Nani at Artist Residence: Day 6

While drawing Nani's early life, and throughout the book, I decided to allow myself a large space for creative license, for imaginings of my own. These little escapes from the actual facts which mark the structure of the story, began to turn into little wanderings of mine where through research magical coincidences began to surprise me. 

In one of the parting scenes between Nani and Dada, when he leaves for Ghana without her in 1946 to begin to settle their life there, I had written that he leaves by boat. I don't know if he actually did, but I knew that the scene I imagined had to be by boat. 

I began to research boats that would have been used in Sind on the Indus River departing from Hyderabad in 1946, and found this wonderful image. 

The caption accompanying this image reads: Flat bottomed ferry boats are used even today to help travelers cross the Indus River near Mohenjo-Daro. Under the image of the tablet reads: Three sided molded tablet. One side shows a flat bottomed boat with a central hut that has leafy fronds and two birds on the deck and a large double rudder. Discovered in Mohenjo-Daro in 1931. Since iron was not yet discovered in the Bronze Age, the Meluhhan, the Mespotamian and the ships did not have mariner's compass at their disposal.

The Harappan ships probably followed the coastline during daytime; in case they accidentally lost the way and came to open sea, they seem to have kept in their ships birds, which on being released flew towards land and thus showed the way.

Thrilled with my research, I made my image.

And as a final surprise, while hanging it up on the wall, the background music was an old Bengali folk song by Nitin Sawhney which I hadn't heard since my London years, and which I did not understand. When I went over to the computer to read the title of the song I laughed and cried all at the same time. 

It is called The Boatman:

Baroshekar aador meke

Bheshe elam sagor theke

Baleer toteh notun disha

Adar theke alor mesha

Batash bhara bhalo basha

Ke kandare baicho toree aral theke

(Something) caressed with love

I drifted ashore from the sea

The sand shows a new way

The light blends with the darkness

The wind is full of love

Who are you boatman who paddles this boat, 

whom i cannot see

It is little big things like this that make me feel 

that everything is falling into place, 

that the book is growing into what it ought to be.

The song The Boatman talks about exile.

And accompanied me through the next image also.

Photograph of 1947 exile by Margaret Bourke-White. 

 Imagined image of Nani's migration.

When these little big things happen, 

despite the heartbreak that inevitably 

comes with making a book such as this, 

I am filled with strength.