The Blue Lotus 13

Lotus The Blue

Issue 13 2018

Arts Magazine

in this issue Interview with Ivy Ngeow Art from Mongolia Chong Choon Kim Tan Puay Tee Sevanti Roy Eddie Putera Ben Chong See Wai Rokeya Sultana Haziq Syawal Tutu Dutta 1

Lotus The Blue

Arts Magazine

The Blue Lotus remains a wholly independent magazine, free from favour and faction.

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The Blue Lotus Arts Magazine is an entirely free and non-associated publication concerned with bringing Asia to the world, and the world to Asia

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inside....

6 Editorial

Thoughts on the current issue

by the Founding Editor

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Interview Author Robert Raymer with author Ivy Ngeow

18 Art from Mongolia

34 Chong Choon Kim

Fine artist from Melaka

46 Tan Puay Tee

Ink and brush works 60 Sevanti Roy

Designs 74 The Bird Park

Short story by Martin Bradley

84 Eddie Putera

Malaysian minimalist

92 Ben Chong See Wai

Autism

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Front cover; Blue Lotus by Sevanti Roy

Issue 13 2018

110 The Forgotten Cities of Delhi

Review of Rana Safre's book 118 Rokeya Sultana

An I for Buddha by Martin Bradley 134 5 Heeren

Melaka's exclusive hotel 144 Haziq Syawal

Emerging artist

154 Perchance to Dream

Micro fiction by Martin Bradley

156 Tutu Dutta

Queen of Folktales 168 Chai's Cuisine

Hosting bespoke Malaysian fusion cuisine

coming soon....

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Lotus Welcome to

The Blue Lotus Arts Magazine.

I founded The Blue Lotus (as Dusun) in 2011, originally to assist art students and nurture their curiosities in the history of Asian art, and to act as a conduit for Modern and Contemporary Asian art and Literature.

I created this magazine with the intent to 'give back' to the art and literary worlds for all those years of enjoyment that I have received from both.

The Blue Lotus is wholly free of favour. It is an entirely FREE magazine. No money is involved anywhere down the line. It is my gift, for as long as I am able, to the 'worlds' I have mentioned.

The Blue Lotus aims to be a platform for international cooperation, aiming to bring creative Asia to the world, and the creative world right back to Asia.

Now read on

Martin Bradley (Founding Editor)

photo by Dino Goh

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IVY NGEOW interviewed by Robert Raymer

Ivy Ngeow

Robert Raymer

Robert Raymer Chats with London-based Malaysian Author Ivy Ngeow on writing and publishing two novels.

It’s always an exciting time for a writer when your first novel is about to be published, but when you have two novels coming out from two separate publishers — one a prize-winner in Hong Kong, an­other crowd funded in London — that’s really exciting..

Thirty years ago, when Ivy Ngeow was 17, I met her at two-day workshop in Kuala Lumpur conducted by noted Malaysian author K.S. Maniam. Seventeen years later, as an editor for the anthology Silverfish 4, I happened to choose one of Ivy’s short stories. I didn’t connect the writer from the UK with the writer I had met from Johor until she pointed it out to me.

I was fortunate to have read the advance copy of Ivy’s forthcoming novel, Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize, for her Proverse Hong Kong publisher. The book was written in a lyrical style infused with Borneo folklore, Iban dreams, and peppered with startling fresh similes and meta­phors both illuminating and culturally apt....Ivy has an eye for rich telling detail and a deft ear for dialogue. I’m looking forward to reading Heart of Glass.

Born and raised in Johor Bahru, Malaysia and a graduate of the Middlesex Uni­ver­sity Writing MA program, Ivy won the 2005 Middlesex University Literary Prize out of nearly 1500 entrants 9

worldwide. Her short stories have appeared in two Silverfish New Writing anthologies, in Fixi Novo’s anthology Hungry in Ipoh, The New Writer, and on the BBC World Service. She won first prize in the Com­mon­wealth Essay Writing Competition 1994, first prize in the Barnes and Noble Career Essay Writing competition 1998 and was shortlisted for the David T K Wong Fellowship 1998 and the Ian St James Award 1999. She even won fifth prize (out of 850 en­trants) in the 2006 1-MIC (Music Industry Charts) UK Award for her original song, ‘Celebrity’. An architect by profession, Ivy lives and writes in London with her family.

After being interviewed on Ivy’s blog, I’m delighted to return the favour.

Robert: I can’t imagine what’s going through your mind right now knowing that your first and second novels, Cry of the Flying Rhino and Heart of Glass, are both coming out in 2017, so please tell us...

IVY: I feel I am being whacked about the head every morning. I remind myself that although I have had short stories published, I have put in the five ingredients of writing a novel: in­spi­ration, time, effort, commitment and energy. After many decades, in which at no stage was it easy, another journey has begun for me—that as a novelist.

Robert: About time, I’m sure....I know the feeling all too well and so do plenty of other writers. You’ve also cleverly managed to bypass that whole second novel syndrome — two at one time. Smart! Tell us a little about each novel, their similarities and differences? I know one is set in Malaysia. The other?

IVY: Cry of the Flying Rhino is set in Malaysia and Borneo in the 1990s.

The protagonist is a Malaysian Chinese doctor, a middle-class Westerneducated professional. However he is entangled in his wife’s past secrets and has to disentangle himself and his family. Heart of Glass is set in Chicago and Macau in the 1980s. The protagonist is a mixed American Chinese girl, a petty criminal, a school dropout who has to find a way of coming clean by taking on a gig abroad in Macau. Both main characters have to find their own sense of belonging; both are decultured in their own natural settings.

The themes of imprisonment, displacement, cultural identity and diversity are prevalent in my novels. They are both slightly gothic literary thrillers taking place in the denseness and darkness of cities or jungles at night, steeped in rich cultural references and atmospheric settings.

Robert: The settings for Cry of the Flying Rhino were palpable. I was thinking, when did Ivy come to Borneo? Why didn’t she visit me!

How did crowdfunding Heart of Glass come about? Was that your idea, the publisher, or is it a new trend that you tapped into — a com­ promise between traditional publishing versus self-publish­ing — a win10

win, I assume, for both the writer and the publisher?

IVY: I first heard of Unbound, a crowdfunding publisher through a mailing list that I was on and I thought what the hell. I sent them the entire manuscript in October 2016 and they accepted it on 18 November 2016.

The idea behind crowdfunding was simply to pre-sell 175 to 300 copies of your book through direct sales. I thought — I can’t do that! I could sell 10.

Maybe 20. But then I asked myself, wait a minute, what if I could sell 175 copies? Would I not want that? Why don’t I give it a go? I could always quit if I could not make the target. Since no one, in­clud­ing the publisher, knew what could happen in the future, I signed the contract. If I pre-sold the copies, I would have a real book and an ebook. This was the deal. And it was a top London publisher. I started my crowdfunding campaign on 12 December 2016. The project was fully funded on 30 March 2017.

From the start I knew this is the exact opposite of vanity or selfpublishing. No self-published book would exist in a real bookshop even an indie. Unbound’s books do. It can’t be vanity as it was as humble as you would ever have to be. You’re selling your hard work. How to be proud when you’re selling? And in sales, the customer must at least feel comfortable to spend his or her hard-earned money on you. The publisher? Unbound would be editing, design­ing, copy editing, proofing, publishing, distributing as per tradition. You? The writer? You write the book and you sell the copies. The contract was very transparent and clear. My contact who I was deal­­ing with was friendly, helpful and kind. They were always there to answer my questions or to assist me with the steps I was taking. On top of that, I had access to the Unbound Social Club, the online forum of the authors and a treasure trove of experience, sounding boards, tips and advice.

Robert: This all sounds intriguing — you get a publisher, an inhouse support group and a social network, something you can plug into at any moment, ideal for isolated writers in the far flung corners of the world like me in Borneo....What are the benefits and the drawbacks to crowd­funding a novel? Do you recommend it for other writers?

Would you do it again?

IVY: Pros: -publication by a top quality London publisher via traditional publishing process -high quality, professional production -access to top editorial team and design team -access to the authors’ forum and network -gaining wide readership or fans through campaigning -gaining new skill of crowdfunding through the process -attract media attention, publicity and promotion -books distributed widely, or by Penguin if hardback -authors get 50-50 with publisher (high royalties) after target reached 11

Cons: -crowd funding is direct marketing, sales campaign and self-promotion all in one -not being able to find/reach out to enough readers/investors/supporters/ patrons -social media over-use -extremely time consuming -annoying people you know (to buy your book) -annoying people you don’t know (to buy your book) -risk of not reaching target (shame/embarrassment) -no advance -high target Despite the cons, I would definitely recommend crowdfunding to new authors who have written a truly original piece of work or something which straddles genres (like mine) or something that has a moral heart which is hard to place in the market. For previously published authors crowd­funding would work well if you have an established readership. There are many well-known authors crowd­funding.

Robert: With publishing industry being what it is today, I’m not surprised. If a writer can guarantee sales by crowdfunding, it removes a lot of the risk for the publisher; also the writer will be getting that second chance that may have eluded them if their first book or early work, for one reason or another, didn’t sell up to expectations....I was amazed by all these writers whose books had gone out of print, by how quickly they jumped into the ebook market. Suddenly they were back in business, eager to find new readers, putting in the hard work to market themselves, proving to publishers who let their work go out of print — see, I knew I had readers out there; they just happened to be scattered around the world!

Tell us little about your background, growing up in Johor, and what led you into writing at a young age. Do you draw upon that experience in your fiction?

IVY: I was born and raised in Johor Bahru. My house overlooks the Straits of Johor. I attended the local Convent school (Holy Infant Jesus Convent). I was so fortunate that when we moved into the house where my parents still live, one room was filled with the previous owner’s books from floor to ceiling. I did not know what these books were, but I started to read every one of them and by the time I was fourteen I believe I had read them all. There were classics, block­busters, books on religion, biology, science, maths, astronomy, law, and teaching yourself (French, Yoga, Music, Chinese, Malay, English, Islam, Christianity, Swahili etc). There was even a Kama Sutra (I remember being so horrified as I thought it was yoga!) The books were very old, dating from the forties to the mid-seventies....I could slip into the past 12

quite easily; even now I still see myself as a vintage person.

My mother, who was a school teacher, also brought home six hardback books every week from her school library. She knew I loved humour, mysteries and crime so she brought home Agatha Christie, P G Wodehouse, Enid Blyton books. There was also the Sultan Ismail library which I remember my mother took me to join when I was eight or nine.

Robert: Lucky you! My parents weren’t readers, so we had zero books at home. My grand­mother, who went to college but my parents didn’t, had a thick children book that I learned to read. Luckily we had a library next door to one of my pri­mary schools (we moved a lot) and a decent library in junior and senior high school and my older brother had books assigned to him in college that I would read. But I was never a voracious reader and envied those who had cultivated that wonderful habit. I didn’t start reading on a regular basis un­til I backpacked through Europe after university — I would swap books with other back­packers. Nor did I start to write until my mid-twenties.

IVY: I started writing really young. This is pretty much the perfect age to begin living in an imaginary world. Initially it was to entertain my toddler brothers because they were bored with the stories they had heard (so was I), so I started writing down stories that I made up. I found it quite entertaining....I sort of cared and did not care if they liked my stories or not.

