Lantern Headstone by John Das Gupta

Riven Welsh Slate

‘This stone is to my father, a Bengali, who died in 1959 in Darjeeling and was cremated there  in the customary manner. I felt the design should strongly reflect his Indian origins, yet take some account of the memorial traditions here in the UK. One side carries the biographical facts and shows a lantern motif containing a tiny flame. The other side is a more complex arrangement of English and Bengali: short passages from poems by Rabindranath Tagore, whose work is still loved throughout Bengal. These combined texts overlay an abstract pattern, itself a play on image and ground.’