Latest news with #Sundri
Al Jazeera
04-05-2025
- Climate
- Al Jazeera
The woman braving tigers, crocodiles and pirates in Bangladesh's mangroves
Gabura island, Bangladesh - The sun is fierce and the air hot and sticky when Mahfuza Begum steps onto the riverbank one late morning in March. Her bare feet sink into the cracked mud as she reaches for her narrow, black boat. Her fingers quickly check her net for tangles. Then two women and a man help her push the boat into the water. With no upstream current to fill the riverbank, they strain under the weight of the task. After several minutes, the boat finally drifts free. Without a word, Mahfuza slides into it, grips her oar with calloused hands and begins to row. Each stroke carries Mahfuza forward, carving a path through the river's gleaming surface. She glides past dense green Sundri mangrove canopies. A humid river breeze tugs at her headscarf. The 52-year-old pulls it back into place with a practised hand and keeps rowing. Beads of sweat trace a slow line from her temple to her jaw. After about five minutes, she stops in the centre of the river, stands, and with a graceful motion, casts her net wide over the water. The heavy mesh unfurls, then sinks. Fifteen minutes pass. Then she pulls the net, and as the mesh rises, a wide, triumphant grin blooms across Mahfuza's face. The net is filled with shrimp. The air has the earthy smell of mud, and the only sounds are of the river's gentle movement and the rustling of leaves. Dense mangrove roots twist out of the water at the river's edges. In the places where thick tree canopies block out the sun, it casts deep shadows, while beyond the riverbank, the forest hides what moves within.
New Indian Express
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Heart to Art Conversations
Her paintings are visual poetry, knuckled with raw emotions. In her solo exhibition, Untamed Heart, showing after a gap of 18 years, in Mumbai, artist Laila Khan Furniturewalla dedicates her artworks to her parents, Sundri and actor-filmmaker Feroz Khan. 'Some works have been in the making for years, while others emerged more recently, but all of them come from the same space of honesty and exploration. This exhibition is deeply personal and emotive,' she says. Why call it Untamed Heart? 'Through this collection, I wanted my heart to speak in its purest form,' she smiles. Slivers of burnished gold, a hushed collusion of reflective materials and expressions of the tuskered god run through the collection of 30 artworks. 'Gold has always carried a sense of divinity and transcendence and naturally became part of my work due to its deep-rooted significance in religious and spiritual art,' she says. Across cultures and traditions from Hindu and Buddhist temples, Mughal miniatures, Byzantine mosaics, and Renaissance and Baroque paintings, gold symbolises prosperity, divinity, and enlightenment. In India, gold is observed with immense sanctity across all religions, exuding an aura of spirituality. It is this profound symbolism that drew her towards weaving gold into her art.
