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| A mosaic portrait of SM Sultan by Bimanesh Chandra Biswas. |
Even today, Narail doesn’t suffer much
from big city problems. There might be small-town electric-engine jams around
Roopganj Bazar time to time but they’re not much to contend with. There’s little
risk of arriving late for an appointment.
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| Detail of a portrait of Sultan, SM Sultan Memorial Gallery. |
In the mid 1970s the town was quieter
still. When carpenter’s son Narayan Chandra Biswas arrived on an empty stomach
with time to spare it was a simple matter to set off for a meal. He’d come from
Itna village in Lohagara to support his older brother Krishna on the day of Krishna’s
BA exam at Victoria College. The exam would start in an hour.
Krishna likewise thought little of
Narayan disappearing from the hostel. He gave ten taka for food. What neither brother
considered was the risk inherent in a flute song.
Narayan had almost reached the desired shop
beside the Chitra when that soulful, melancholy melody first caught his ear. He
saw a crowd listening attentively. “The flute pulled me in,” recalls Narayan,
“I saw a tall, handsome figure in a long, black kurta and scarf. He had curly black hair falling down his neck in
waves.”
When the song abruptly ended Narayan
stayed put. “I was hypnotised by that man’s deeply inspiring speech. His words
were not of lesser value than his song. Not a single person left.”
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| Sculptor participating in the Sultan Utsob 2014. |
The man spoke of walking along a country
road. He described paddy swaying back and forth. As he spoke he smiled a little
in the corners of his lips, and he eventually stopped and said, “You know, in
the eyes of an artist nothing seen is valueless.”[1]
The eyes of Sheikh Mohammad Sultan had
seen much by the mid 1970s. Born the son of a mason in 1923 they’d seen
poverty. In Kolkata and later in Karachi they’d seen periods of mingling with
the elite, where appreciation of Sultan’s artistic skills had opened doors. In
the Second World War years SM Sultan’s eyes had learnt the barrage of visual surprises
in store for any wanderer, including one selling cheap portraits to British
soldiers through North India. They’d seen exhibition tours to America and
Europe; and Kashmir’s beauty.[2]
But the scenery that captivated the
most, the place that endured was Narail. Affectionately called Lal Mia in the
town, he was known to wander the Chitra’s banks with his flute melodies, to stay
out all night and sleep at the Shiva temple. He was a skilled dancer, a
Bohemian and a vagrant.
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| Sultan gave the gift of art to all of Narail. |
True to his words SM Sultan found value
in all he saw. As a child a piece of charcoal was an invitation to draw upon
the walls. Through India and Kashmir dreamy landscapes found their way onto
canvas in watercolour and in oil. But it was in Narail he found his most
distinctive style – those iconic rural scenes where the figures have
exaggerated muscles in place of the thin, bony reality of the peasant farmer.
Sultan had training: at the Kolkata Art
College; and he named one Rongolal, a village artist from Kalia Upazila in
Narail who’d instructed him from a small age, as his master.
Yet perhaps Sultan’s own paintings are
properly understood as temporary outbursts of creativity – an act of painting that
was an end in itself. Sultan took little care of his finished works and many
are lost. He was unconcerned about using materials that would preserve. Sultan’s
song was never about a legacy of artwork, but of ideas.
With the support of friends and
sympathetic local officials he founded a Fine Arts Institute in Narail. He
taught many, of varying talent, often for free. Sultan didn’t seek to hoard the
value in what his artist’s eyes had seen. He wanted to share it. He sought to encourage,
challenge and extend: to disseminate the ever present liberation and
self-realisation in art.
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| Child participating in a drawing competition for Sultan Utsob 2014 at the SM Sultan Memorial Art Gallery, Narail. |
Not many evenings ago I reached a
pleasant flat in the alleyways behind Dhaka’s Farm Gate. The location was
enviable, featuring an open terrace – rare in the mayhem of the city. I was
there to meet 60-year-old artist Bimanesh Chandra Biswas, an ex-chairman of
Khulna University Fine Arts Institute and one of SM Sultan’s students.
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| Artist Bimanesh Chandra Biswas. |
He’s not an easy man to catch, commuting
weekly back to his Narail home where he runs art workshops for children. We
settle in the small living room that features various ongoing artworks – which seem
to be the room’s real owners.
“What people underestimate,” he says, “is
the spiritual quality of Sultan’s work. I believe he was the Subcontinent’s only
truly spiritual artist. He had a strong faith.”
