The First Letter Day Ceremony

Volunteering for the Communist Party of India’s relief efforts, the prominent left-wing artist Chittaprosad extensively toured rural Bengal and documented the devastation wreaked by the man-made Famine of 1943. He believed in the democratic potential of printmaking as a medium which could cheaply reproduce art and make it accessible to people. As part of this vision, he illustrated children’s books and many of his prints draw from the languages of folk art to depict domestic rituals and ceremonies. This linocut illustrates a local initiation ceremony, where the new-born learns to write their first letters of the alphabet. The baby is surrounded by family members engaged in ritualistic actions—a woman blows on a conch shell while another leans in to bless the child. Chittaprosad focuses on subtle details of rural domesticity, like a pair of pigeons in the foreground, the alpona (ceremonial floor-paintings) on the floor and different postures of the onlookers in the background, to convey a vivid sense of the ceremony’s atmosphere.