My only read­er was my dad. He was a doctor and quite a serious critical thinker. He would read them and give me feedback on plot or character weak­nesses and I remember that I went back to fix the gram­mar or spelling, but not to improve or change the stories because I just wanted to start a new one. The door to many other worlds opened when I discovered reading and, from then on, I really did not want to look back or to stop to come back to the real world.

Robert: I left the “real world” in my late twenties when I moved to Malaysia (after travelling for nine months) to make myself a writer. I had read an autobiography by Norman Hall who had moved to Tahiti and wrote the Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy with Charles Nord­hoff, and thought, now there’s an idea! I thought I’d give it two years and if it didn’t work out, return to the com­pany I had worked with....I’m still here, but now living in Borneo....

Living so long in London, do you consider yourself a Ma­laysian writer or an ex pat writer or just a writer who happens to be living in London?

IVY: Now that’s tough, Robert! Someone once said patriotism is the love of the food one ate as a child. I have been away too long. I now only have dim glimpses and snatches of details of Malaysian life and culture. I would consider myself a London writer of Malaysian origin.

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Robert: Me, I’m an ex pat writer who happens to be American. I felt more Malaysian early on when I was writing the stories that became Lovers and Strangers Revisited, many written from the viewpoint of Malaysians.

Then I began working on an ex pat novel. I wrote two ex pat novels.

Lately, my novels are mostly set in the US....Perhaps, in a way, I’m miss­ ing home, though I feel more at home here with my wife and two children (I have a third work­ing in West Malaysia). I have a hard time relating to what is going on in America these days, socially, politically...

Something I do miss is a literary scene. Penang and Kuala Lumpur held literary events now and then, readings, well-known writers from overseas stopping by as part of an Asian tour....I used to meet with two ex pat novelists and the three of us would get together and exchange our work in these marathon meetings that were fantastic until I accidentally offended one of them, who was very sensitive about her novel (she had a traumatic, wartorn childhood). Then soon after, she moved away. She was very talented and years later her novel sold and did very well in the US and now she has another novel out. I just wished we didn’t have that falling out because we had a good thing going....I did teach creative writing in Penang and Kuching at the university level and that was fun workshopping their stories.

We all learned.

Robert: Are you actively involved in the London literary scene, regularly attending readings or work­­shops or being part of a writing group? Does it help with your writing or can it be more of a distraction or an excuse not to write? (I’ll never be as good as so-and-so, or who has time to write with all of these literary events going on?)

IVY: I am in the London literary scene both virtual and real. I prefer real face to face inter­action as opposed to online groups. For example, I am attending the Brixton Book Jam this month. I am also a member of the South London Writers’ Group. I joined the City Lit Writers’ Club when I first arrived in the UK and I completed my MA in Writing at Middlesex University. Let’s face it, writing is a solitary profession. I attend groups or workshops when I am not writing or need motivation, encouragement or just a drink, without any real aim. I am attending the Lon­don Lit Lab in Hackney in October for a weekend workshop which I am really looking forward to. Meeting writers in the flesh is the most inspiring experience.

I meet my fellow Unbound authors every few months or so in a pub room in London. Online I am a member of Facebook groups such as the Book Connectors, The Crime Book Club and the Unbound Social Club. These are fine, but they are still social media and can suck up time. There is no end to it.

Robert: How do you keep yourself motivated to write novels, especially when you feel the novel is not going as well as you had intended? Do you share your early drafts with other writers or friends?

If so, is it encouraging or discouraging?

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IVY: It is never going as well as intended. No first draft does. I am just a simple jovial pessi­mist like any other writer. For me the first motivation comes from turning up at the job. If I just sit there, and think, it’s already a hundred per cent better than not sitting there and thinking, even if I do not write a word. If you can’t think, you can’t write. And if you don’t think, you will write rubbish. The second motivation comes from knowing the ending.

I have to know the end­ing for me to proceed. Better still, I need to know the “twist” at the end (but this is just a bonus). I don’t share any drafts with anyone. Period. I trust my own instincts to get to the end of the first draft and do at least another two before it’s ready.

The reason being I got my fingers burnt by an early experience. About twelve years ago I was very nearly signed by a prominent agent. She read the first 10,000 words of my novel and said this is the most amazing thing she had ever read, was thrilled to bits and she asked to see “the rest”. I was even asked to go in to their very grand offices in Soho Square. You can imagine my excitement, stupidity and naiveté. However, I had not written this mysterious thing called “the rest”. In a big rush I com­pleted the novel and showed her the worst first draft ever known in publishing history. I was dropped. She did not even return my calls. And “the rest” as they say is history.

Robert: Sorry, I had to laugh. It reminded me of Lisa Jewell who, on a bet, wrote three chap­ters of her first novel Ralph’s Party and submitted it to an agent, who then requested “the rest”. Taking it on faith that she “had” an agent, she rearranged her life and for the next year wrote “the rest” and hand delivered it to this agent who was flabber­gasted when she showed up at her office. You just don’t do that, and a year later! No shame! Lucky for her, the book was well written and it launched her career. Sometimes you just have to write on faith that some­one really wants your book and is willing to wait a year to re­ ceive it! You just have to make sure it’s worth the wait! Rushing your work to pass to someone, as you and I and others have learned the hard way, merely backfires. Get it right first because you only get one shot to make a first impression — impressing the right agent.

You learn by writing (and rewriting), by finishing, and by sub­mitting...

IVY: What a way to learn, but in those days there was no social media or any kind of detailed advice that you could get about the submission process.

You just bungle along and learn as you screw up. That book became my first novel Cry of the Flying Rhino after 14 drafts and 12 years and won a prize. Heart of Glass went through nine. I am getting better at doing fewer drafts because I am thinking clearer with each draft, rather than randomly drafting and changing direc­tion with every whim. I am aiming for five to seven drafts for my third book, which I am now a third of the way through.

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Robert: Is it a sequel to one of the other two novels, or is it a stand alone? Can you tell us a little about it?

IVY: It is a modern literary suspense novel told in multiple voices and view­points on the themes of memory and loss. A vulgar wealthy London banker in his early fifties leaves his wife and daughter for a hedonistic lifestyle under the pretext of a career move to Sing­a­pore. He gets a Thai girlfriend, a yacht, a luxury penthouse and lives the dream until one day there is a storm. He crashes the yacht and is shipwrecked. He loses his memory and when he gains consciousness he has to live the life of the person they “think” he is.

Robert: Sounds intriguing, especially if they are manipulating him for their personal gain! I’ve met ex pats like that, who end up ruining their lives (and their families). Some work out okay, but many gets played by their “girlfriend and girlfriend’s family”, or end up losing their high flying job over a low lying maid or a prostitute, forget­ ting why they came to South­east Asia in the first place (to advance their career), drawn into that hedonis­tic life­style. Some end up as a drug addict, in prison or dead. I guess it was fun while it lasted...sad, though. Somerset Maugham wrote about them, too....Some people just never learn. Good luck with your book.

Tell us about your typical day or week as a writer. Do you anticipate any major changes in your working schedule once your books come out?

IVY: I don’t have a rigid routine as my day job number one, being a freelance architect, is dead­line-oriented. Also if I wake up with an interesting dream, I will write that down instead. I am a slow writer. I can’t do what other people do such as write 2,000 words at a go, per day. If I man­age 500 I am really ecstatic. I try to write by hand about 10 to 30 minutes when I wake up (in the winter months at 06:45 or 07:00 if I am lazy; in the summer months 05:45). Using my trusted fountain pen, it could be stream of consciousness type thing or it may be just thinking and notetaking. I stop and I make the children their breakfast before they go to school and do my day job number one, where I have a degree of flexibility. In mid morning to mid afternoon I usually cannot write a word so I may as well work.

On Tuesday and Wednesday after­noons I teach music (piano or guitar) to children and adults. This is my day job number two. I really love my jobs and I don’t know what to do without them as they are a great displacement activity from writing. After cooking and eating dinner and the children’s bedtime, I may bash away again for another thirty minutes to an hour. A writer never really stops working, so while I may not be writing, it still counts as my thinking time. Once my books come out, I anticipate cutting back on new projects or commissions for my day job num­ber one. I would like to be writing in the day time for longer periods. This would be for me living 16

the dream. Writing is like having homework forever and ever.

Robert: I laughed out loud. My children, age 10 and 12, refer to my writing as homework, some­thing they can relate to. “Don’t disturb Daddy, he’s doing his homework!” In a sense, it’s true. I’m working from home; hence homework! Now and then they get a glimpse that maybe what I’m doing is important like when a French crew recently came to my house to interview me while filming a documentary on Somerset Maugham in Malaysia for the Franco-German Cultural Channel Arte.

What advice would you give your 17-year-old self before you attended that first work­shop in Kuala Lumpur? What would you have done differently? Also, what advice would you give to an aspiring novelist just starting out?

IVY: I would tell myself to not have so much fun and at least be taking notes or collecting name cards. What I would have done differently: I would have not used writing as a past time or a subsidiary extension of reading, rather taken it more seriously. I did not know that you could take it seriously or be taken seriously. I thought that writing was something that you stumbled into like Alice down the rabbit hole. What advice I would give to an aspiring novelist just starting out: Firstly, read, read, read.

Read anything and everything. Secondly, nothing has changed — the five ingredients still apply — inspiration, time, effort, commitment and energy.

Thirdly, don’t obsess about social media. It really doesn’t matter. Only the writing matters.

Ivy Ngeow's Cry of the Flying Rhino

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Mongolia Art from

At Bay Nyam Adiyabazar

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Reincarnation Zayasaikhan Sambuu

Mongolia may not be a first choice when it comes to thinking of art, more especially ‘Modern Art’, and yet art has thrived through much adversity within Mongolia. The history is long, with interruptions. Here is the tiniest of snapshots...

The Bronze and Iron ages Petroglyphic complexes at Salaa/Baga Oigor, in northwestern Mongolia, maybe the largest, and oldest, in North Asia. They span a period of 12,000 years, reaching along the slopes of the valleys of Tsagaan Salaa and Baga Oigor, and therein are art finds which have become some of the most valuable, in terms of their representational imagery.

For many centuries Mongolian peoples were nomadic. From the 12th century Mongolian Fine Art began to thrive and, by the time of the high lama (spiritual master) Zanabazar (1635-1723) there was a Mongolian artistic ‘Renaissance’. The Lama Zanabazar became a recognised sculptor, as well as creating a new alphabet (Soyombo) for Mongolia. The sculpture ‘Vajradhara’ (1693) is considered to be his greatest existing work (influenced by 20

On Encampment N Sanchir

his frequent trips to Tibet). Lama Zanabazar surrendered one section of Mongolia (Khalkha Mongolia) to China’s Manchu Qing dynasty, that involvement lasted from 1644 until 1911.

In 1911, Mongolia declared independence from China, yet to all intents and purposes continued to be part of China, even through Mongolia’s period of being a Soviet satellite, (effectively from 1921 for 70 years), that is despite a tentative agreement between the Soviets and China, in 1945. Soviet purges resulted in the destruction of Buddhist monasteries and Mongolian arts, during the period between 1937 and 1940. Treasures and monasteries were destroyed, monks were slaughtered. The murder of so many artists meant that little Mongolian visual art managed to survive from the earliest periods. Some artworks, such as Zanabazar’s sculptures of ‘The Three Buddha Families’ did not 21

borjigonii bor tal

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survive. Others were secreted away and remained in Ulaanbaatar’s museums and in Gandantegchinling monastery. Since the 1980s, these works have slowly been revealed. In 1924, Mongolia’s medieval capital Ikh Khüree, had been renamed as Ulaanbaatar (“Red Hero”) by Communist revolutionaries..

