Champions of Narail

Narail locals consider purchasing a cricket bat.

“If you play cool and concentrate we can win. Don’t be overconfident or hot headed. It’s not the time for foolish risks.” I’d come to Narail Government High School field to find the answer to a question. It was lunch break on the day of the under 14s divisional cricket championship final and coach Md Imrul Kayes, 25, his face whitened with sunscreen, was half-whispering a pep-talk to his team. “Don’t forget your role or get distracted at the crease,” he was saying, “The match is in a vital position. You know what to do.” It sounded like advice for life.

Fahim, Bappi, Oruno – he’d be relying on his promising batsmen. But with the visitors, Bagerhat, having set a target of 72, with 22 overs complete, 40 runs on the board and eight wickets in hand, the situation was far from hopeless. “This is no time for heroics.”

Coach Md Imrul Kayes gives pep-talk to the U14s Narail cricket team during lunch break at the divisional final.

The question I sought the answer to was larger than the under 14s. I wanted to know why Narail District performs so well at sport. One might’ve thought it’d be enough for a small district to excel in culture – SM Sultan, Bijoy Sarkar and the others. But no, when it comes to sport, with national champions too many to list, in cycling, weightlifting, archery, kabbadi, handball, volleyball, table tennis and cricket – did I name them all – little Narail punches above its weight.

U14s divisional final, Narail vs. Bagerhat.

Coach Kayes gave an initial clue: enthusiasm. He plays in third division cricket himself and dreams of becoming a first division player. And he’s playing the sport that produced Narail’s most famous player, Mashrafe bin Mortaza, the fast bowler for the Tigers known affectionately as the ‘Narail Express.’

Mashrafe’s familial home being just beyond the field I thought to wander over to find out more from his father Golam Mostafa. “I wanted him to be a doctor,” he says of his son, “but as a child he was restless, always active. If he wasn’t swimming he’d be helping himself to green coconuts or lychees from other people’s trees.” His talent for cricket was “totally God gifted” with no coach or training at first.

Photo of Mashrafe displayed in his family's drawing room.

Is it a coincidence the field is close by? Perhaps that’s another clue: Narail town has open spaces including the stadium and historical Kuriddobe. But open spaces is a feature common to at least some other district headquarters.

It’s surely true that success breeds success. Coach Kayes attended the Ataur Rahman Cricket Academy named after Mashrafe’s grandfather – and it’s about more than sports stars giving back. It’s about town pride and a belief in winning. It’s because when that kid down the road made it to the national level why shouldn’t I? Kayes says he is inspired by the success of Mashrafe and others. I’m certain he isn’t alone.

Yet despite his emphasis on the importance of practice, Mostafa believes natural talent is essential. Similarly, he observes that sporting prowess came naturally to Narail. From the 1970s the town started to perform well in kabbadi, weightlifting, cricket and athletics, he remembers, and by the end of the 1980s table tennis had taken off.

At home with Mashrafe's parents.

So where was all this talent coming from? Was it something in the town’s rather salty water which the locals drink often enough not to notice? Was there a peculiar chemical combination that gave rise to a higher proportion of naturally gifted sportspeople?

One person who might know would be Riaz Mahmud Rocky, 24, a national table tennis champion. You can find him down the road at what’s optimistically called the Table Tennis Academy. It’s basically a brick shed that’s currently lined with bags of concrete while under renovation. Inside is a slightly dour space featuring the single functioning ping pong table in town. Perhaps 200 players take turns on that table, Rocky says, and yet he guesses that up to 90% of top table tennis players in Bangladesh, men’s and women’s, hail from Narail.

“All my friends were playing ping pong,” he recalls of the beginnings of his own career, “I used to watch them and I tried it. It was a way to pass time.” His protégé Javed Ahmed, 18, meanwhile, says he took up table tennis because the building was nearby.

Riaz Mahmud Rocky at the Narail Table Tennis Academy.

“As I got older I started to think about life,” continues Rocky, “I understood the need for study and a job but I saw that from table tennis some money could come.” By age 16 Rocky was district captain with a monthly salary of 10,000 taka.

“When we started to compete outside,” he recalls, “I saw we weren’t bad at it. The taka prizes encouraged our training.” As his income rose, Rocky’s parents who had once taken a “Do your schoolwork!” approach to his sport became less worried. “Before it wasn’t possible to earn a living from table tennis,” he says, “but now it is.”

Rocky and Javed Ahmed spar at the Table Tennis Academy.

