Thammi's Kantha...

Those were blithesome warm afternoons in Dehradun. While baba was busy in office and mom was away to pick didi from her school, thammi and me had our share of good time.

The large courtyard attached to our British Era Govt accomodation alloted to my father then, was a perfect place for our hangout in the winter chilled afternoons of Dehradun.

 The sun kissed lap of my Granny (whom we called thakurma and sometimes thammi too), was the perfect place for this one hour after school break. The milky white saree she wore gave me the feeling of a pillow.

Thammi used to sit with her threadbox and would complete the kantha work with coloured threads and needles. Red, blue, green, yellow,pink, those threads were the only colours in her otherwise white life.

I used to either pick up a textbook from my syllabus and read it out for my thammi else she would tell me the stories of her childhood in Bangladesh.

On one such occasion I learned about Kantha, the heritage of Bengal, how almost all ladies back in Bengal used to stitch kantha at home during their freetime after completing all household chores by stacking their old sarees.

My granny too created wonderful masterpieces then. Many of them were lost in our transit in multiple places due to my father's transferrable job and few got worn out due to their age.

I just tried to recreate one such work through my painting.

This is done in A4 paper with colored pencils borrowed from my son.