Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[comixcroz]

Wow - amazing thread Michael. Thanks for sharing!

[Twistty1]

Excellent in every way and a very thought provoking thread Michael. Thank you for sharing like that.

[Flex Mentallo]

There is perhaps one final strand to bind this rope of serendipity.

 

I lost touch with Nirmal and the village around 1992, by which time and after many visits, I suppose I felt I no longer had anything more to offer them, and the decade long correspondence with Nirmal had ended insofar as he had ceased to reply to my letters. [Though I still treasured the hundred or more he had sent me to that point, full of his stories and wisdom.]

 

Life moved on, I translated my enthusiasm for the village into a more generalised study of community around the world.

 

I was exceedingly fortunate that year to be awarded a Churchill Travelling Fellowship to visit a latino community centre in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, which though now long since gentrified, was at the time the second poorest congressional district in the United States.

 

This residency came about because I had happened to leave some reports on community arts projects I had undertaken in the UK with a professor at Baroda University, my old alma mater in India. It seems they were kept by the university library, and subsequently unearthed by a visiting muralist from Chicago, Joe Matunis.

 

Later, we corresponded and became friends. According to him, and to my great surprise, community arts as practiced in the UK [that is as a means to bind communities together] had yet to take root in the US.

 

My reports inspired him [his words, not mine] to seek out El Puente de Williamsburg and offer his services. He began teaching local youths to paint enormous murals. [This was at a time when on average a young person a day was being killed by other young people there in drug related incidents.. The real measure of El Puente's success is that through their efforts, this had ceased by the time I arrived there.]

 

I benefited greatly from seeing these remarkable community activists in action.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Soon after my time at El Puente, I found myself volunteering in the former Yugoslavia on behalf of Warchild during the war that shattered that country.

 

I spent several months living and working with Bosnian Muslims - mainly women and children - in a refugee camp near Ljubljana in Slovenia.

 

Some of the children were survivors of torture. One told how her beloved teacher, a Serb, had tried to murder her and her sister on the outbreak of war.

 

Another told me how she had had to flee into the forest in the middle of the night. The forest was burning, and bazooka shells were exploding all around her.

 

When we took the children into the woods surrounding the camp, they built little shrines out of objet trouvé - bits of bark, leaves and grass, stones and shells.

 

They looked like little houses - or coffins, as a colleague more sagacious than I pointed out. At times the children were unaccountably angry with me - but this was not so very hard to understand, for their fathers were off fighting against the Serbs, with no hope of contact.

 

The shrines were for their fathers.

 

And I had the temerity to be a man of perhaps their father's age, living, breathing - and a perfect focus for their terrors. When news came confirming a husband's, a father's death, the entire camp went into mourning, as happened to one woman while I was there, who had - I think it was - five children - all girls.

 

How they hated me!

 

But when I left the camp, and the entire population of perhaps a hundred souls turned out to wave goodbye to my colleagues and I, and they being more extrovert than I were engaged in many demonstrative and fond farewells while I hung back. But that woman came straight up to me and embraced me before them all. She was comforting me. I cannot remember her name, though I can still clearly see her face, but it is one of my most cherished memories - for in the face of so much collective grief, one can only feel powerless

 

Edited December 28, 2012 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

On my return to the UK I had a minor breakdown. What pulled me out of it was the opportunity to found Arc, the arts and health agency I still run. That was in 1995.

 

The years rushed by, and I thought of Nirmal only in passing. By then he would have been of exceedingly advanced years I reasoned, and perhaps his failure to correspond was simply because he had died.

 

I thought of returning to the village, but I knew that by then the children I had known would have grown up, perhaps married and moved elsewhere.

 

Then in 2005, quite out of the blue, I received a letter from Nirmal! He was now nearly blind aged 97, and by his account in a desperate plight, with no-one to help him. The letter had been written for him, but he had signed it. He begged me to come to the village to rescue him.

 

What would I find, after all these years?

 

I had no way of knowing, but when I arrived I was amazed to discover that many of the children I remembered were still there. The village had grown. Calcutta had stretched out to encompass it, though behind the single busy thoroughfare the countryside remained as unchangingly beautiful as I remembered.

 

But the children - ah! the children! For they had of course grown up, married, had young children of their own, had become the village.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 28, 2012 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

It felt like coming home, and over the following years I returned on numerous occasions. Nirmal's situation improved. Those paid to care for him provided better care.

 

On one of these visits I met Lucina Yeasmin. She was the niece of Mridula Uddin Ahmed, who had been in earlier days one of my English language students. [Mridula's father Ashraf had been a good friend and I was saddened to learn that he had recently had a stroke from which he died soon after my return, though not before I had the chance to say goodbye to him!]

 

There are levels and layers to poverty in India. To the western eye, all in a Bengali village may seem equally poor. Houses are small, sometimes still made in the traditional way from clay and thatch. People bathe in the pools. Flush toilets are practically non-existent. Mosquitoes abound, and malaria and cholera are still largely unchecked. Yet first impressions can deceive. In time one notices motor bikes. Mobile phones, television sets...

 

The poorest families do not have these. And Lucina's family was among the very poorest.

 

Her father, an invalid, made a few rupees by making packets out of newspapers for peanut vendors. Her mother would rise at 4 am and work right through the day and half the night.

 

Lucina was desperately thin. She was a student at the local college, and to help the family make ends meet, she ran many classes for younger village children whose parents could afford to pay a little for the extra tuition.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 27, 2012 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

One day she came and told me that she was in a desperate fix. She had only been able to attend college because the local communist party had given her a scholarship. Now they had decided to withdraw the scholarship because they wanted her to become a party activist, which she had no time for.