In her ‘Introduction to the Art of Mongolia’ for an art exhibition in the USA (1995), Terese Tse Bartholomew had this to say about the beginning of Mongolian art…

‘There was a great deal of cultural exchange and travel between Tibet and Mongolia; Tibetan lamas Night of autumn N Orsoo

Rope Khongorzul Byambasuren

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proselytised in Mongolia, and Mongolians went on pilgrimages to Tibet. Young Mongolian monks travelled to the monasteries of Tibet, such as Kumbum in Amdo, and Ganden, Drepung, and Sera in Lhasa, to further their studies. When these travellers returned to Mongolia, they brought religious objects home with them. High monks of Mongolia and Tibet visited one another and exchanged numerous presents, many of them religious artefacts. These religious objects, often of a high artistic calibre, were in turn copied by the local craftsmen. As a result, there was much mingling of artistic styles between Mongolia and Tibet.’ Young artists, like Mongolian born artist Ăœrjingiin YadamsĂźren (1905-1987), took themselves off to Russia (1938-1942) to study Sound of the Heart Battur Tsedenpil

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Monastery in Wintertime Battur Tsedenpil

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Socialist Realist style of painting, at the Surikov Art Institute. On his return the Mongolian communist government created the ‘Union of Mongolian Artists’, forcing Socialist-Realist styles on the artists involved. In his later years (1950s), Ürjingiin Yadamsüren returned to more traditional subjects and mediums, and is known for a style of painting called Mongol Zurag, as typified in his painting ‘The Old Fiddler’ (1958).

It is explained in History of Civilizations of Central Asia (Volume VI: Towards the Contemporary Period: From the Mid-nineteenth to the End of the Twentieth Century, Editor: Chahryar Adle) pp747, that….

‘At first the new Union of Mongolian Artists treated European-style oil and canvas as the sole superior medium for painting. Until the mid-1950s, scenes from revolutionary and military history and portraits of political leaders were virtually the only permissible topics for Mongolian artists. The ideological thaw created by the de-Stalinization movement in the Soviet bloc after 1956 had a direct influence on Mongolian art. Portraits of living leaders and the idolization of the deceased Marshal Choibalsan (Mongolia's 'Stalin' from 1936 to 1952) disappeared and the range of acceptable themes expanded vastly.’

Mongolia opened its doors to the world in 1990, allowing Contemporary Artists to begin to build important relationships/liaisons within the exterior art community.

In her review of Mongolian artists at the 2015 Venice Biennale (in ‘Orientations’, September 2015) Uranchimeg Tsultemin reveals that ‘Contemporary Mongolian artists have, over the past two decades, participated ever more actively at Asian biennales and triennials, and in group shows in Western galleries in an array of media. Painting predominates-a reflection of the priority placed on the discipline during the Soviet era by state-run art schools, which were completely closed to ideas of conceptual art.

Current trends include academic­style realist painting, Modernist painting (in the wake of European Modernism of the early 20th century), traditional Mongol Zurag painting, and contemporary art including conceptual art

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Melody B Shatarsaihan

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Life N Zeinelkhan

and a variety of media (the term and concept of Mongol Zurag, lit., 'Mongolian painting', was developed in the mid-20th century by Nyam-Osoryn Tsultem; (see Tsultem, 1986).

Mongolian art has now spread to the world, with interest from museums and galleries around the globe, and Mongolian Contemporary Art being encountered at La Biennale di Venezia in 2015 and 2017, supported by Mongolian Contemporary Art Support Association (MCASA).

Martin Bradley I have used images in this article with permission from; Mongolian Digital Art. Mongolian Digital Art, #1301, Central Tower, Ulaanbaatar 14200, Mongolia info@mongolianfineart.com

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On the border of homeland G Sereeter

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one woman

Every so often a book appears that reveals and illuminates a project that might otherwise remain largely unknown by the outside world: ‘Colors of Cambodia’ is such a book. This is a highly personal and passionate account written by Martin Bradley and illustrated by Pei Yeou Bradley of her encounter with a remarkable art-based project in and around Siem Reap in Cambodia, and how she was drawn into practical involvement with the children for whom the project exists.

The book shows how a small NGO run by William Gentry in Siem Reap has been able to reach out to children in local schools, some in areas of great poverty, through the medium of art, and to give them hope for the future in a country that has suffered so much. The children and their families who are drawn into the project prove how art can cross all borders of language and culture. The book also tells of how Malaysian children and their parents have been encouraged to support the project and to become involved with the children and their work.

This is a highly personal and passionate account written by Martin B remarkable art-based project in and around Siem Reap in Cambodia, for whom the 32

n’s journey

And there is the additional touch of magic as Pei Yeou and Martin tell of their meeting and of how he too was drawn into the story, and contributes to it, and of how it changed his life. His sensitive words and poetry add another colour to this unique book In a world in which the news is bad more often than not, this inspirational book tells a story of optimism and success, and of how dreams can become true.

Richard Noyce, Artist and Writer, Wales, July 2012 contact honeykhor@gmail.com martinabradley@gmail.com http://colorsofcambodia.org/

Bradley and illustrated by Pei Yeou Bradley of her encounter with a , and how she was drawn into practical involvement with the children project exists.

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Chong Choon Kim fine artist of Melaka

by Martin Bradley It was not as if I hadn’t been to Melaka. I had. Many times, over many years. But this journey I was seeing Melaka afresh. While others were busy sketching, or painting the town, not red but many other colours, I wandered that antique town, dating back to the 14th century.

It was May Day, the first of May, a little damp, but a welcome damp after all the fierce sun Malaysia’s Johor State collects, then releases as cleansing rain, cooling rain, rain to prosper the plants and promote the welcome greens.

I had walked along Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock, formerly Dutch Melaka’s Heeren Street, and past the Chee Ancestral Mansion (part of UNESCO World Heritage) formerly called the Chee Yam Chuan Temple, built in 1925. I stopped, took photographs, looked through the rounded ‘windows’ along the pathways, past another crumbling mansion with ornate Art Nouveau gates, and crossed the road.

There was a window. I remember looking through the window.

Someone had just changed a sign from ‘open’ to ‘closed’. I tentatively opened the door to check that the place was ‘open’. It was. I had arrived, without knowing, at ‘Kim’s Fine Art’, gallery.

There are quite a number of artists living in Melaka, some more famous than others. I have, over time, met and visited a number of artists in that ancient Dutch/Portuguese city however there are obviously many, many more artists quietly beavering away at their creativity, making no fuss, just being artists, than I had previously been aware of. In his art gallery,’Kim’s Fine Art’, I discovered Chong Choon Kim to be one such artist.

It was Gan An Gel (Kim’s artist/potter wife) who had opened up ‘shop’. Chong Choon Kim was born in Johor Baru, the Malaysian ‘State’ nearest to Singapore, in 1956. He studied art in the esteemed Nanyang Academy of Art, Singapore and, like many Nanyang artists, Chong Choon Kim also studied in France. Firstly at the Academy De Port Royale, Paris, France (1990), then at the Atelier Contrepoint (Atelier 17), Paris, France (1991) and finally at the renown Ecole National Superieure Des Beaux - Art, Paris, France (1993).

That antique Melakan (Chinese) elongated shop house, which comprises ‘Kim’s Fine Art’ gallery, was amazing, not just for its sheer size but for its decoration. The gallery was chock full of the creative output of husband (Chong Choon Kim) and wife (Gan An 35

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Gel), all tastefully displayed amidst islands of welcome greenery. In a traditional air well, which connects ground floor to an upper storey, a small rectangular pond sprouted blue lotus flowers, surrounded by small pottery pieces, rounded stones and wooden floorboards. A piglike pottery piece spouted water into the ‘pond’, nicely bringing art and natural elements together. On the wall was a ‘Wayang Kulit” or ‘shadow play’ puppet, adding to the South East Asian atmosphere.

Local antiques carefully enhanced the couple’s artworks, adding to the overall ambiance. To be in that gallery was an art lover’s dream come true. It was an amazing discovery, and I landed the grand tour by the loquacious and perpetually smiling Gan An Gel. Intriguing canvases by husband Chong Choon Kim graced walls and screens, while his sculpture/furniture were carefully placed around floor spaces as elements both of art and of practical design. Wooden neo-Surrealist chairs doubled as objects d’art, as did small wooden coffee tables, with glass tops. One wooden ‘Swing Chair’ could have been mistaken for a xylophone, while simultaneously recalling the imagery of Malaysia’s planter days. Gan An Gel and I passed a series of sixty-five small wooden sculptures (Element of Life), aligned on a wall to our right. The overall length of the combined sculpture was an intriguing 210 x 546 cm. Each square was an artwork unto itself, intricate, comprised of numerous pieces of shaped wood, like the internal workings of locks, or wooden insects burrowing into a square host of wood. The whole was set to catch the light and create shadows in that soothing air well. Throughout the gallery, the visitor has the feeling that light play and shadows form another purposeful dimension to that subtly designed gallery, as strategically placed sculptures interact with light streaming from those open spaces, casting most appropriate shadows.

Chong Choon Kim’s wooden sculptures were everywhere downstairs, (I didn’t get to see the private quarters upstairs). In another air well , amidst local greenery, I had come across two adjacent wooden sculptures. To my mind they were male and female, with the ‘female’ sculpture perforated with more holes than the ‘male’, her ‘feet’ being two large slabs of hardwood. The ‘male’ figure had two slabs of hardwoods as feet, but with a rolling mechanism inset in each, like half a roller skate. She was slighter, more airy, but fixed, unable to move, whereas ‘he’ was thicker set, and more mobile. But it could have very well been the other way round.

Elsewhere, in Kim’s veritable Aladdin’s Cave of a gallery, an amazing array of Gan An Gel’s refined, organic clay/Wall Sculpture graced the walls. Her work reminiscent of clay ‘mandalas’ with clay ‘plants’ reaching from the inner space, girded by the clay rim which suggests that ‘mandala’. While Gan An Gel’s pottery suggests a nature bound

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spirituality, Chong Choon Kim’s work in wood suggests the more playful elements of organic Surrealists such as Joan Miro, Yves Tanguy or the latter day British Surrealist Desmond Morris and his ‘Naked Surrealism’.

The fourth element, once I had encountered the organic, heavy, hard wood Sculpture/furniture, the equally organic delicate clay forms and the elements of nature allowed to interact with both, were Chong Choon Kim’s astonishing cellular art works on canvas, strangely reminiscent of Diego Rivera’s Mexican paintings. Truthfully, as the visitor enters that gallery space, they are regaled by the organic beauty of Kim’s remarkable canvases wherein human and plant forms interact, intermingle in gently disturbing vistas, again with elements of ‘mandala’, and an organicness of Surrealism. I have used the word ‘organic’ many times in this piece, what I mean is a representation of the biological, perhaps amoebic; plastic in the sense of the Latin ‘plasticus’ that which may be moulded, compounded, and intermingled because of its visual pliability, looking as if naturally sculptural.

