Birthday of an Indian Painter Nandlal Bose Nandalal Bose (1882–1966) occupies a seminal position in the history of modern Indian art. Trained under Abanindranath Tagore at the Government School of Art, Calcutta, Bose became a central proponent of the Bengal School, which sought to articulate an indigenous aesthetic countering colonial academic styles. His oeuvre draws on classical Indian sources—particularly the Ajanta murals—along with East Asian brushwork and vernacular art traditions. In 1920, Rabindranath Tagore appointed him the first principal of Kala Bhavana at Visva-Bharati University. There, Bose developed a pedagogical model emphasizing close engagement with nature, craft practices, and regional cultural idioms, profoundly influencing modern Indian art education. Beyond his studio practice, Bose contributed to India’s cultural nationalism. His Haripura Posters for the 1938 Congress Session represent a landmark in the visual language of the freedom movement. He also executed the illuminated decorative designs for the Constitution of India. Recognized with the Padma Vibhushan, Bose’s legacy endures through both his artistic corpus and his impact as a teacher. Osho Says, “It is said that if all the paintings of the world disappear, you will not be able to see the beauty of a sunset. You will not be able to see the beauty of a roseflower. You will not be able to see the beauty of a bird on the wing. You have become able to see it because painters for centuries have been preparing the right context to see it. But ask the painters themselves. Ask a Van Gogh or a Rabindranath Tagore or Nandlal Bose, and they will say that they have failed. What they had seen was something totally different. It was so alive, so pulsating! And the painting is dead; it is nothing but canvas and color. How can you put a sunset on the canvas? It will be a still life and the sunset -- the real sunset -- is dynamic, it is moving, it is moment to moment changing. Your painting will be just a framed phenomenon -- and the sunset has no frame to it.”<div class="raw-html-embed"><div style="width:100%;height:1px;background:#00000036;margin:10px 0;"></div></div>BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS IT THAT DIVIDES ME? Prem Pankaja ... Just a day before I had answered her, "Don't keep your umbrella open, because I go on showering on you and you go on protecting yourself." So poor Pankaja has sent her umbrella to me. But this is not the umbrella I meant. What am I supposed to do with this umbrella? It was only a symbol, I never meant your real umbrella. This you can take back. You may need it. When I say umbrella I mean all your defense measures. You are defending yourself. That's what keeps you divided. On the one hand you want to go whole-heartedly into the search for your own being, on the other hand you are afraid to go totally. You have other interests, other investments, and if you go totally into the search for your own being, you wonder what will happen to your other investments. For example, she is a novelist. She is always afraid that if she goes deeper into meditation, her so-called creativity for writing third-class novels will disappear. That is certain. It will disappear, because as your meditations deepen, you will not be able to write those trashy novels. That does not mean your creativity will disappear. Your creativity will be refined. Perhaps you will write something really great, something that becomes part of the great literature of the world. Whatever you have written up to now is just like the daily newspaper. After one reading you just have to throw it away. You wait for it every morning so eagerly and after ten minutes it is useless. Not so is the case with Fyodor Dostoevsky's novels or Leo Tolstoy's or Maxim Gorki's. They will remain as long as man is on this planet. They will remain super-creations of human consciousness. Their beauty, their peaks are such that you cannot finish them in one reading. You will have to read them again and again. And each time you read them, you will find new meanings, new depths, new significances. Pankaja, what keeps you divided is that you don't understand there are higher categories of creativity. I am reminded of one of the great Indian painters, Avnindranath Tagore. He was one of the uncles of Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath became world famous because of the Nobel Prize. Avnindranath is not known so much because he was a painter, but India has never known such a painter. Each painting is unique. He had a student who became an even greater painter than Avnindranath. This disciple's name was Nandlal Bose. And one day it happened ... Avnindranath and Rabindranath were of the same age, although Avnindranath was an uncle to Rabindranath. They were very friendly and they were discussing something, and just then Nandlal came to show his master something he had painted. In Bengal, where these people happened to be, there is a certain class of painter. They are very poor people, but traditionally they paint only one thing and that is pictures of Krishna. In Bengal people love Krishna, and from generation to generation a certain class has been doing only one thing: painting beautiful paintings of Krishna. But they are poor people, and their paintings are sold very cheap. On this occasion Nandlal had also made a picture of Krishna. Krishna's birthday was coming close and he wanted to show it to his master. Rabindranath, who was present, could not believe his eyes: Nandlal had done such a superb painting. He had seen thousands of paintings of Krishna, but he could not remember any painting that could be compared to it. Even Avnindranath had painted Krishna and the painting of Krishna was hanging on the wall of his sitting room. And Rabindranath looked at both the paintings: Avnindranath's painting was not comparable to Nandlal Bose's. The disciple had defeated the master. This was the first surprise, and the second thing that happened was even more surprising and shocking. Avnindranath took the painting, looked at it, threw it out of the door and told Nandlal, "You idiot, you don't know how to paint. You should go and learn from those poor people." Their caste is called patia, who paint Krishna's pictures, and their pictures in those days were sold at the most for four annas, which is one fourth of a rupee. And to tell to Nandlal to go to the patias and learn how to paint Krishna was very humiliating. Rabindranath had never seen Avnindranath so angry. Deep in his mind he thought that perhaps he was feeling jealous, because Nandlal's painting was far superior to his own painting. Rabindranath himself was a great painter in his own right; he could judge perfectly well. Nandlal touched the feet of Avnindranath and disappeared. For two years nothing was heard about him. And Rabindranath told Avnindranath many times, "What you have done is absolutely absurd. You know perfectly well he has defeated you." Avnindranath said, "I know it. The moment I