He’s not the only one to notice. According to local high school physical education teacher Orun Sarkar, who once went to live in India with his relatives but missed Narail so dearly that he only lasted four days before returning, “Earlier people wanted their kids to be doctors or engineers but many now hope their kids will be sports players.” There’s lots of support in the district for sport, he says. Rocky takes it a step further, “Sport in Narail is very well organised.”

Yet the reality of Narail’s one table suggests facilities are not a major factor in achieving excellence. Once, while at a training camp in India Rocky was asked how he practices. He explained the one-table situation. “They were all laughing,” he says, “But while they had many tables they had no champion players. Other districts have better opportunities too. We have to wait to play – but then, when our turn comes we really try. We really enjoy it.”

In Narail's Roopganj Bazar, even a bookstore is decorated with sports equipment illustrations.

Now, if you want to know why anything is the way it is – little trick – look at history, and Narail has a colourful one. The main founder of the Narail feudal estate or jomidari was Kalisankar Roy who, like his father Ruphram Roy, first served the King of Natore. His father was faithful and rewarded by being allowed to establish a property in Narail and build a small house there.

Kalisankar was healthy and intelligent and known for achieving a task using any means. Over the years he managed to amass vast tracts of land for himself using other people’s names – the Natore Raj did not suspect this trickery. He was even involved in an act of piracy on the Chitra River, and when sepoys were sent from Jessore to arrest him, with his henchmen, he started a fight. Two sepoys died and fifteen were wounded. Kalisankar spent time on the run but was later arrested in Kolkata and ultimately released without conviction from Jessore.

In place of his father’s small house Kalisankar built a massive palace with dozens of ponds.[1]

The trophy cabinet at Mashrafe's house.

Now, while this history might have nothing to do with sport, it’s true that the Roys are best remembered as Narail’s founders and less for trickery and criminal cases. It would hardly be the first instance where, once dubiously gotten wealth has been amassed, inheritors seek to establish genteel credentials. Subsequent Roy generations are famed for encouraging culture and sport. They established the Kuriddobe and by the early twentieth century had introduced a football competition.

 The jomidars took advantage of the rich sporting traditions in Narail’s villages. Lathi and shorki khela were stick fighting games where opponents would dance and manoeuvre in an attempt to hit the other. There’d be the tap-tap-tap of the sticks and players would call “ali-ali-ali-ali” as they played. Large crowds of spectators would gather. Both games required skill and were dangerous, but especially shorki khela where the valid zone for hitting the opponent included not only the waist to feet of lathi khela but also the ear lobe – but not the ear. The shorki stick could pierce the human body – mistakes could be fatal. At times of puja Narail’s jomidars organised jousts.[2]

There were numerous other games including khol lathi played by farmers, dhaker bari which was marginally cricket-like but involved a rectangular wooden puck in place of a ball – with the potential to blind an eye, danguli – another cricket-like game, and golla chut, where the fastest runners would win. An early version of kabbadi was called ha-du-du, dug-duga or chol-kut-kut. Yet many of these games do not distinguish Narail from other districts and besides, history can only take one so far...

Mukul Chowdhury has represented BD in several sports.

At the stadium still in search of an answer I meet Mukul Chowdhury, 35, who suffered polio as a child which resulted in one of his legs being half the diameter and shorter than the other. “I was not good at school,” he confesses to explain his sporting interest – and his supportive parents by habit would say, “Go, play!” An all-rounder, Chowdhury has represented Bangladesh in cycling at the 2010 Asian Para Games, in karate in Jharkhand and in football at the 2013 Special Olympics of the Asia-Pacific Games in Australia.

Chowdhury notes that in Narail it’s easy to join any sport and when it came to playing football in Australia he was surprised at the pitch’s smoothness. Chowdhury suggests “training on rough ground” might actually be an advantage when the relative ease of a polished field presents itself.

For national kabbadi player Sharmeen Sultana Rima the path to success was more difficult than what might be usual for males. “My parents didn’t like the idea of sport,” she says, “They were really stressed about it. In the villages people said bad things.” Fortunately Rima had a supportive brother-in-law and an encouraging coach. Her career has taken her to Thailand, Malaysia, Oman and China – but it was the day she was selected for the national kabbadi team that she considers her greatest. Her parents now wish her to pursue her dream to study Bangla; and also encourage her sport.

“In Narail the sporting environment is very good,” says Rima, “All twelve months one or other sport is running. Nearly every national team has one or two players from Narail.”

Sharmeen Sultana Rima (centre) taking lunch at a training camp in Khulna.