If you are ever in Melaka, ‘Kim’s Fine Art’ gallery, at No 140, Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock (formerly Heeren Street), 75200 Melaka, Johor, Malaysia is a must visit. https://www.facebook.com/kimfineart/

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Tan Puay Tee Ink & Brush

by Martin Bradley It has long been said that much of the modern style of Chinese brush painting owes a huge debt to the Chinese modern artist Xu Beihong. Xu, master of such works as ‘Boy with Buffaloes’ (1931), ‘The Foolish Old Man Who Removed Mountains’ (1940) and ‘Mountain Goddess from Qu Yuan’s Nine Songs’ (1943) had studied in China, Japan, Paris and Berlin before being repeatedly exhibited in Singapore.

Surprisingly, Xu Beihong had exhibited in Ipoh (Malaysia) too, at a Charity Exhibition of his work, on the 1st of March 1931. Xu visited Singapore a number of times (beginning in 1925), and was to be a great influence on the Chinese emigre artists there, especially Liu Kang.

Xu’s controversial oil painting ‘Put Down Your Whip’, depicting a Singaporean street dancer, was created in Singapore, 1939.

September 1983, Lu Yaw, writing in The Straits Times, mentioned ‘Given another 30 to 40 years, Xu might have developed a distinctive and mature style of his own. As it was, his experiment to blend Western and Chinese techniques had to wait for some other gifted artists to come along and continue it.’ Xu Beihong died in 1953. What had been begun by Zu, has been taken up by Tan Puay Tee, whose vibrant brush and ink work has incorporated poignant aspects of Western art (including perspective) with local Malaysian subjects, within a medium previously associated with Chinese brush and ink work.

Using traditional colours, red, blue and black, on the natural paper surface, Tan, in one ‘landscape’ (horizontal) piece (Fishing Valley 2014) captures fishing boats at rest. Small red or blue flags, and some red lanterns, are fluttering in a brief breeze. There is calm and orderliness in Tan’s view of those fishing boats, seemingly devoid of human figures. The boats become characters, a crowd, staring at the viewer, noses turned up practically accusatory, as if they were a watery herd of buffalo. Behind, in the mid distance, we see not the prows but the ‘sterns’ of boats moored against the further bank. These are hazy, as are the buildings in the distance. Tan combines those elements of perspective with traditional materials, fusing Eastern and Western ideas of painting. Another boat scene (Riverside 2014), this time ‘portrait’ 46

Bali Women

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The Gold Sound

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The Fishing Valley

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Umbrellas

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The Old Tree

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Riverside

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(vertical) reveals a ramshackle fishing village, small jetties, organically devised dwellings and, of course, boats, all in a brown and black perspective. The nearer boats are skilfully rendered in sharp ink outline with tone, whereas the perspective effects follows a line of buildings (et al) into a hazy, grey, distance. The effect is masterful, again melding Western concepts with traditional Chinese ones.

Another landscape ink and brush painting (The Gold Sound 2015) focuses on red lanterns, strung high from bamboo poles leading the viewer’s eye from the sharply defined foreground lanterns, back to kampong houses in the background. Tan has completed Zu’s voyage to meld Chinese, Western and locally Malaysian ideas into one dynamic scene. This is a technic Tan uses, to great effect, in a townscape (Muar Bridge 2017) which sweeps along a row of houses, across a bridge and into the far distance, further, towards the rear of the river below. Red flagged boats putter along the river, heading towards the road bridge.

Cars ease across the bridge while we viewers become concerned with the complexity of myriad roofs of buildings in the foreground. Even in the quiet of a river scene, humanity and its debris abounds.

When observing Tan’s amazing black and white renderings of trees (The Old Tree 2014), I was immediately struck by the British illustrator Barry Windor-Smith’s explanation of how his black and white ink piece ‘Withering’ (1975), which is essentially a study of trees with a ghost-like figure wandering through, came about. In ‘The Studio’ (p102), a published collection of Windor-Smith’s illustrative works (among others) he reveals… ‘In the Spring of 1975 I was working on a pen and ink drawing of trees, just trees. It was inspired, in part, by a wonderful painting of old Hampstead Heath by John Constable.

At that time I didn’t think my audience was ready for - or let’s say interested in - a new work by me that was ‘just trees’…I drew a shrouded figure of Death - a skull-headed man - and off in the distance a dark, forbidding mansion. This made the trees seemingly incidental.’

However, Tan’s intriguing trees need no supernatural assistance to reveal their intricate beauty, through studies of trees, in all their innate splendour.

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Marriage and Mutton Curry M Shanmughalingam

Marriage and Mutton Curry August 2018 M. Shanmughalingam

ISBN 978981075622-2 $18.90 250pp I Paperback 129 x 198mm M. Shanmughalingam has had his short stories published in 30 anthologies around the world, including France, the US, the UK, India, Malaysia and Singapore.

This is his first collection.

What happens when two sisters share a husband when one fails to produce a child, an American diplomats urgent inquires about the Malaysian Treasury are hilariously misunderstood, and a daring civil servant from Malaysia proposes to a lady in his Sri Lankan hometown mere minutes after meeting her? drshantri@gmail.com https://drshantri.blogspot.com/

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Dato’ Dr M Shanmughalingam holds an Honours degree from the University of Malaya, a Masters from Harvard and a Doctorate from Oxford University. At Harvard he graduated first in class with Grade A in all eight subjects and was admitted to the Ph.D. programme directly without formal application. At Oxford he won the second prize in the Short Story competition judged by Iris Murdoch and John Bayley, Literature Prof, the poetry prize and a graduate scholarship from Balliol College.

Shan’s short stories, poems and essays have appeared in national and international anthologies in France, India, Ireland, Malaysia, Singapore, the UK and the US, in universities (Harvard, Malaya, Oxford and Singapore) and in national literary journals (Dewan Bahasa). His short story and poem were published in TRASH: A Southeast Asian Urban Anthology and the Little Basket (2016) both launched at the London Book and Screen Week, at Kinokuniya, K.L. and Borders, the Curve, in Malaysia (April 2016).

Another short story was co-published in ku.lit:asian literature for the language classroom by Pearson Education South Asia Pte Ltd and National Arts Council, launched at the Singapore writers festival.

One of his poems has been required reading for Form Two students in Malaysian schools.

He is co-editor of an Anthology of Malaysian Poetry in English with Malay translation (Dewan Bahasa).One of Shan's short stories won the British Council Short Story Prize and another was an Editor’s choice from 1,450 entries for Ireland’s Fish International Short Story Prize.

His poems are in New Voices of the Commonwealth an Anthology of Poetry in London with Nobel Prize winners, Derek Walcott, Wole Soyinka and Seamus Heaney, ISIS, Balliol College Annual Record (Oxford) and Asianist Asia in Paris. Shan has been invited to be Session Chairman, for the Commonwealth Writers Seminar for Papers on Literature from Jamaica to New Zealand.

He has contributed an essay concerning HRH Sultan Nazrin Shah, and his enthronement as Sultan of Perak (2015). Malaysian Culture Group, Newsletter. Quoted in TIME magazine cover story, (Dec. 9, 1996) on Tun Dr Mahathir, then Prime Minister of Malaysia.

Shab was interviewed by Le Prestige, the Victorian, and on various Malaysian TV programmes including a profiling of Royal Prof. Ungku Aziz ex Vice Chancellor University of Malaya and Dato’ Dr Usman Awang, national poet laureate.

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Wooden Print Block

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sevanti roy designs

Sevanti Roy, aka Sevanti Weitz, Sevanti is an artist, textile designer and an educator; brought up in the midst of the creative environment at Tagore's asram/ university in Santiniketn, West Bengal, India, and now lives

and works in Britain.

She has created Sevantidesigns, which concentrates on bespoke textile, wall interiors and soft home furnishings. Sevanti holds classes in print making, helping to spread understanding of different forms of this craft, and specialising in her love of ‘Block Printing’, or printing from a previously carved wooden block.

Ms Roy gained a strong background in Arts & Craft in her upbringing, and her early education in Fine Art in Rabindranath Tagor's university, and there after gained a Masters in textile at NID a design collage based upon the Bauhaus ethos of Industrial design. This has given her a strong edge, almost a Yin and yang like complimentary strength in her work.

Ms Roy likes working with cross cultural influences with contemporary twists, and draws her inspiration from anthropology, historical textile, nature and architecture.

Her strengths lay in an in-depth knowledge of craft and industrial techniques, and awareness of all style trends of the West.

She is a bridge between both worlds with the expertise and creative vision to fuse them seamlessly for the contemporary world.

Her “Blue Lotus” design is based on her Lotus study at London Kew garden fused 61

Peacock

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Peacock

with south Asian batik texture. The “Ogee” print is inspired by mediaeval architecture; fanvalting and made for a Luxurious bohemian contemporary home, while the Ajanta Carpet design is inspired by 4th century Buddhist cave painting for the USA Altlanta carpet show. Her Global garden Wall paper is a story of colonial influence in India and recollects the birth of the Paisley Motif, in Britain.

Ms Roy started her design carrier as a carpet designer and moved on to home furnishing and fashion, designing for big brands like Zara home, East, Brora, Fabindia. She has worked with Indian sustainable craft for the last 20 years and directed her own textile export company alongside designing for UK retail brands. Her work as an educator has included delivering undergraduate and post-graduate print courses for Fashion and Design collages, and has given many workshops and talks including giving an illustrative lecture at the Norwich Castle Museum -”the travel of the Paisley motif and Norwich shawl”. Ms Roy has also given classes for Art Awards at Fitzwilliam museum at Cambridge.

It is a long way from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India where she studied design, and later enjoyed some years of experience at block printing to Norwich, Norfolk, England.

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Blue Lotus Design

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Blue Lotus Design

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https://www.facebook.com/sevantiweitz/ 73

The Bird Park

by Martin Bradley

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Tall, slim, moustached Blicton-on-Sea lad Mark Allboy, wearing

his especially designed ‘Hot & Humid jungle gear - guaranteed to cool you down when hot weather approaches’, braved the thirteen hour flight from London to Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). That intense learning experience was followed by a local flight descending from out of a brightening sky and bumping its wheels on the tarmac of Penang airport, one hour later. The descent to Penang Island was practically a spiritual event for Mark. Lanky coconut trees were silhouetted against a pinkening sky, clouds, once dark and foreboding, became tinged with red, purple, pink as white sparkling winged birds brought the mercy of arrival to the tentative traveller.

The oven blast of exceedingly hot air on exiting the craft was a rude awakening. Uncomfortable moisture ran down Mark’s back and dampened his arms, as he and his fellow passengers dragged their swollen feet from the air plane and into the Customs and Immigrations sheds. His tropical weather gear was no match for the actual Tropics. It was just as well that Mark’s old friend, Antony Mudaliyar, was waiting as Mark exited customs, and was ushered into Antony’s air-con cool car.

In England, exuberant Antony Mudaliyar had been just another well-tanned Britisher. They drank, talked about football, women and spent as little time as they could studying Sartre, Husserl and Heidegger.

‘How was the flight, any descent stewardesses. It’s fan-bloody-tastic to see you. You look great. You must be tired,. How’s Blicton, I’ve never been back. Do you ever see Cioffi, no I don’t suppose that you do, that was years ago, and that other lecturer, the one who was having all those affairs with the students.’ Antony talked virtually non-stop as he drove out of the airport, and around the Island to George Town.

‘Krell, that was his name wasn’t it.’