To illustrate his point, Bimanesh draws
my attention to one of Sultan’s most famous paintings, First Plantation from 1975. The painting features a very muscular
man planting a small tree. Overhead are two angels, alternatively nominated as images
of Cupid.
While this painting has been described
by research scholar Dr. Rafiqul Alam as demonstrating man’s power over nature –
and he asserts Sultan confessed that he believed in mysticism rather than
spiritualism,[3] to
Bimanesh the painting depicts the Creator’s blessings bestowed upon humankind.
In his view, the muscular image of the man arises from the nutrition and wealth
represented in the tree, delivered by angels from God. The man’s strength is
not a power over nature but from nature – how a small tree can make a man big.
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| An unfinished work by SM Sultan on display at the SM Sultan Memorial Gallery, Narail. SM Sultan's vision of introducing every human to the enlightenment of art is also still a work in progress. |
Similarly, although it is asserted that
the muscular rural figures common to Sultan’s work depict the working man as a
hero, perhaps as Sultan wished they were and to the point of being a political
statement, and concurrently reducing the natural scene to mere backdrop status,[4]
Bimanesh does not agree. To him, Sultan was demonstrating nature-mankind interconnectedness.
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| Untitled. Bimanesh Chandra Biswas, 2014. |
Bimanesh recalls his first meeting with the
great artist. His father, Sultan’s former classmate, had taken him to Sultan’s
house when he was nine years old. “When I saw Sultan’s hands drawing it was
like magic,” he says. Bimanesh became Sultan’s student in the late 1950s.
He was impressed by Sultan’s devotion to
Narail and the villages, the life his Guru chose over pursuing more
materialistic success as an artist in Dhaka. It wasn’t easy to access paint
materials in Narail, and Sultan often made his own paints from local pigments
and used jute canvases. For varnish he used gaber
gam, the resin of a local type of fruit tree. “You will notice that many of
his paintings use only few colours, maybe two or three,” Bimanesh remarks, “and
Sultan often did not fully finish a painting before moving on to the next.”
Bimanesh showed artistic promise. In
1975 Sultan took him to Dhaka to admit him into the Fine Arts Institute – the first
of Sultan’s students to follow that path. Bimanesh did well and upon graduation
was offered a job as a designer with the shoe company Bata, for a
then-lucrative salary of 15,000 taka. They promised to send him to Europe to
study shoe design. Bimanesh consulted his Guru.
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| Untitled. Bimanesh Chandra Biswas 2014. |
“For the whole of your life you will
design only shoes? You will not make your sons?” said Sultan. He encouraged
Bimanesh to join the teaching staff at Khulna Fine Arts Institute, which set
the course of his career. He wanted Bimanesh to make artists not footwear.
The last major exhibition of Bimanesh’s
own work was a watercolour landscape series, “Rural Nature” hosted by Dhaka’s
Bengal Gallery in 2011. It is unsurprising that a protégé of Sultan’s would
find rural landscapes inspiring. “I thought about the motherland,” says
Bimanesh.
But more recently his mind has become occupied
with the Creator of that motherland’s beauty. His contemporary works are
concerned with spirituality and feature religious symbols – all religions are
paths to the one God – with terracotta relief elements and angels. “Artistic
styles change as artists mature,” he says. I ask if he can paint a little. He pulls
pots of paint from under the sofa.
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| Children's drawing competition. |
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| SM Sultan Utsob 2014, organised by Shilpakala Academy. |
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| At SM Sultan Memorial Gallery. |
When Narayan Chandra Biswas understood
it was Lal Mia who stood before him he was astounded. From childhood he had
heard – Lal Mia could draw fine pictures, he had no family of his own and kept
animals and pet birds. And in those few moments Narayan had learnt that
speaking gently with good pronunciation was also a form of art.
Before he realised, the hour was gone.
Narayan awoke from his trance at the sound of the Victoria College bell signalling
the start of Krishna’s exam. He ran to the hostel but his brother had left.
“Did you get lost?” his brother asked
after the exam. Narayan started to explain but before he finished his brother’s
roommate interrupted, “Krishna, can it not be that your brother fell in love
with Lal Mia’s song?”
Krishna saw the point. “Yes, some of Lal
Mia’s disease is also in my brother.”
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| A self-portrait by artist Narayan Chandra Biswas, symbolising confusion and also his existence within the many aspects of nature - as SM Sultan would have appreciated. |
Since childhood Narayan had pursued
drawing as a hobby. Being from a poor family he knew not to dream of attending
an art college, yet after his chance meeting with Sultan his enthusiasm grew.