It’s late in the day when news arrives: it appears Coach Kayes’s pep-talk worked. At 37 overs with four wickets in hand the under 14s have become divisional champions.

And yet, to my question there remained no definitive answer. On the bus to Dhaka was the last chance to shed light on the matter. Beside me sat Md Sujan who was either 20 or 22 – his parents wrote it down somewhere. At his feet was a large pot full of pitha cakes such as village mothers may well send with their younger sons returning to work at a sweater factory in Savar in order to pay for an older brother’s college education. He dabbled in cricket but was hardly a sportsman – yet he was from Narail. There could be no harm in asking...

“The sporting success...” I ask, “Is it something in Narail’s water?” It proved to be a poor word choice – Sujan’s face became suddenly burdened with anxiousness over Narail’s water quality. I rephrased. He thought. “I think they practice a lot,” he says.

In the drawing room of Mashrafe's home.

This article is published in Star Magazine, here: Champions of Narail

---

[1] History of Narail from S.M. Royis Uddin Ahmed, Laraku Narail, 2009.

[2] Ibid., p.302-303

The Song Catcher

Dumdee village in Narail.

Knowledge, I want to know your real name...

Bahmini Mohon Roy has reached an age. His hair is grey. He sits on the mud veranda of his house in Tabra village, Narail, waiting to speak. There is a lot to speak of and he takes a moment to consider where to start.

You think of the city mornings when half-asleep pupils file into the microbuses that circle. You’ve seen them on their honking, jam-crawling ways to school. Maybe the a/c is broken and maybe it’s sweltering inside.

A small stage in Dumdee, for Bijoy Sarkar events.

You think of the villages where the only thing circling might be a pigeon flock, where students set out on foot. From historical Dumdee village it’s a long walk to the Tabra schoolyard – and you’ve heard that when Monsoon arrives she enforces a nouka-boat necessity on them. But Roy the teacher, he lives in Tabra, so the worst the rain can do for him is to make squelching muddy steps towards the school gate. It’s obvious: the paths leading to knowledge are many.

“We are calling You different names; some say Bhagawan and some say Allah...” Roy begins. He’s reciting the lyrics of a song by Bijoy Sarkar, his Guru. “I want to know Your real name.”

There’s enough to learn from textbooks – sure – to copy into notebooks and memorise. But also from birds, from trees and from rivers are things to learn. The sun can have something to utter and neither are the farm fields silent if you care to listen.

Baul singer Bijoy Sarkar.

While SM Sultan wrought knowledge onto Narail’s canvas from all he saw his friend Sarkar listened. As he caught and was caught by songs he wrote Narail’s score. From some time after his birth 111 years ago in Dumdee, Sarkar plotted the course of Baul wisdom, what has turned up once again, just now, on that Tabra veranda. Roy has just begun to open that knowledge treasure chest.

“Vaitarani and Pul-e-Siraat are. Allah, if I can cross the Pul-e-Siraat easily...” are the lyrics of another Sarkar song, referring to the Hindu river and the Muslim bridge to be faced after death. The righteous will see nectar-like water in the Vaitarani, the sinful will see blood. The Pul-e-Siraat is thinner than a hair, sharper than a sword and hotter than fire – yet the righteous will pass quickly.

“He believed everyone should go the same way,” Roy continues in prose, “That’s why he wrote this kind of song. He wanted the whole world to be successful.”

“His name is a man’s belief,” Roy recites. Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and Muslim – in the human religion it’s obvious: the paths leading to knowledge are many.

It was 1965 and Roy had just passed his SSC examination when his father thought to take him about the villages to share the good news. He took him to Bijoy Sarkar’s house in Dumdee – they met for the first time.

Bahmini Mohon Roy with his wife, Tabra village.

And as Roy recites in this later age it returns to his eyes a curious youthfulness. His face is calming and even while animated seems to harbour a resident kindness. There’s something touching, something indefinable... Does it border on the eternal? You can feel it. It’s exciting.

“As the world is now so it shall continue. I will go leaving this beauty behind.”

“These wonderful words,” says Roy, “the meaning that every human life shall pass. He wanted us to think more about our souls.”

Lyrics and prose, the flow of Roy’s words continues – as though certain lines have pressed themselves upon Roy’s lips, needing to be told at a particular moment. It’s like he wants to express all of Sarkar’s life and lines at once, in a rich, overwhelming and unified oneness.

Roy performs a Bijoy Sarkar song.