George Town, named after the British King, King George the 3rd, was quiet as the sun began peering over Penang Hill. Antony, imagining Mark to be missing his homeland, headed towards the Old Oriental Hotel, parked, then ushered his friend into the restaurant with its hardwood furnishings and proudly displayed aspidistras and large, leafy, ferns. Before Mark could utter a sound, Antony ordered a Western breakfast with all the trimmings – (beef ) bacon, minuscule fried eggs which came American style - sunny side up orangey/yellow, then fried, tasteless,tomatoes staring at cold, hard, toast. When the surly, and evidently time strapped waiter, dumped Mark’s repast in front of him, all Mark could think of was ‘BEEF BACON, what kind of heresy is this’. What Mark really desired, was his first real taste of 75

exotic Malaysian cuisine, not the travesty of beef bacon, but things with coconut, chilli, spices, yes lots of spices to make his mouth come alive again, like ‘King prawns in a spiced coconut curry topped with roasted potatoes and red peppers.’ Or ‘Char grilled Chicken & King Prawn Laksa’ that you get in any Marks & Spencers Food hall. It was a pleasure now deferred.

After breakfast, the first thing Mark noticed in Antony’s car was the small statue of Ganesha (Ganapati – the elephant headed Hindu god) atop the dashboard. Another, was the slightly old, and browning, string of jasmine flowers hanging from the car’s mirror. Mark wanted to say something. Ask questions, but held back. He had only just met Antony after five years, and there would be plenty of time, he thought, for catch-ups.

They crossed the unruly Straits of Malacca. The 1920, turmeric tinctured, metal ferry rose and dipped from Penang Island to the mainland at Butterworth. Despite being tired from the long flight, Mark loved watching the white furling waves emerge from the rear of the ancient ferry, seeing them merge into perspective, disappear like so many of his youthful dreams and fancies. He raised his head, feeling the salty breeze on his cheeks, the smell of ozone in his nostrils and a brief sense of freedom from his tedious life in the UK. Antony drove inland from cluttered Butterworth, along windy roads, past the Australian Air Force base, past the green shooting paddy fields and laboriously slow moving water buffalo. The journey both excited and exhausted Mark. He could feel Jet lag creeping, taking the edge off his experience. The cool of the car’s air-conditioning fought bravely with the mounting heat from outside, and it almost won. The interior of the ageing Toyota Carina was a little warmer than cool, warm enough and cool enough to lull Mark to sleep. He dozed the last half-hour of the journey, missing the small town of Sungai Petani and the small shrine to Ganapati.

Antony and Vijaya’s official line was that they needed a greater space than their small bungalow in Ipoh would allow. But those who knew the couple were well aware of Antony’s difficulties with games of chance. They had moved from Ipoh to begin afresh. They had imposed themselves upon Vijaya’s mother, Laksmi, to live down a small lane lined with banana trees, fruiting papaya and towering coconut. It was practically romantic, if somewhat isolated.

More sky-reaching coconut trees loomed over the squat single storey house. Banana leaves waved their large, plush, green skirts in Far Eastern dances to the frequent warm breezes. An old, peeling, metal two-seater swing sat stately on the porch, its white paint revealing 76

darker green beneath. Rust from its ironwork threatened to taint lighter clothes but, perhaps, no more so than the red/brown laterite of the garden. There was garden enough to plant a few bushes of bougainvillea, pink, white and orange bracts which were fading to purplish pink. That night, white, nightly scented, jasmine would perfume the equatorial air around the romantically inclined swing while swift, fiery, miasmas of fireflies would dance sweet promises under tender moonlit skies.

Antony and Vijaya’s was not an ideal marriage. Though a love marriage, there were disappointments. He was a Methodist and she Hindu. They both had fought discrimination in their increasing small town of Ipoh. A strongly willed Vijaya, staunchly resisted the pressure for her to convert to his Christianity, ‘….if my religion was good enough for my dear departed father, it is good enough for me’ she had pointedly reminded her husband. ‘Wasn’t he Marxist’ Antony defended, ‘He was born Hindu, and that is good enough for me!’ Vijaya had barked, closing the conversation to his observations. Once more Antony had reached for the ever-present bottle of Glenfiddich, scrutinising the measure marks scratched along its side as he poured a generous measure of his favourite Scotch into a cheap glass, and had sighed.

Antony’s Toyota exited the small dirt road and entered the compound. The gates swung electronically shut. Though tired, Mark experienced a more than pleasant surprise seeing a slim female waiting in the doorway. Vijaya, five foot something, slim, lusciously ebony haired, was wrapped in a remarkably azure sari. It seemed to catch the essence of the morning light as she stood. Flashes of her exposed midriff intensified Mark’s curiosity as he gazed, almost in awe, at the vision she presented to his tired eyes. It was as if some efficacious Asian ointment had been splashed in his face, for he felt as if he was seeing the world for the very first time, a clear, beautiful, world containing the splendidly sculptured form of an Indian goddess, albeit a goddess who was, in actuality, the wife of his friend.

Vijaya wore a garland of fragrant, white, auspicious jasmine in her hair. It was tied in a careful knot at the back of her gracious head. Mark uttered ‘I.., I’m so grateful for you and your wife for putting me up like this. This place is amazing’.

‘Don’t mention it’ replied Antony,’ we’re more than happy to have you, Vijaya has been waiting anxiously to meet you, but you must be tired after your flight’.

Mark was shy to take Vijaya’s hand when proffered. It felt cool, strong yet soft and with just the polite amount of pressure. She looked him steadily in the eyes as she said ‘Welcome, I have been so longing to meet you. Antony has told me all about you’. In that look Mark 77

imagined days of mellow sunshine, nights gazing at tender moons and an eternity of soft comforts. That was enough for him to want to look away, embarrassed at his own thoughts.

For the rest of the morning Mark slept in a room with a large, antique, wooden ceiling fan whirring the warming air around the room.

The walls were painted in a light blue wash and the furniture, though not antique, was a heavy, solid teak wood. The floor was a herringbone parquetry, strewn with small black and white droppings from the naked ceiling gecko, locally known as ‘cik cak’.

A groggy Mark awoke around one. He found his way to the shower space next door. It contained a small concrete and tile water container, which was built into the wall to the right, and a shower with a large aluminium shower head which deluged him with lashings of icy cool water. It was literally the wake up that Mark needed.

Refreshed and dressed, Mark made his way along the long inner hallway, looking for his hosts. He found Vijaya’s aged mother, Laksmi, wearing a plain loose cotton blouse and a faded, brown, Indonesian batik sarong, both matched the colour of her skin. She was bent over, cooking on a charcoal stove balanced on pillars of loose bricks, outside the main kitchen. Through charcoal sparks they exchanged pleasantries the best they could with her broken English, and his lack of Tamil.

Mark learned that Antony and Vijaya were out. He was encouraged to dine alone as Laksmi had freshly prepared a dish of Sri Lankan goat curry, and rice, and it was still hot. Mark sat and ate in the equatorial leaf-shadowed kitchen. Curry of the goat was, for him, a fresh idea.

Outside, the elderly Laksmi attending her chores - swishing dead leaves and checking pots for mosquito larvae. There was a meditative nature to her rhythmic movements and, after lunch, Mark felt like emulating those movements at the front of the bungalow, on the veranda swing. It was evening before Vijaya arrived back. Antony had been invited to Kuala Lumpur to attend a vital interview, taking the Toyota with him for the five hour drive.

Vijaya worked part-time as a legal secretary, filing for an Indian barrister, tidying his cluttered office and generally tried to help him organise his mess. It was a job, that was all, something to bring in some money to help her mother. All Vijaya’s fantasies of becoming a journalist had disappeared over the years. Slowly, habitually, she walked the half mile or so from the small town. She picked up daily provisions from the Indian stores along the way. That day it was a small hand of Pisang Mas (small, sweet, golden bananas); tiny, white, pea- aubergines; waxy potatoes and other necessary sundries.

A while later, Mark, still on the swing, heard a sudden scraping noise 78

from the house.

‘I’ve always dreamed of being in London’. Vijaya adjusted the glass louvres of the living room, just enough so that Mark could see her face, from inside. She gently bit her bottom lip, and continued, ‘browsing the bookshops, taking walks by the Thames, it must be lovely there.'

‘Yes,’ said Mark a little startled ‘about once a month I take the train and visit secondhand bookshops, or remaindered book shops’ ‘Remaindered, I’m not sure…’

‘Books that have been sent back to the warehouse and sold off to the public’ ‘Oh, and you can buy those..’

‘Cheap, yes.’

‘Do you go to the theatre, I would love the theatre, Oscar Wilde or The Mousetrap.’

'I’ve been a few times, watching plays, shows’ ‘Shows, what shows’ said Vijaya, unable to control her excitement.

‘I saw Bombay Dreams’ ‘That’s A.R.Rahman isn’t it’ ‘Yes, I like his music’ ‘Me too, En Swasa Kaatre is so romantic.’ Then ‘Do you watch Bollywood films or Tamil films’ ‘I’ve seen some of both on TV, but it’s the music I like. I buy Rahman CDs in East Ham, London.’

‘Really, but you’re an Orang Putih, sorry a white man, an Englishman, and you like Indian music?’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘And one I’d love to hear too. Sorry, but I can hear mother calling’.

It was a brief interlude and, for Mark, somewhat surprising.

Vijaya was quiet over dinner. She was seated where Mark had sat earlier in the day, but kept her head down as if chastised for her behaviour. Laksmi sat next to Vijaya, also quiet, a chaperone. They finished the goat curry from the morning. Laksmi had freshly cooked some local long grained white rice, and a couple of small vegetable dishes with fresh santan (coconut milk).

After dinner they all went their separate ways. Mark didn’t see Vijaya again until the following evening. Antony, apparently, was still away in Kuala Lumpur.

Mark spent the day getting to know the area. His first port of call was the local stores, just along the lane from the bungalow and across the old road from Sungai Petani to Alor Star. The stores were housed in what appeared to be wooden lean-tos, their rusting corrugated iron roofs overshadowed by a large peepal tree with its heart-shaped 79

green leaves. Opposite those buildings, on the same side of the road, sat a small Hindu (Ganapati) shrine. It was a little faded and weather worn, but garlands of jasmine flowers had been freshly placed over the statue’s head, along with marks of white ash, yellow turmeric paste and a smear of vermilion on the statue’s forehead, just above the beginning of the elephant trunk. Mark had read that Ganapati was the Lord of Obstacles, or remover of obstacles, he couldn’t quite remember which.

He followed a small path which evidently led to a partially covered wood and corrugated metal construction, which served as the local day market. It was late in the morning by the time he got there, and the market was closing down for the day. Small brown children, who had nicely played together around the market discards, ran off jeering and laughing when they saw Mark coming.

In the evening, after an early dinner of ‘String Hoppers’ (steamed noodles), Dhal and the soup-like yellow Sodhi (coconut milk coloured with turmeric root and flavoured with curry leaves), Vijaya suggests an evening walk. She wants to take Mark along to the gardens known as the Sungai Petani Bird Park (because of the number of caged eagles, owls and other birds seen there in the evening). Laksmi walks by Vijaya’s side, while Mark walks behind them.