If only he could learn some techniques... But he was too shy to ask.
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| A rare piece of commercial style art by Narayan. |
It was some years later when Narayan was
already a teacher at Itna High School that the chance came for a proper
introduction. A junior friend, Ali Azgar Raja, was already taking lessons from
Sultan and encouraged Narayan to accompany him.
“If you agree, then sometimes...”
Narayan said nervously to Sultan; but before he could finish the sentence
Sultan laughed sweetly and said, “It is okay – sometimes you will come.”
Noticing Narayan was older Sultan continued, “For learning there is no age
limit. Rabindranath Tagore started his painting addiction when he was sixty.”
And when Narayan explained he could not
think of attending an art college because his father was just a carpenter,
Sultan replied, “My father was a mason. Those who are creating something, they
are artists.” For SM Sultan, artistic thought and creative act was where merit
lay, more than in the created article.
He also said, “If you want to learn art
it is like focusing torch light on the night sky. The light will never find a
boundary. If you want to learn such a thing, so start!”
 |
| Sketch of Sultan by Narayan Chandra Biswas. |
Narayan continued to visit SM Sultan as
he could, and Sultan sought to encourage him. Upon receiving an invitation to
visit Itna, Sultan said if his Narayan Babu and Raja Saheb held an art
exhibition there he was sure to be at the opening. As it happened progressive
Itna was due to inaugurate their public library and in order to ensure Sultan’s
attendance the local authorities offered funds for Narayan and Raja to organise
their exhibition.
On 24 November 1993 SM Sultan took his
first steps on Itna’s soil. “You see those birds playing? Do you know what it
means?” he asked Narayan, “Those birds are ready to receive the newcomer. They
are ready for me.”
It might be that Narayan’s paintings
will never hang in a national gallery – but Sultan’s song is a cherished gift.
According to Bimanesh, Sultan said that if a man had no money or property to
donate as zakat he could donate
knowledge. And with Sultan’s tuition, Narayan was brave enough to paint the
image of his mother, who died when he was young, of whom there are no
photographs. That is of course, no small thing.
In any case, to be a village artist is not
to be less than one Rongolal – Sultan’s master.
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| Poster advertising the Biswas and Raja exhibition, Itna. |
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| A Narayan Chandra Biswas landscape. |
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| Narail graffiti Sultans. |
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| SM Sultan's equipment as displayed at the SM Sultan Memorial Gallery, Narail. |
If ever there was a small town more
taken with art and creativity than Narail I have not seen it. With numerous
celebrations of Sultan throughout the year and weekly art tuition for children
it is easy to say that SM Sultan succeeded in his wish that art should
flourish.
 |
| Niha Bela Saha. |
And among the participants at the Sultan
fairs and exhibitions, if you look you might just spot 80-year-old Niha Bela
Saha. SM Sultan made his family of people close to him and Niha became as a
daughter.
Although she was not his student, Sultan
did not refrain from challenging her. On one occasion he took her to
Narayanganj to a festival, and the organisers, on hearing Sultan’s daughter was
in attendance, requested her to give a speech. Having never imagined she would
do such a thing – she didn’t know how to handle the microphone or what to say –
she was terrified. But due to the crowd’s pressure she stood there, and SM
Sultan stood just behind her, quietly whispering the right words into her ear.
“It was a really memorable day,” Niha recalls.
“I never met anyone like him,” she says,
“He had no pride. Such a good person! Such an artist! There will be none like
him.” Bimanesh and Narayan would both agree.
There were those who were quick to say
that Lal Mia was a madman. It’s not surprising for one who did not value
possessions or conformity to life’s predictable course to be labelled as such. If
art can bring the self-assurance of self-knowledge that opens horizons to the
broader world, when true caring for humans in general becomes possible: then from
the life of SM Sultan we can understand that the true meaning of eccentric is,
sometimes, wise.
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| Art is alive in Narail. |
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| Events to celebrate Sultan inspire all kinds of creativity in Narail. |
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| Performers at Sultan Utsob 2014. |
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| Children's drawing competition. |
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| Painting exhibition in Narail. |
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| Entry to SM Sultan Memorial Gallery. |
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| Traditional pitha cakes baked for Sultan Utsob 2014. |
This article is published in Star Magazine, here: To the Tune of SM Sultan, Play On!
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| To the tune of SM Sultan, play on! |
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