Sarkar wrote songs about nature: rivers, birds, waterholes called beels, trees and forests. According to Roy, Sarkar captured about 1800 songs before his passing in 1985. There are 150 in one book and 250 in another, he says. A further 450 exist in the memories of his followers; many other songs have, like their composer, already left their beauty behind.

In 1971 as Bijoy Sarkar moved about, recounts Roy, it happened one day that razakars stole some papers of his lyrics. “He tried a lot to get them back, but he couldn’t. After that, what he could remember he wrote again.”

In 1971 both Sarkar and Roy separately fled to India. Roy took with him 100 Sarkar songs, noted down – prized possessions – in order to save them. He found Sarkar at his new home in India and when he arrived there was a small stage set up in anticipation that the bard would give a concert. Sarkar addressed him, “Pundit Moshai, from where did you come?” “I am living just beside your home,” said Roy, “From there I came to meet you. From there I came to sing your songs.”

“We need another banana leaf...” called Sarkar in that house at that time when banana leaves were used as plates. He was insistent, as always, on food and pleasantries coming first – How is your family? How are your finances? Later there could be music. Later there could be the wisdom in Baul songs.

“You will come on stage with me,” Sarkar said – to Roy a great honour. And he sat beside his Guru as the concert got underway.

“Mainly we love our parents and family,” says Roy, “but not strangers, not in the same way. We can love them too, but not in the same way. Yet it’s true. Pagol Bijoy – Bijoy the fool – thought everybody was the same.” From his followers he had been gifted the nickname Pagol Bijoy, certain as they were that the man was possessed by God.

“One day the house bird will go to the sky if he gets the chance.”

Roy at the harmonium.

“You would never think about it, but it’s true that your taken-for-granted faithful pet bird will die one day. Some of us might even think that lyric was about a wife leaving from the house,” says Roy, “but he did not give this kind of message. We did not think about the soul, which he meant.” When asked how he came to write such songs he said it was simple logic that the human soul would depart.

You wonder if there is a pet bird in a cage hanging somewhere on Roy’s long veranda.

Songs caught Sarkar or he caught them – in the morning, in the evening; he even met them in his dreams. “Sometimes he would dream songs,” says Roy, “and it would wake him and immediately he would note them down.”

The conversation meanders still further into the harmonious depths of the song catcher’s soul. Roy tells of a time at the last of Choitro or the beginning of Boishakh many years ago when Roy’s son was deathly ill. Sarkar came on three consecutive days to pray at the hour of Fajr – and it wasn’t easy to move about in those days – but Roy’s son recovered surely enough.

Biplob Biswas and Brahmini Mohon Roy.

More remarkable is the history of 45-year-old Biplob Biswas who has come to join us. When he was aged six he could not walk and his mother appealed to Sarkar to see him. Sarkar went there, touched his legs and blessed him, promising that after two days he would be able to walk again. And it happened – just as the bard foretold.

The harmonium is brought and both Roy and Biswas ready themselves. The first notes begin and their faces, each in turn, fill with emotion – uplifted and overflowing. There’s something indefinable there, on the veranda. Does it border on the eternal? You feel it. It’s exciting.

Knowledge, I want to know your real name...

The emotion of a Bijoy Sarkar song. Spiritual and uplifting.

Biplob Biswas plays harmonium.

Temple in Dumdee featuring Bijoy Sarkar's photograph.

Bijoy Sarkar gave to Narail its score.

This article published in Star Magazine, here: The Song Catcher

*song lyrics are challenging to translate. Please forgive these humble efforts.

To the Tune of SM Sultan, Play On!

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Children's drawing competition.

SM Sultan Utsob 2014, organised by Shilpakala Academy.

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.”

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.

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.

Poster advertising the Biswas and Raja exhibition, Itna.

A Narayan Chandra Biswas landscape.

Narail graffiti Sultans.

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.

Art is alive in Narail.

Events to celebrate Sultan inspire all kinds of creativity in Narail.

Performers at Sultan Utsob 2014.

Children's drawing competition.

Painting exhibition in Narail.

Entry to SM Sultan Memorial Gallery.

Traditional pitha cakes baked for Sultan Utsob 2014.

This article is published in Star Magazine, here: To the Tune of SM Sultan, Play On!

To the tune of SM Sultan, play on!

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[1] The experiences of Narayan Chandra Biswas in this article researched from interview and his book in Bangla, Chitra o Modhumoti Parer Kotha.

[2] Details of SM Sultan’s life in this article researched from Subir Choudhury (ed), S.M. Sultan, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka 2003.

[3] Ibid. p. 24

[4] Ibid. p.22