They enter the park and, for a moment, Mark is quite startled to see a peacock fan his feathers so rapidly, and so close to him. Mark steps back, taken aback. Vijaya giggles at him. Mark smiles back. The frowns on Laksmi’s face senses trouble. The evening is still, warm and as equally humid as the day. Mark’s thoughts race. He thinks that, even in the dimming light, he can see Vijaya’s dilated black pupils in the brownness of her eyes. He might be wrong, it is evening after all. But then her eyebrows, raise as she smiles, and her hand crosses her face, brushing hair away while she looks at him, unflinchingly. Idly she twirls a strand of captive hair around her finger, nostrils flaring just enough, no more.

‘Wow, so many cages’ Mark brakes the spell.

‘Many Chinese bring their magpies in the mornings, but in this bird park they also bring them along in the evenings too.” Informed Vijaya.’In the mornings the birds sing their little captive hearts out’.

‘Cries for help I shouldn’t wonder” chips in Mark. Vijaya laughs a short, clipped laugh.’

‘The cages are so beautiful in this light, I wish I’d brought along my camera’ mentions Mark.

‘Some things should be left to the moment Mark. Not captured like these birds’.Vijaya smiles again.

During the brief conversation Laksmi manages to insinuate herself 80

between Vijaya and Mark, as they look at the birdcages. She keeps her eyes on Vijaya as they talk, and the three of them saunter the bird park.

Laksmi says something to Vijaya in Tamil. To Mark it sounds a bit harsh, but he doesn’t know the language. Vijaya shakes her head, then looks away. ‘She is asking me when Antony will be home. I said that I don’t know. He hasn’t rang yet. He is away too often, it’s lonely here.’ Mentions Vijaya, then he looks at Mark again with her smiling eyes but, perhaps also with a hint of sadness. Mark thinks that he sees moisture at the corner of her eye, but it may be the poor light.

His attention is on the birdcages. Each with a perfect little black and white bird inside. The cages appear to be the same size, same colours, yet each bamboo cage appears unique. Some stained a blood red, others black, or varying shades of wood colour, Some engraved, others plain.

‘They can cost over eight hundred ringgit you know. The cages. The men are hobbyists. Skilled craftsmen build their cages for them. The birds are well looked after. Tonight is the magpie specialists, tomorrow who knows, the Bee-eaters, perhaps.’ Explains Vijaya. ‘But still imprisoned’ They walk around the bird park with Laksmi chaperoning. In the centre of the park stands a lotus pond. ‘They are incredible’ says Mark pointing to half submerged, carefully sculptured, lotus leaves, the light and shadows playing across them.

‘You must see them during the day, when the lotus flowers are open, especially the pink, they are heavenly.’ Just then Laksmi speaks quickly and a little sharply to Vijaya, again in Tamil.

‘I’m sorry, but Amma thinks we should be returning home.’

‘And what do you think?’

‘I think that we should stay until the sun rises. We could watch from that bench over there, as the sun’s rays blow away the darkness.’ She said smiling and pointing ‘but I guess Amma does not approve. You are the first white man she has met and does not entirely trust you.’

‘In what way, doesn’t she trust me.’

‘With me.’ They both laugh, causing Laksmi to tug Vijaya’s sari once more in reproach.

They are quiet on the walk back to the bungalow, each with their own thoughts. On arrival they go their separate ways. Vijaya to her bedroom, Laksmi to the bathroom nearest the kitchen, Mark to the room he had been given.

After ablutions in the bathroom adjacent to his bedroom, and grateful for the cold water shower, Mark suddenly remembers that he has left his Flaubert novel (with the Renoir cover), in the front room.

As the household is quiet, Mark assumes all to be asleep, or preparing 81

for sleep. He dashes quickly into the lounge, draped only in his damp towel.

Vijaya is there.

She is looking out at the night garden, watching fireflies. Her profile is caught by moonlight streaming through the glass louvres. She is beautiful, majestic. Vijaya feels, rather than sees, Mark enter. She quickly puts a finger to her lips and moves towards him. He enters the room towards her. Silently she touches the hairs on his chest and looking up at him, flickers a crooked, cheeky smile. Her eyes, caught in a sudden shaft of moonlight, are sparkling. Mark’s heart pounds uncontrollably. He stands still. She touches his shoulder, stretches herself up and kisses him on his lower cheek. He adjusts his pose, bends to meet her. He claps her and they kiss, a full, long, kiss in the shadows.

She puts her hand on the flimsy towel he is wearing, strokes him, feels him hardening.

There is a sudden crack of thunder, quickly followed by illuminating lightning. The entwined couple jump apart just as Antony’s car headlights brush away the room’s shadows. Vijaya peeps through the louvres to confirm her fears, then dashes to her bedroom to ready herself for her husband. Mark saunters back to his bedroom, turns just in time to see Laksmi disappearing into her room too. 'What has she seen’ thought Mark.

He didn’t wake until quite late the following morning, but when he did he could hear Laksmi talking animatedly and with some sense urgency, to Antony. Antony’s reply seemed puzzled, questioning. Mark showered as quietly as he could, preparing himself for what the day may bring...

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Eddie Putera

malaysian miniaturist

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From carefully crafted, antique, kampong and small town scenes in miniature, to fine detailed diminuative replicas of antique motorcycles, cycles and rust riddled cars., painstakingly Eddie Putera layers on the effect of rust, decay and erosion to bring back those partially forgotten memories, with his unique creations.

Memories, perhaps from some ethereal 'Golden Age', involving the films of P. Ramlee are caught and relived from photographs, and transfixed into tiny three dimensional 'playlets'.

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Rusty rides lean against eroded white walls, half blocking antique wooden doorways. Aged lace curtains are partially open in a encapsulation of everyday Malaysian life in a bygone era.

Aluminium kettles rest beneath fading posters proclaiming American lifestyles concerning caffinated soda drinks and soft pornography.

It is another, half remembered world, 'yesteryear'.

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Each miniscule artefact is attentively crafted, carefully placed to evoke a bygone age. Small-scale scenes are set to elicit the maximum amount of nostalgia from the on-looker

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Eddie Putera says...

I can build your dream scene. Your first car ? The old garage where your dad works his magic ? Or the house you are born in. Memories are meant to be built and I will make it happen. Provide me with photographs or sketches of your dream build, for estimates.

For more info. email me at eddie@epvisualarts.com

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Ben Chon autism

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ng See Wai

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Ben Chong is a contemporary artist, working across advertising , interior design and painting. He is based in Kuala Lumpur and graduated from the Malaysia Institution of Art, Kuala Lumpur.

He has participated in numerous open and group art exhibitions in Malaysia and Overseas.

Chong finds his inspiration through nature, but more especially in human nature. Recently his works focus on drawing the human figure, as he finds that the human structure or portrait is unique and incredible to him.

Chong's artistic subjects inspire others concerning love and compassion for one another, in our community. In this set of paintings he brings his focus upon people with 'special needs' such as adults and children with Autism.

Symptoms of an Autistic children is a socialising problem, often with limitations of speech. Children with autism have difficulty using their imagination, communicating or interacting. Chong hopes that his paintings can bring more attention, and awareness to this subject.

Chong mentions that 'art, music and architecture's goal is to become part of your daily life, surpassing artificial boundaries of culture, art and customs.'

Chong had his first overseas solo exhibition in Seoul, South Korea after receiving the Asia Art Award ( Grand Prize ) by Asia Invitation Art Exhibition is Seoul, South Korea.

He has been hailed as one of the most promising young figurative painters,

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autism

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Obsession

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autism

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autism

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Boxing Helmet /Self harm

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Autistic Boy

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autism

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autism

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Freedom

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Purity

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autism

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autism

Dyslexia

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The Forgotten Cities of Delhi

by Rana Safvi In The Forgotten Cities of Delhi, book two of the Where Stones Speak trilogy covers historical trails in Siri, Jahanpanah, Tughlaqabad, Firozabad, Din Panah, Shergarh and Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti. In her trademark style, Rana Safvi combines narrative history with Sufi couplets and takes on walk across the first city of Mehrauli and Firozabad. This period was a major step towards integration of two distinct cultures towards a culture called Indo-Islamic by many historians. In the latter half of this volume, she tells us stories from an area and an era that's perhaps the richest in Delhi's archaeological history Shahjahanabad and Firozabad on one end, and Jahanpanah and Siri on the other - a stretch that's today dotted with tombs, dargahs and the ruins of the Purana Qila. This area also houses the famous Humayun's tomb and the center of Delhi's spiritual trail: the Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah.

The Author Rana Safvi is a writer, blogger and translator. She documents her passion for India’s Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb via its food, customs, festivals, monuments and clothes.

She is the author of Tales from the Quran and Hadith, Dastan-e-Ghadar and Where Stones Speak: Historical Trails in Mehrauli, the First City of Delhi.

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The Forgotten Cities of Delhi by Rana Safvi Book Two in the Where Stones Speak trilogy; Rana Safvi 2018-04-25; History, Rupees 699.00; Extent: 332 pages. https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Cities-Delhi-Stones-trilogy-ebook/dp/B07BFLVLYF

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The Forgotten Cities of Delhi A Review

by Martin Bradley All 322 pages, plus half-gatefold card covers of Rana Safvi’s book ’The Forgotten Cities of Delhi’ reached me, from India, in just four days (two of which were weekend). Harpers Collins Publishers India had, indeed, done me proud to rush off this astounding book to arrive, in Malaysia, so quickly. A diminutive motorcycle courier had stopped by our electronic gate. He had thrust a small ‘Aramex’ parcel at my wife, who just happened two be in the front garden at the time. ‘It is for you,’ she called as the young motorcyclist rode off. For me? But I rarely receive parcels. Then, as my wife handed over the white paper parcel with the legend ‘HarperCollinsPublishersIndia’ at the bottom, the thought struck me, ’The Forgotten Cities of Delhi’ had arrived.

Wonderful, now to perchance to read.

India, but especially its capital - Delhi, keeps drawing me back. I had first set foot in India in 1996. It was a trip to see the sea, in Goa, and to ease myself gently into that ancient land full of mystery and mysteries which, at first glance may appear ‘full-on’ and a little daunting. Goa, as it turned out, was just what the doctor ordered.

I have visited many places in India since. My first visit to Delhi was in 1998, as part of a ‘Golden Triangle’ tour starting at Delhi, then visiting the glory of Taj Mahal, outside of Agra, and the wonderful Hawa Mahal or ‘Palace of the Winds’ (Amber Fort et al) in Jaipur. It was then time to return to Delhi, for a day, before flying back to Britain.

When the time came to go, I wished that I could stay on, like William Dalrymple, for a

photograph by Martin Bradley

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whole year in Delhi (as recounted in his ‘City of Djinns’, 1993).

I recall standing (literally) at a crossroads, staring up into the orderliness of Lutyen’s (New) Delhi, remembering photos of my father there. He had stood, not to attention as a lowly British sergeant erect in his uniform, but as a man, taking a casual stance, sans his military hat, in the city that he loved. The era in which the photograph was taken, was at a time (1930s) before my father had heard of his recall to the British Army, which was to pull him away from Delhi, away from his billet at the Red Fort, and away from the New Delhi Police and his application to serve with them. Despite over a decade in India, once wrenched apart from that city and that sub-continent, my father never did return.

In 1998, I stood at that crossroads in his stead.

My second engagement with the glory which is Delhi, was with thanks to the Sahitya Akademi photograph by Martin Bradley (National Academy of Letters), requesting me to read some of my poetry at the ‘Commonwealth Literary Meet’, in the October of 2010. It was a wonderful time and a further opportunity for me to wander the vastness and antiquity, of Delhi’s cities.

