagination and language. Our afternoons were spent with our eyes glued to television sets broadcasting cartoons and sci-fi serials produced across the border. In those neighbourhoods, where stories travelled more freely than people, children’s imaginations were shaped collectively. And through these small, everyday crossings, our attachments to that neighbouring country deepened, shaped by histories that have long been intertwined. This is how we belong to each other.

In the seventies and eighties, as my father, Kalyan Maity, was gaining recognition as a cover designer and illustrator, he and Prabir Sen would often visit Annada Munsi’s home near Tala Park. Munsi’s influence on both their styles was unmistakable. I felt an irresistible pull toward the brushes, zinc blocks, poster colours, set squares, compasses, thick pencils, and the tubes of rubber solution—an invaluable import from Munsi, and essential to the resist technique—that filled the drawers of my father’s worktable. I would try sheet after sheet to imitate my father’s calligraphic style, usually failing, yet always receiving encouragement instead of scolding. This continued until I entered Art College. Even today, when I write in Bengali script, the style I absorbed from my father and through him. Munsi—still appears, though years of typing have dulled my hand.

Over time, I realised that I had absorbed Annada Munsi—the “Father of Commercial Art” in India—since childhood without knowing it. His influence has remained unbroken across generations, even after Satyajit Ray. Munsi was born on 27 November 1905 in Shibnagar, Pabna, during a turbulent political moment. He passed away on 14 January 1985 in Kolkata. My father inherited from Munsi-da two notepads filled with rough sketches—drafts from two series titled Gifts from God and Kingdom of Heaven. Munsi could never accept Partition, and these drafts make that unmistakably clear. There was also a long, centre-spread-like sheet: Svargarajya Sambad—Heavenly Kingdom News—dated Calcutta, 10 May 1972. It was his imagined newspaper.

This document reads like a burning personal record of his thoughts on the Partition. At its centre was a blue-green map of India, its borders drawn with rubber solution, and across it the figure of Christ, crucified, blood dripping—India crucified. Beneath it, Munsi wrote of the violence unleashed after the Partition, the persecution of Bengalis, and the Radcliffe Line’s cruel cut: “the scratch-marks of that coward Radcliffe on the chest of golden India.” Munsi lamented that none of this appeared in Indian newspapers, which perhaps prompted him to reveal his own truth through this imaginary one. Even in draft form, his words remain startlingly relevant to contemporary politics. He was no meek artist but a conscious citizen—an activist.

He wrote: “A day will come when the entire strength of Bengalis will unite and rebel against this injustice. We shall not accept the foreigner’s scratch upon our map. We want the India of a hundred years ago. The God of Bengalis will give us that heavenly India.” In the Gifts from God notepad, in red ink, he wrote: Ishwar-Allah tera naam, sabko summati de Bhagavan! Below it, in black: “When the two-nation theory no longer exists, what obstacle remains to unifying the two Bengals? When Allah comes, even West Pakistanis will honour Him…therefore turn toward God-Allah.” And then, emphatically: Today is that day! The artist was not merely criticizing Partition; he was almost ferociously seeking a remedy. In Crucified India: A Dialogue with God, Shiva speaks through him about the need to rehabilitate those uprooted by the division of Bengal and Punjab: “You sit in power and do nothing…”

Throughout, he clings to the idea of one body—one vessel in which caste, race, and hatred dissolve; where religions coexist in harmony. Devotional, human love becomes his weapon. Annada’s genius lay in this: the impulse to stitch together a broken country. His drafts made me think of how the Partition’s shadows had touched us in ways we never named. While thinking about the recent political anxiety and violence in this neighboring land, another memory suddenly returned to me—one I had never before connected with Partition. It was an evening from childhood: I was sitting on the ground by a canal, cooking thin, watery khichuri with a group of poor people and eating with them. We spread banana leaves on the dusty earth, and as soon as the khichuri was served, it rolled off into the grass. There was a half-boiled egg on the side.

My eyes filled with tears at the sight of such food, especially since I was used to taking Kalimpong and Gupta Brothers pastries and apple strudels for lunch. But the enthusiasm of the others knew no bounds. They were all refugees. This fact had never struck me then. The place where the khichuri was being cooked was a refugee colony. Among the people who lived there was Debu-kaku—otherwise known as Debabrata De. Because he had won a national award for his artistic work, the local club beside our house would bring him in on Saturdays to conduct drawing classes. But if anyone called the club a “club”, the secretary would get terribly annoyed and insist: “This isn’t a club. This is an ashor. A Shobpeyechhir Ashor.” His family, too, had come over from o-paar Bangla for the same reason as the others.

We, ourselves became connected with the history of Partition only after moving to New Barrackpore. Had Debu-kaku not come from across the border, had the currents of Partition not pushed him into our neighbourhood, this influence of the arts might never have entered my life. In my own family, the impact of Partition had never been direct. I do not remember a single conversation about it. No sorrow, no lament over lost homes or ancestral lands—nothing. My father’s family was natives of e-paar Bangla. They were financially well-off. In Midnapore, they had paddy fields and as many as seven ponds. At home, fish, rice, coconuts, milk, ghee—everything was always available.

My mother’s family, though originally from Chittagong, had moved away long before Partition for studies and work. As a child, I usually stayed with my maternal grandparents in Kalna, rather than in Midnapore, my father’s ancestral home. We spoke Bangla. Not Bangal. Yet an umbilical tie with Bangladesh remained. Dadu had been close to Master-da Surya Sen during his youth. When we settled in New Barrackpore, none of us imagined we would end up living among refugees. I was seven then, and Munni was one. I studied at Julien Day School in Ganganagar. We moved there because it was closer to our house in Italghachaa, and since Munni often fell ill, it was decided we should not attend the same school.

Domestic helpers in the area wanted only rice. Even while working—and also when leaving for home—they would carry away extra cooked rice in pots. In the 1980s, such things were inevitable in North 24 Parganas. Things often went missing—steel spoons, dried chillies, money, clothes. These days, no one even looks back at such matters. In the last twenty years, not a single thing has gone missing from home.

And then there was the strange difference in language. Munni and I, who spoke standard Bengali, understood nothing of words like chhaap, kop, membati—their versions of Surf, coffee, and candlesticks. Mother and we would endlessly mock this “local language” of the area. Especially mother—she lived in constant fear that if her daughters ever picked up that dialect—they would be completely ruined. By the time I was ten, my lines in drawing had begun to resemble Debu-kaku’s—long, strong strokes. After getting into Rabindra Bharati, during the two preparatory years, Manik-da (Talukdar) would be amazed at the style of my sculpture. He would praise me.

Two old men with broken faces, missing teeth, and dry skin, sitting crouched with shawls wrapped around them, smoking bidi—I sculpted them by carving details into the folds of the shawls with a scalpel. At nineteen, I had no knowledge of anatomy. So I rolled the clay flat with a rolling pin and wrapped it around them, making them sit crouched just like that—an infallible technique I learned from Debu-kaku. His sculptures were filled with crowds—Durga immersions, overflowing buses, processions—everything he had learned to observe, having grown up on this side as a refugee. And that was how Bangladesh began to enter my nerves, my veins, my blood. Neighbours cannot be severed; the lines run too deep.


Oindrilla Maity Surai is an
independent curator, writer 
and cultural researcher 
based in Kolkata, India.