I Will Bring My Time:
Love Letters from Raza to Janine Mongillat, 1953–54
These are some of the letters by Raza we found among the material that he brought with him when he moved from Paris to Delhi in 2011. The fifty-odd letters to Janine Mongillat, whom he married in 1959 after almost a decade-long courtship, were found, with very few by Janine. He was an avid letter writer and spent a long time framing his letters. These love letters are no exception.
Apart from revealing a depth of emotion, of longing and desire, these letters also reveal an aspect of Raza hardly noticed before. He effortlessly revealed his knowledge of writers such as Paul Valery, Charles Baudelaire, Andre Gide, and so on, by quoting from them. He also articulated, in depth, an expansiveness in his ideas about life, art, time, and worldly circumstances in his letters, to someone he loved, and who was to become his life-companion. A small selection is being presented here. A. V.
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