Rana Safvi and Harper Collins India have given me another excuse to return, this time through Rana Safvi’s writing and myriad photos by Syed Mohammad Qasim which grace the book ‘The Forgotten Cities of Delhi’, the second part of Rana Savi’s ‘Where Stones Speak’ trilogy.

Delhi calls to me time after time. Delhi is where Allen Ginsberg, after sightseeing for a week, met the indomitable Kushwant Singh for ‘literary tea’ (‘Indian Journals’, 1962-1963) in a great meeting of minds that I wish that I had been party to, and Delhi is where I shall, inevitably, return one day.

‘The Forgotten Cities of Delhi’, is certainly a book that I wished that I’d had when wandering that city during my 2010 visit. Safvi’s work is painstakingly precise in its accounting of the various Delhis, and all-encompassing in its scope to include not just Delhi’s past cities, but also its individual mosques (such as the ‘Mohammad Wali Masjid’, discovered in Siri (also known as Dar-ul-Khilafat or seat of the Caliph). ‘Mohammad Wali Masjid was once a treasured mosque, but had been used for many years to store fodder not for the soul, but for cattle, unfortunately it has that in common with many of the ‘finds’ by Rana Safvi’s and Syed Mohammad Qasim. Safvi’s book reveals not just past glories, but intriguingly romantic structures promising to become present day wonders.

In conjunction with Syed Mohammad Qasim’s affirming photography, Safvi leads the viewer/reader into an astounding history of India’s capital (National Capital Territory of Delhi). Together, writer

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and photographer make known the beauties of ancient architectures such as the Tomb of Sultan Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq (founder of India’s Tughluq dynasty, died 1325 A.D.), and the quiet serenity of Lal Bangla (now adjacent to Delhi Golf Course) at Sundar Nagar, comprising of the mausoleums of Lal Kunwar (the mother of Shah Alam II), and Shah Alam II’s daughter Begum Jaan. Section six of ‘The Forgotten Cities of Delhi’ unveils the sixth citadel of Delhi - Dinpanah/Shergarth (p181), now Pragati Maidan. Author and photographer show the ruins of a ‘Hammam’ (a traditional Mughal ‘Turkish Bath’) adjacent to the Sher Mandal and within the Purana Qila (or Old Fort). Those Hammam remains are a touching site, situated near to the marvellous Sher Mandal, and within that ancient Indian fortress of Purana Qila, and a poignant reminder of much of India’s northern heritage.

If you are visiting Delhi, or are a confirmed Indiaphile, ‘The Forgotten Cities of Delhi’ by Rana Safvi and profusely illustrated with photographs by Syed Mohammad Qasim, is a must have. Short of actually having Ms Safvi accompanying you on a series of marvellous adventures in and around India’s northern city of Delhi, and its present day capital, the book will guide you. True it will be no substitute for the edifying scholar herself, or for Dev Anand from Vijay Anand’s film adaption of R.K.Narayan’s ‘The Guide’, but in place of these the book will carry you into myriad adventures as you witness, for yourself, and come to love Delhi’s ‘forgotten’, but now remembered, cities.

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rokeya sultana Rokeya Sultana’s “An I for Buddha”

by Martin Bradley

“A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore a risky and unfeeling act to send it out into the world. How often it must be permanently impaired by the eyes of the vulgar and the cruelty of the impotent who would extend their affliction universally!”

Mark Rothko (Tiger’s Eye, December 1947, vol. 1, no. 2, p. 44.)

Rokeya Sultana, or to give her full title Professor Rokeya Sultana, at the Department of Print making, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka, Bangaldesh, is an artistic phenomenon, of that there can be no denial. From a Western perspective, Rokeya Sultana artwork’s have all the visual reminisces of Odilon Redon, the French Symbolist painter, as well as the strange beauty of Marc Chagall, the French Russian artist, and the early, spiritual works, of the Russian - Wassily Kandinsky.

Rokeya Sultana intimates Kandinsky and has leanings towards the deliriousness of colour which exploded with ‘Fauvism’, and a decidedly French Symbolist aesthetic (the poetry of Baudelaire and music of Claude Debussy) informing her works.

That colour alone can manipulate our senses is not a modern phenomenon. Kandinsky, in ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art’ (Über das Geistige in der Kunst 1911 [Concerning the Spiritual in Art, English version 1914], writes…

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An I for Buddha

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Pouch of Mother (Memories of 1971)

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Forest Goddess

“There occurs a purely physical effect, i.e., the eye itself is charmed by the beauty and other qualities of the colour. The spectator experiences a feeling of satisfaction, of pleasure, like a gourmet who has a tasty morsel in his mouth. Or the eye is titillated, as is one's palate by a highly spiced dish. It can also be calmed or cooled again, as one's finger can when it touches ice.”

Sultana presents a Western aesthetic albeit with distinctly Indian forms, gleaned from her stay (for her MA in Print making, 1983) at the renown Vishwa Bharati (communion of the world with Indian) University, in Shantiniketan, India, founded

by Indian’s foremost creative -Rabindranath Tagore. Sultana shares her place in that alumni with Satyajit Ray, Amartya Sen and Indira Gandhi.

There is both light and darkness in Sultana’s works as she becomes closer to Kandinsky’s notions of a spirituality in art, with her own adventurous colouration, and freestyle line work.

Michael Sadleir (aka Michael Thomas Harvey Sadler or M. T. H. Sadler), in his father’s publication ‘Rhythm’ (1912) had 122

Forest Goddess

written in his article ‘After Gauguin’ suggesting that ‘An art intent on expressing the inner soul of persons and things will inevitably stray from the outer conventions of form and colour.

That is to say, it will be definitely unnaturalistic, anti-materialist.’

Many years later Sadleir, as M.T.H. Sadler, in his introduction to a fresh edition of ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art’ (1977), originally titled ‘The Art of Spiritual Harmony’, suggested that with the ‘Fauves’ Kandinsky ‘…saw the liberation of colour, and the artist spent the rest of the decade absorbing and incorporating the implications of this freedom in his art.’

With Sultana, we see this ‘freedom’ of art. She incorporates images of the lotus bud and flower, along with other figurative elements, aquatic denizens, orchids. In a comparatively recent work ‘An I for Buddha’ (2010) the viewer’s eye is immediately drawn to the blue figure projected out of a background which is predominately red. Maurice Merleau-Ponty (in The Visible and the Invisible 1968, pp132) remarks that…

‘Claudel has a phrase saying that a certain blue of the sea is so blue 123

Relation 6

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Relation 20

Relation 4

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Madonna on Rickshaw

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Madonna

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Relation 9

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that only blood would be more red. The colour is yet a variant in another dimension of variation, that of its relations with the surroundings: this red is what it is only by connecting up from its place with other reds about it, with which it forms a constellation, or with other colours it dominates or that dominate it, that it attracts or that attract it, that it repels or that repel it.’

The Claudel here is the French poet Paul Claudel.

Alternatively Kandisnsky expresses….. ‘…red, as is seen by the mind and not by the eye, exercises at once a definite and an indefinite impression on the soul, and produces spiritual harmony.

I say "indefinite," because in itself it has no suggestion of warmth or cold, such attributes having to be imagined for it afterwards, as modifications of the original "redness." I say "definite," because the spiritual harmony exists without any need for such subsequent attributes of warmth or cold.’ (pp28 Kandinsky) In the title ‘An I for Buddha’ Sultana reminds us how fragile the ego is, how the blossoming lotus, finally freed from the mundanity of its mud, is quickly subsumed into the fierceness of desire if we let it.

Kandinsky also relates (Concerning the Spiritual in Art) that “… the colour red may cause a spiritual vibration like flame, since red is the colour of flame. A warm red has a stimulating effect and can increase in intensity until it induces a painful sensation, perhaps also because of its resemblance to flowing blood.”

In other of Sultana’s works we see intimations of the female form, swirling, standing, dancing, mothering. At times a female form suckles, goes about her daily chores, rides buses. Sultana revels her care for the female in the forms she presents. Yet other aspects arise. Buddhism, joyful, yet sometimes foreboding, intermingling of colour and form reach out from canvases and paper to the unsuspecting viewer of Rokeya Sultana artwork’s.

At times her work is wholly abstract, as in her ‘Earth Water Air’ series of colourations, with contrasts of colours - red, the colour of the Bangladesh flag blood of martyrs, counter balanced by the Bangladeshi flag’s green field, amidst a reflective sea of blue ( ‘Earth Water Air 3’).

Colours speak for themselves, such as a swirling haze of yellow, orange and red graced by a hint of spiritual blue (‘Earth Water Air 4’). At other times there maybe hints of the figurative (‘Relation 12’), where figures ‘walk’ on serene blue anchoring the viewer’s eye amidst what is otherwise a wash of muted colours, from white to yellow.

I have quoted extensively from Wassily Kandinsky, to draw parallels, concerning Sultana’s use of colouration, and have raised questions about its affect and effect, understanding and misunderstanding across our cultures.

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My Comedy

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Yellow I

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Pink Flowers in my Hair

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Lotus I

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an impression of 5 Heeren, Melaka, b

Melaka

5 Heeren is located on one of Melaka's finest and most intact heritage streets, and right in the heart of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. 5 Heeren is minutes away, on foot, from the city's top attractions.

Much of the building's beautiful original features have been restored to their former glory after seven years of refurbishment (completed in 2016).

by Malaysian artist Chay Hwa Chua

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an impression of 5 Heeren Melaka by Malaysian artist Honey Khor (Khor Pei Yeou)

5 HEEREN 5, Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock, Melaka, 75200, Malaysia Tel: +6 012 2744 670 WhatsApp: +44 77 844 70290 Email: info@5heeren.com 143

Haziq Syawal Haziq Syawal; a showcase exhibition’ highlights the lifestyle trends among youth specifically when it comes to daily products such as clothes and accessories. Having him keen on fashion trends, the artist is particularly interested in the rise of ‘street wear’ fashion. Unlike the intricate clothing that was created by most high-end fashion designer, Haziq feels that ‘street wear’ feels closer to younger generation as far as practicality, comfort-ability and afford-ability goes.

The exhibition features a series of self-portrait painting that was done in a sitting pose. The subject is portrayed in different posture, view and the clothing. The artist also incorporated collages of canvas patches on his surface. The addition of collages added certain depth and value to his subject as he meticulously painted them in the pre-planned manner of the collage pasting. Haziq also added mark-making value to the painting which can be seen throughout his paintings. This effect cannot be seen in the fashion photography works that he was inspired by in the first place. It is almost like adding his personal touch to his subject.

Haziq as an emerging artist has been keeping his works in check.

After graduating from his art school, he did some commission paintings, propmaking jobs that would sharpen his skills as an artist. Through G13 Project Room program, the artist would not only be showcasing his body of work as an introduction to his art career but also a step moving forward for his well-being both as an artist and a person. The showcase will display seven mixed media paintings from the artist. ‘Haziq Syawal; a showcase exhibition’ is by Haziq Syawal and a program by G13 Project Room.

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Recollection

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Recollecting Old Thought

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The Time and Thinker 2

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In Time

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Haziq Syawal intimates To me, one of mark-making functions is to get an exact proportion of a subject whereas every 360 angle is measured from one angle to another. That is of course, in order to get the accuracy. Regarding selfportrait as subject, it is the outcome of my thought and observation over my surrounding. I can see all of the fundamental elements of art are within us. For instance, the element of art itself and the basic theories has been taught in fundamental books. However it is just a theory understanding of mine. I, as an artist, have expressed my take on this theory through my artworks by utilizing the concept of collage,colours, line, and value as mark making.

