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By Rose McIlveenIn the movie version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, when Margaret Dashwood asks Col. Brandon what India is like, he replies in a mysterious voice: "The air is full of spices." So are the pages of Art and Life in Bangladesh, by Henry Glassie, College Professor of folklore at IUB. The book will be published by the Indiana University Press next month.
As the name implies, Glassie's visit to Bangladesh wasn't a tour of its art museums. It's art is inseparable from its people, their own stories and how they live. But first, Glassie describes the settings of the places he visited, from Dhaka, where we meet Salah Uddin, brass-caster, to potter Ananda Pal in the village of Kagajipara.
"...I write to introduce you to the people of Bangladesh through their art, and to use their art to exemplify the study of creativity in its own contexts as part of a general inquiry into the human condition," wrote Glassie.
Although Glassie's book encompasses the finest workmanship the country's artisans have to offer, the folklorist in him cannot resist the decorated rickshaws and baby taxis of Dhaka.
Glassie explains,:"There is one basic plan for the decoration of baby taxis, and two for rickshaws, though they merge in the process of endless repair...The one image they all share is the Taj Mahal." Though some Bangla-deshis mistakenly call it a mosque, rather than a tomb, they generally identify it as a symbol of Islam.
The religiously divided populace produces a diversity of images in its art.
"At the top of a winding stair, in a temple on a roof in Shankharibazar, Old Dhaka, I find, along with the Hindu deities, calligraphed Koranic texts and prints of Christ of the Sacred Heart. At Hindu festivals, I find posters of Durga and Kali, Lakshmi and Saraswati, of Krishna, Christ, and Putai, the merry fat Bodhisattva of Buddhism," wrote Glassie.
The 520-page book is lavishly illustrated with artists, their works and their settings.