Aban Mela 2007 in Pictures!

As I entered the gate of Rabindra Bharati University on 18th Dec 2007, some students were involved fixing this banner to greet the public:

... slowly I proceeded on and to the right side of the compound wall a wooden installation of statue was glaring at the passersby(for a moment I mistook it for an actual student may be wearing a mask to frighten or practicing drama)!

This is a new building for performing arts which has come up this year, I was amazed and spellbound by the large murals executed on the walls of these hall and class rooms. They were nearly 10x15 feet.

Rabindranath Tagore is glorified on one of the murals among the 4 and one was depicting dance.







Next to the performing center building is the boys hostel and in between the hostel and the visual arts class room, is a lake where fellow students share their notes, gossip and other creative pursuits including love.

Mela Highlights: Separate stalls were put up by different department heads and this one is supervised by Parag Roy (Head of Graphic Department) to hang the calenders made by the students with 3 different etchings. Some of the calenders were made with serigraphs of teachers works like Parag and Paula Sengupta.

It was great pleasure to interact with an enterprising final year student from Iraq, Reyhani Akan who was in-charge of a stall to popularize "Ebru Painting" and encouraged onlookers to try using the technique and take out a print as final proof.

After the student volunteers boldly, the resulting artwork is showed in the end, and the joy you get to see on the face of the volunteer is wonder struck.

Here he convinced one of the popular staff (painting head) Nikhil Ranjan Pal to experiment, which the teacher hesitatingly tried after many coaxing.

I tried my hand on it and Reyhani wanted the artwork photographed after acknowledging that I had traveled all the way from Bengaluru to visit the mela.

Face tattoo was also done by some students for a paltry sum of Rs 10/- and one of the resulting face with tattoo ...

As we were getting ready for the closing dinner, I chanced to see a chameleon on the shutter of the sculpture department.
Overall I enjoyed the mela immensely bringing with me lots of memories in the form of lithographs, silkscreen prints, etchings, watercolor paintings, collages, hand-drawn picture postcards, trinklets made of kowde (type of sea shell)