Text with grateful thanks to G13 Gallery where an exhibition of the artist's work was held between 28th May and the 9th of June, 2018.

G13 Gallery GL13, Ground Floor, Block B, Kelana Square, SS7/26 Kelana Jaya, 47301 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia.

Tel: Fax:

603 – 7880 0991 603 – 7886 5755

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The Time and Thinker 1

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Waiting is another thing

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Vague

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perchance to dream

by Martin Bradley

That night, after spending so many sweltering hours travelling under the hot sun with Zoe Tan, dodging through minuscule pathways between water-filled mining pools in Zoe’s workhorse of an Asia Motors Rocsta jeep, avoiding white-clay-splashed-water buffalo, prancing otters and bushes of pitcher plants within the hinterland of Perak (Malaysia’s ‘Silver’ state), John Gold collapsed on his bed in Hotel Excelsior, exhausted.

In John’s nocturnal playlets tangentially replaced reality as night replaces day. The demands of dreaming gradually became more gruelling as hours progressed, channelling through Morpheus’ gateways. Colours made sounds, blue – a far off tenor saxophone, red the rasping of Chinese sorghum, and green a tortuous woman’s scream.

In the bizarre borders of John’s baroque dreaming, monstrous, animated, pitcher plants uprooted and preyed upon wandering water buffalo, which they swallowed whole. One graceful keratin covered buffalo horn, the last to go, fell from a carnivorous pitcher back onto the compacted sand. From it sprouted a small cornucopia, from which wrathful grapes spilled. Other, smaller, pitchers hunted otters in packs, dragging them down, devouring them instantly. Two large, jet black, otters having escaped the pitcher packs, fought duels to the death with French rapiers amongst sand dunes on the exact stroke of eleven fifty nine. Debonair Zoe Tan, as referee, insisted that the otters repeat their performances until they both were dead. The duel repeated, and repeated, as the otters sprung back to life the moment they had departed. In time with the duelling otters, a constantly chiming, melting Hunter watch struck eleven fifty nine and continued to drip from a tree (sporting weaver bird nests), and onto a bronze bust of Salvador Dali, now splashed with Nipponpaint WASP pink, in a Cap de Creus (Catalonia) landscape.

Zoe’s black and maroon jeep became a raft, floating in a vast mining pool the size of an ocean named eleven. She looked and thought she saw a tiger on the raft but, on second glance, it was an otter. The otter and Zoe spent the day together, getting hotter, with Zoe constantly in fear lest the otter might be hungry and eat her. The otter, as is the way with such ill-defined creatures, became a book and flew away to nest in a tree beside the lake, which had

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reduced in size to a pond. As the otter book descended upon the highest branch of the tree, it disturbed a flock of other books, which flapped away shedding their pages over the sandy landscape.

Each page which settled on the sands below had the words ‘tick tock’ printed on them, large, and bold, in the Clarendon typeface.

Two rotund boys, twins, answering to the names of Dum and Dee, climbed a sand dune and started picking up the fallen sheets of paper, not realising they were in the wrong story. They were ushered away by a rabbit with pink eyes and fur the colour of snow. Zoe, now in a white Victorian dress, began to grow until she was the size of a tree. She was hungry, and as an American band called The Great Society sang, she began grasping at the marauding pitcher plants, devouring them until satiated. She burped a hearty, purple, burp which became prose and drifted off to write some poets.

Janus, in two minds, looked this way and that, smiled, opened a door and was gone.

John finally appeared in his own dream, to raucous applause. He bowed as mining pool denizens stood on hind legs, and thundered together their hooves, or paws, to welcome him into their midst.

A crowning circle, made from small pitcher-plant cups and their tendrils, was jauntily placed over his brow, ordaining him king. The animals bowed or curtsied as he strode among them, depending upon their gender, or whim. Zoe, looking down, took a pill, which reduced her size. She greeted John with a kiss, and a loaf of bread containing chicken curry. Together they broke the bread and dipped it into the curry, licking their fingers to savour every morsel.

The final chime of the Hunter Watch struck. Every animal disappeared as if they had never existed which, of course, they had not. The jeep turned into a small pumpkin and Zoe into a white mouse. ‘How distinctly odd,’ exclaimed John, whose words were rainbows, ‘but better to curry chickens than favours’, he said earnestly thinking of his good friend Oscar, who was often wild about such things.

‘Goodness, gracious me,’ sighed John as his skin turned brown, and the watery mirror pond reflected the visage of Peter Sellers as an Indian doctor.

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Tutu Dutta

Queen of Fables and Folktales

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And Other Books 157

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Nights of the Dark Moon - by Tutu Dutta A Review by Martin Bradley.

Malaysia’s undisputed Queen of Myths and Folklore, Tutu Dutta (Yean), was born in Churachandpur in Manipur, India and travelled far and wide with her Malaysian diplomat husband. In New York, Ms Dutta began a career of collecting and telling Asian folktales.

Ms Dutta and I had been aware of each other, but had not met until one day in July, this year. We shared beverages and intriguing conversation in the air-con cool of a local Starbucks. Ms Dutta spoke of her many books, intriguing me with her folklore knowledge and her quiet, unassuming demeanour. Over the years, Ms Dutta has regaled her audiences with a number of books concerning local folklore, some specifically concerning Malaysian tales, others, like the present volume -‘Nights of the Dark Moon’ published by Marshall Cavendish Editions, Singapore, concerning folktales across Asia and Africa.

Ms Dutta has been responsible for stories, and collections, such as ‘Twelve Treasures of the East: Legends and Folk Tales from Asia’ (2005), ‘Eight Jewels of the Phoenix’ (2009), ‘Eight Fortunes of the Qilin’ (2009), ‘Timeless Tales of Malaysia’ (2009), ‘Eight Treasures Of The Dragon’ (2011), ‘The Jugra Chronicles: Miyah and the Forest Demon’ (2011), ‘The Jugra Chronicles: Rigih and the Witch of Moon Lake’ (Book 2) (2013), ‘Phoenix Song’ (2015), 'The Magic Urn and Other Timeless Tales of Malaysia’ (2016) as well as her latest volume. In that ‘Nights of the Dark Moon’ she repeats a quote from Neil Gaiman (whom I had met briefly, in a library, on a dowdy evening in London, some many years hence), saying ‘Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten,’ (Preface, pp 9).

Personally, I might have used Gaiman’s friend - the author Terry Pratchett, to quote from. It would be something like… “Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.” From Hogfather, but it is small matter.

Folk tales encapsulate the essence of a culture and, through them, we learn not to go into the deep, deep woods, or to be suspicious of strangers

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wearing red hoods. Folk Tales are passed down, generation to generation with minor changes here and there, such as the age old story of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ which had been, many centuries ago, a story called ‘Perceforest’ (1330s) and grew until it became ‘Sun, Moon and Talia’ (1634), then ‘La Belle au Bois Dormant’ (1697), then in the collection of The Brothers Grimm that tale was known as ‘Dornröschen’ (1812) and, finally, Sleeping Beauty. Folk tales help us come to grips with the culture of others, and allow us to sample the diversity of others, as Ms Dutta so accurately demonstrates.

Needless to say, Ms Dutta is well versed in her chosen sphere - the lore and tales from the non-Western world. My own introduction to tales from Malaysia was through Jan Knappert’s ‘Malay Myths and legends’ (1980). It was a slim volume which I had bought on my first visit to Malaysia, in 1981. Jan Knappert was also known to delve into African, as well as Asian myths and storytelling.

Over many years, there had been others just as fascinated by 162

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Malayan, Asian and some African stories.These enquirers have included Richard Olaf Winstedt (orientalist and Colonial Administrator) with his ‘The History of the Peninsula in Folk-Tales’, in The Journal (a magazine of Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1911, pp.

183 -188) in which he had written… ‘Now folk-tales, it must be admitted, require very careful sifting.They may be partly based on actual fact ; they certainly abound in fiction.’

Walter Skeat, author of ‘Malay Magic and Fables & Folk-Tales from an Eastern Forest’ (1901) had made no such claims as Winstedt, but simply enjoyed those tales he stumbled upon during a ‘Cambridge Expedition of 1899 through the remoter States of the Malay Peninsula,’ whereas Rounsevelle Wildman (Consul General of the United States at Hong Kong) in his ‘Tales of the Malayan Coast; From Penang to the Philippines’ (1898) had muted that his stories were the result of a nine year residence (and experience) on the Malayan coast ‘…that land of romance and adventure which the ancients knew as the Golden Chersonesus…’(pp 6. Preface). While addressing his stories, the reader might excuse that writer for his lack of 165

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research, especially when it comes to the matter of the origin of ‘sarongs’.

That there are many more collections of folk tales, myths and legends, there is no doubt, but Ms Dutta is skilled in capturing not only the reader’s wayward imagination in the essence of her chosen stories, but the lore, the mysteries and our hearts too in her retelling of these ancient tales from Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Nigeria and West Africa.

Ms Dutta writes in a traditional storytelling style, suitable for most ages, as witnessed in the beauty of the tale of ‘The Tiger of Flower Hill (a folktale from China). You can almost hear, ‘are you sitting comfortably, 166

then I shall begin….now once upon a time’, as she writes… ‘The young man wiped the sweat from his brow with a silk handkerchief,’, or in ‘The Strange Tale of Chief Naam (a folktale from Malaysia) ‘Cik Emas was ushered into the main hall. Her face was pale and anxious and her long black hair was unbound….’. It is this gift of storytelling that Ms Dutta shares with us in her writing. All but the very young are able to read and enjoy these books, however the very young delight in hearing these tales read to them, triggering their imaginations and the innate curiosity of the young, as well as the young at heart.

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Delicious Dishes at Chai's Cuisine

by Joyous Creation

I have always liked to observe the changes and tastes of dishes as I start to cook.

The establishment of a fascinating private cuisine space has given me more opportunities to share the food I have cooked. As a fashion designer too, I often use an artistic point of view to look at colour and fragrance when I am cooking. I work hard and make sure that people who taste my food can enjoy that contrast between taste and vision.

When the enthusiasm of cooking food is more intense, naturally there is an idea to share the cooking experience so I created this culinary space - Chai's Cuisine. The concept is to match the ingredients and make the food enjoyable in taste and look Here at Chai's Cuisine we say Respect our ingredients.

Love our ingredients.

Enjoy our ingredients.

Adelene Chai

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Blue Pea F

Flower Rice

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Fruit Salad P

Dre

Leicha Spaghetti

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Enoki Mushro

Pumpkin French Toast

eam Pudding Mushroom Gathering

ooms

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Swe

F

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RosĂŠ Blossom E

eet Potato Dumplings

Fruity Salad on Boats

Steaming Pao Egg

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Chai's 174

Secret 175

Coconut Ice Cream

White C Ro

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Rose Dump

Pineapple Pudding

Chocolate oses

plings Garden

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Dusun Publications The Blue Lotus Publications

Books by

Martin Bradley

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Books by Martin

Bradley 179

CAMBODIA CHINA ITALY

WITH MARTIN BRADLEY

MALAYSIA PHILIPPINES SPAIN 180