![]() I’m reminded of something the musician and martial artist Prajna Dutta said to me. The sculptors caress each face into being, returning them from the muddy banks of the river so that they might see what has become of the world in their absence. ![]() There are groups of humans frozen in mud, too, standing, kneeling, pointing-all of them staring toward the horizon, as if immersed in memory. Gods multiply in miniature, painted in brilliant hues, their arms lifted in celebration, their faces smiling at thoughts unknown to me. Full-sized elephants with mud-caked hides stand motionless and serene as the sun burns through smog, peach and tangerine. Sculptors create skeletal armatures of wood and wire for the upcoming Durga Puja festival, applying mud from the riverbank until the skeletons are enrobed in a charcoal-colored paste, until these figures attain the musculature of the living world, their features pensive and contemplative and, sometimes, radiant with joy. ![]() ![]() ![]() In Kolkata, on Banamali Sarkar Street, I am a bewildered and ignorant tourist, just as I have been throughout my life, eavesdropping on people’s lives and conversations, jotting down notes, folding thoughts into whatever pattern I can make of things as I follow the street to the banks of the Hugli River, an arm of the Ganges. ![]()
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