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Bapu
By
Nishat Hossain
Project Statement
"If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes" - Agnès Varda.
Bapu sits cross-legged in his red chair. His hands, once covered in mud, now grind tamak in his right palm. He speaks in a low hum, matching the rhythm of his pottery machine.
O Bapu, the world is indeed tough. Do you understand? There is nothing besides hard work.
He gestures to Remas, his 8-year-old grandson, and recounts his own migration to Siliguri and West Bengal at the same age. Bapu’s father took him there to work but died unexpectedly when Bapu was 15, leaving him to return to Devijhoda, Kerabari, without his father’s ashes.
Now a grandfather to eight children, Bapu is one of the last three pottery makers in the village. The mud is an extension of his body—a connection his children and grandchildren will never know. Seven years ago, the government restricted mud collection from riverbanks, cutting off a resource Bapu had relied on for 30 years. Despite the restrictions, Bapu and others, with the help of municipality members, found a loophole to collect mud at least once a week.
To me, Bapu is the land, and the land is Bapu.
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