saw his painting, I immediately could see that one of my disciples is going to carry my tradition far ahead of me. But if I had accepted his painting, he would have stopped. I can see much more potential in him. I had to reject that great painting." And when Nandlal had left, Avnindranath took the painting inside, cleaned it, removed his own painting from his sitting room and put Nandlal's painting there. There were tears in his eyes, and Rabindranath said, "It is a strange drama. What is the need of all this?" He said, "You don't understand. I love Nandlal. I cannot accept that this is his whole potential. He has much more potential and I have to hit him hard to bring all his resources into flowering." After two years Nandlal came back. He looked just like those beggar painters of Bengal. He had lived amongst them, painted like them, learned their art; whatever the master said, he did. And finally he painted another painting of Krishna and he could see the difference. The first painting was great, but this was far greater. It was almost three-dimensional. It was as if Krishna was going to come out of the painting at any moment, it was so alive. He was full of gratitude towards his master who had insulted him. This can happen only in the East. It is not possible in the West. The West does not know many dimensions of love. It is unaware. Avnindranath's behavior was out of love, out of great trust, and Nandlal understood it. He touched the feet of the master before he disappeared. And for two years he moved all over Bengal, searching for any painter with whom he could sit and learn his art. And when he came after two years, he brought this second painting. People could not believe he was the same man, he had become so thin. He could not earn much, because he was living with poor people. And he was also selling his paintings at the same cost. And when Avnindranath looked at his painting, he ran to Rabindranath's house. They both lived in the same university that Rabindranath had founded in Shantiniketan, the `House of Peace'. It is a university on its own, unique in the whole world, where beauty is God, where painting and music and dance are rated far higher than physics, chemistry or mathematics. These sciences are taught, but they are not thought to be the highest creations of man. They are lower, mundane. They can produce things, but they cannot create. I am telling you, Pankaja, this story because you need not be afraid of losing your creativity. This is not the place where you are going to lose anything that is significant. Yes, you will lose many things which are false in you: your personality, your ego. But you will not lose anything that has any sincerity, that has any authenticity behind it. That is part of your real being. That will grow. In this garden your reality, your truth, your consciousness, your bliss are going to grow. Yes, many things will disappear which need to disappear and you are clinging to those things. That is creating a division. You are becoming more schizophrenic, more a split personality. You are half here and half not here, and I need you to be totally here… People have artificial personalities. Everything seems to be artificial, synthetic. You cannot tell even whether the man sitting by your side is real or synthetic…There is so much false in you that if you become aware of it, you will come to a great revelation. Pankaja, this revelation is still missing in you. You are too much of a head and you have trained yourself as an intellectual. Your whole life structure is based on intellect. And here you have to come down from the head to the heart. Nor is the heart the full stop of the journey. From the heart you have to come even deeper to the being, and from the being to the universal, cosmic, eternal life. The head is the farthest point from your real life. But your whole training goes against your real life. That is dividing you. You will have to choose. If you choose your head, you choose a miserable life, superficial, meaningless, anxiety-ridden. But if you choose to get out of the head, then be more meditative, be more feelingful, be more of the heart, be more sensitive. Whenever I look at Pankaja, I feel a deep sympathy for her. She is completely enclosed in the head. She has forgotten the way to the heart. She is a woman, hence it is not very difficult to find the heart again; for a man it is a little more difficult. He is naturally head-oriented. The woman is heart-oriented. So what Pankaja is suffering from is headache; she has to come down to the heartache, which is another name for love. It has been the same situation for many years. It is time for you, Pankaja, to decide. Either forget me completely and be at ease with your head and your superficial life, or take the risk. Sannyas is nothing but risking the known for the unknown, risking the false for the real. But you don't know the real; you know only the false. And the trouble is, unless you drop the false you will not be able to see the real. Hence a strange thing has been happening in the East of which the West is unaware, and that is a totally new dimension to love which we call trust, shraddha. If you can look into my eyes, trust me when I say you have a real self. Don't be worried about risking the false. Of course, it has to be only on the grounds of trust. I cannot do anything to make you see the real, unless you drop the false. You can drop the false only if you trust my word or you trust my eyes or you trust my presence. It is not belief. Belief is always in a certain doctrine, philosophy. Trust is personal, intimate, the highest quality of love, what the Zen people call the great love affair. If you feel that what I am saying is not just borrowed knowledge but my own experience, then take a jump. It is not a big jump. If you can manage to take a jump from the real to the false, just think: from the false to the real is a very small jump. You are only losing that which you don't have; and you are going to get that which is your reality. Source: Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link. Discourse Series: <a href="https://oshoworld.com/sat-chit-anand-26">Sat Chit Anand, Chapter #26</a> Chapter title: Nobody is a German 4 December 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium References: Osho has spoken extensively on ‘art, poetry, music, dance, painting’ and painters &amp; poets like Picasso, Michael Angelo, Salvador Dali, Van Gogh, Byron, Bhavabhuti, Coleridge, Dinkar, D.H. Lawrence, Kalidas, Kahlil Gibran, Keats, Omar Khayyam, Milton, Yeats, Shelley, Tagore and many more in the course of His talks. More on this subject can be referred to in the following books/discourse titles: 1. Ah This 2. Be Still and Know 3. Beyond Psychology 4. Come Follow to You Vol.1-4 5. The Guest 6. Going All the Way 7. This Is It 8. The Book of Wisdom 9. The Path of the Mystic 10. A Sudden Clash of Thunder 11. Beyond Enlightenment 12. From the False to the Truth 13. From Ignorance to Innocence &nbsp;