Leaving a gift of kindness at a stranger's door

Mudar Patherya and his team in Kolkata draw 'alpanas' outside people's houses-it's modest, intimate, and not about grandeur and spectacle

- SANDIP ROY

One morning recently, someone in an old house in north Kolkata opened her front door as usual. Then she discovered that sometime in the night a small piece of magic had taken place outside her home.

There was an intricate alpana design on the street right outside her door. She had not drawn it. And she had no idea who might have. But there it was-a beautiful pattern of freshly painted, neat white curlicues, tendrils and circles, like the border of a sari, bringing a touch of sudden elegance to a tired old street.

It's not the only house touched by alpana magic in recent weeks. Some have woken up to a line of alpana running along the concrete stoop in front of the house. Or it was across the threshold or on the steps leading up to the front door.

It's the handiwork of Mudar Patherya, who leads his small team to different parts of the city on this hit-and-run art mission. He's no stranger to out-ofthe-box ideas to breathe new life into old cities. He was the brain behind painting drab electric boxes with pictures of iconic cultural figures who lived or worked in those neighbourhoods. He just led a citizen effort to repaint and illuminate a huge dome in the busy Maniktala market. He used a 94-yearold north Kolkata house as the backdrop for an evening of Saadat Hasan Manto and Rabindranath Tagore on the street. He leads a singing "club" next to Kolkata's lakes at 6.30am on Sundays.

But the alpanas felt different. It was a simple gesture. They would not last long. That made them feel all the more precious.