 

I asked her how much her college fees would be? The sum involved wouldn’t buy a decent golden age comic, so I unhesitatingly offered to give her the funds to complete her education.

 

Lucina was known to be a bright student. How astonishingly bright had yet to be revealed. Had I not been in a position to intervene, her parents would have married her off, and that would have been the end of her brilliant career before it ever began.

 

Well, there isnt much more to tell.

 

I had returned to rescue one person and had been even more fortunate to rescue another.

 

One day I am quite sure Lucina will rescue me.

 

She completed her college course, then a BSc in agriculture. She recently completed her Masters and is now actively pursuing a PhD.

 

Most amazingly, she just sat a national examination and came in 27th.

 

Why is that amazing? It’s because over 200,000 students sat the exam this year. Her score was 98% and she is still trying to figure out her single mistake!

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

In the land of Serendip, one person's tale becomes another's. The fictional story of Apu eventually took me to India. I became part of Nirmal's story, he of mine. I never met Mohan, but his story affected me perhaps most of all. Because of Nirmal and Mohan, I became a community artist. Because of that, Joe followed suit - and became a far better activist than I have ever been.

 

And because Nirmal reached out years later, I met Lucina.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Past:

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Present:

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Future:

 

 

 

 

In the land of Serendip all stories become one.

 

[Kevin.J]

Wow man, I will say it again.

Great thread and great stories.

[jimjum12]

I know one thing, I'm certainly not ever going to sell the MIS 90 I got from you now. GOD BLESS....

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

Edited December 29, 2012 by jimjum12

[Buzzetta]

Headmaster: [leading a school prayer] Oh Lord, we give thee humble and hearty thanks for this, thy gift of discipline, knowing that it is only through the constraints of others that we come to know ourselves, and only through true misery can we find true contentment.

"Ripping Yarns" Tomkinson's Schooldays (1976)

 

School bully was nearly 6 foot tall at the age of 14. He was a great athlete, especially at the 100 yards dash, all power and pumping arms. But when we ran the cross country, he always made the mistake of running off too fast, as though he could somehow defeat the laws of aerobics and win by sheer determination.. I was weedy, and slow, but when I ran, I could run for hours, so inevitably I would run him down, being careful to cross the track to the far side as I left him (all power, etc) flailing in my wake. His many victories took only seconds - my few, much longer.

 

We were never friends.

 

School bully's nemesis was Mr Brannigan. He was our form teacher in third year at St Cuthbert's Grammar School on the western fringe of Newcastle on Tyne, a ten mile journey every day from my home on the Northumberland coast.

 

Mr Brannigan was only approximately 5 foot tall. Every single school day that year, he would bounce into class, and the first words from his mouth would be "Stand up Sumner!"

 

And not without trepidation, School bully would rise slowly to his feet, towering over his teacher.

 

Whereupon, to the daily mirth and occasional downright hysteria of the class, he would proceed to poke School bully repeatedly in the stomach.

 

As I said, School bully and I were never friends, but one day, by sheer chance, we both happened to catch the early bus home. Since no-one else was present, and his street cred was not in danger, School bully deigned to speak to me. It wasnt exactly a conversation. More a monologue on the theme of his life plan to become a rock star. He spoke with such absolute certainty about this I decided he must be as crazy as Werner Herzog, but I wisely refrained from pointing out the statistical unlikelihood of this.

 

On the other hand, local band The Animals had recently reached the top of the charts with House of the Rising Sun. Along with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Dave Clark Five, and The Kinks, the group had introduced British music and fashion to the world. Like every other boy my age I was keenly aware of this...

 

...but that was the only proper conversation we ever had and I thought no more of it.

 

The years past, and as I've recounted earlier, I went to India, returning to the UK in 1982 after a two year absence.

 

Many things were different. Fashions had changed. People had begun to become noticeably more health conscious. There were people on bicycles, and skateboards, and even roller blades, listening to music on portable players.

 

And the music was different as well. The atrocious "Sugar Sugar Candy Girl" music of the late 70's had been replaced by the Eurythmics, and The Police.

 

And all of this was good.

 

Years later, perhaps 1992, I was working as a community artist at a large psychiatric hospital in Tooting Bec. There was another community artist working there and I noted from his accent that he came from the same northerly climes as I. We compared notes, and it transpired that like me he had been attending St Cuthberts Grammar School in the 1960's - a year or two ahead of me.

 

We chatted for a while, and then he said, "Sumner did alright for himself didnt he, aye?"

 

I said, "What, you mean our old friend school bully? Why, what did he do?"

 

He looked at me in quiet amazement and said, "You know, man! Gordon Sumner! Sting!"

 

Now that is a read...

[comicwiz]

Ironic how as soon as I read "Sumner," Sting came immediately to mind.

[Senormac]

There is no smiley for what I'm thinkin alanna. You are a blessed man <3

[Sal]

Thank you for this thread.

[thehumantorch]

Fascinating thread. Thank you.

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

Wow, what great life stories. I hope to get to India before I am too old; thanks for the inspiration. The beautiful images you shared were also quite wonderful with many I have never seen. Are you also a fan of Jon R. Neill who illustrated the Oz books; it seems you would like his style too.

 

I think all life is full of the connections you describe; one just needs to look.

 

Thanks again for a fantastic thread.

[BOOT]

Thank you for sharing these wonderful stories. It is brave of you to reveal so much.

 

I would offer another perspective on your journey. Not one of chance, but one of the power of human will. Every one of thousands of decisions you made led you to that dry stone fountain. Not chance, but your choice and your determination. What you have done along the way is a testament to the power of your spirit.

 

Thanks again for sharing - this story, and all the great comics.