Fire and Other Images comprises a selection of prose pieces by
Paritosh Sen, originally written and published in Bengali and rendered
into English here, in an attempt to make them available to a wider
audience. The pencil sketches that illustrate the narratives were done
by the artist for this book. In these vignettes of his past Paritosh Sen
evokes a world that we have lost, a memory of what has been and gone;
yet the very act of evocation creates a powerful presence. His family
was large enough for him, as a child, to lose himself in his own vision
of the world: a vision that has remained with him and is recalled in
moments of reflection. This vision comes through in the pieces that
bring to life memories of his boyhood in Dhaka; of his relationship with
his father which, though distant, is deeply imprinted in him; of the
fire at his father's cremation; of the death of his mother which he
poignantly juxtaposes with the anguish of a mother mongoose separated
from her captured babies. Sen responds to the landscape, trees, plants,
birds and people that surround him. For him the magnificent Arjuna tree,
the 'tree in his village', for instance is like a high-rise building -
with a hierarchy among the birds that nestle separately in the various
branches of the tree, and between them on the snakes and iguanas in its
roots.
Paritosh Sen the artist comes through forcefully in the pieces where he
recalls his meetings with Brancusi and Picasso. In his narration of his
encounter with Picasso we are made aware of the initial awe that is
gradually replaced by a recognition of the immense human qualities that
go into the best creativity. The artist in Sen also surfaces in his
stunning description of travelling across the waters at Abu Simbel at
dawn. The creativity inspired by a recollection of a past world and of
the attempt to comprehend the present, is preserved in both his
paintings and writings. Both his painting and his writing are statements
that endorse freedom as necessary to creativity and as central to the
human experience.
