Optical Illusion

My paternal grandmother was a rich, generous, large hearted lady and the mother of many sons and well regarded in our village. Since she died when I was only two years old I never knew her. Her equally philanthropic sons decided to give the village its first school, its first hospital, a gurudwara and also a community centre which had electricity.

Several decades later, a well wisher of the family advised my uncles to get their mother’s portrait painted. Since I was well into photography by then, it fell to me to get a portrait painted so that it could be duly hung in the school building.

In Gran’s days there were no photographs, so nobody really knew what she looked like. Somehow a tiny, sepia print of her was found and a famous local artist commissioned to paint the portrait. He took almost a year to complete…