22 | ART MATTERS
if the flowers had plopped down from some heavenly source. The girl who helped me to stretch the canvas and gesso was named Anaa—her parents were Russian Jews who had fled Russia and come to Providence to start a new life. She lived next door to me during freshman year. In her manner, her being, her entire persona, she exuded what it mean to be an artist. She, in a way, was the one who took me from my shell and introduced me to this new world—one of splendor and richness, one where performance and body art, reinvention of the persona and the art of life were all tied together into one giant whirl. She was the one who took me, freshman year, to see Frida Kahlo’s exhibition in Boston. After the show, she got so inspired she broke off with her high-school boyfriend and cut off her hair. She drove men and women crazy because they were never quite sure what she was thinking. But they all met up at her place on Hope Street, surrounded by her paintings and her strange French bulldog, and lived, for a few brief edgy moments, in the makeshift aura of a transient salon. I remember going to the beach with her, to a New Year firework display, to “Angels in America” in a draughty auditorium at Trinity Rep. Each event was unique, each moment memorable. This was art as lived, moment to moment. In Kathmandu, finding the art world took more time. But its there, moving beneath the surface of unlisted events. Whether it is the Dashain celebrations with bulls in Bhaktapur’s square, or the goat stolen for Nasa Deo, whether it’s the sudden upsurge of plays in Gurukul