Book Review: A COSMIC ODYSSEY

                                          Lakshmi Kannan

Sigma Woman, Memoir by Sangeeta Gupta, Prithvi Fine Art and Cultural Centre, New Delhi, 2025. ISBN: 978 -81- 973394- 3-1

    Sangeeta Gupta is a multi-faceted personality who has established the Prithvi Fine Art and Cultural Centre that is buzzing with activities. Her recent textile art exhibition ‘Aadiyog Shiv Indigo: A Journey in Cosmic Indigo’ attracted many eminent art lovers.    

   Sigma Woman is more than a memoir. It unfolds as a travel recording the self-actualization and self-discovery of a bureaucrat as an artist, writer and documentary film maker through which we come to know the person. Written with an unhesitating intellectual honesty, the book comes across as a  quest: ‘how to find fullness in emptiness’.

   One is  still a work in progress’, declares Gupta (Prologue: To Come Into Your Own). Toward the end of the book, she says ‘we are imperfect’ (Epilogue). We can understand how she lived between these two very profound realizations, a reader has to let her/himself into the book, completely.    

   Identifying herself as a child of ‘a generation of change makers’, the bureaucrat as a young boss was  ‘often the only woman in the room’. She addresses the asymmetry squarely: ‘I had enough of the world telling me and all women that they’re not enough. As I learnt to rely on myself by looking both inward and upward, I was ultimately reminded that we’re more than enough.’ (Prologue). It is looking ‘both inward and upward’ that has made a huge difference to her life and that is what we get to read in Sigma Woman.

Lakshmi Kannan

   Shattering the myth that bureaucrats enjoy an easy life that comes with their enviable status, we see how responsibility brings on challenges that get tougher for a  woman officer. As a sincere bureaucrat, she is a workhorse whose conscience never sleeps. Her belief in herself, together with the high standards she sets for herself make her a Sigma woman-  independent, self-sufficient and resilient in navigating her life through setbacks, serious health issues and an accident that injures the wrist that wields the brush!  

   The book is not structured on a linear pattern. The bureaucrat, the artist, the writer, and the seeker spill over in an interesting profusion overlapping the chapter headings. It begins with the poetry of her childhood, captured charmingly in the section ‘Early Life’, an idyllic phase spent with close proximity to a doting grandfather, ‘the most lovable creature on this earth’. Gupta is sheltered by her protective elder sisters, a retinue of loyal servants at her beck and call, and a beautiful, elegant and educated mother who ‘didn’t allow herself to be treated like a lesser dumb mortal’ by her father. Gupta, the shy but precocious child does exceedingly well in her studies. You would become a  “collector” says the proud grandfather and the little girl does not have the faintest clue to what a collector could be.  She does not fail to note the complexity of her father, ‘an intellectual giant’ who was a ‘Hitler’ to his children, but  nice ‘to his friends’. Her maternal grandfather is a noted Indologist from Allahabad University who later went to Jesus College, Oxford University. Endowed generously with good genes, Gupta fans out as a multifaceted personality.    

   Her College Days expose her to a wide range of experiences in the School of Life. Many people persuade to prepare for Civil Services. She cracks the exams and soon finds herself settled in the Revenue department. She continues to seek Gurus, mentors and teachers ardently. She finds them. The renowned artist Sanat Ray in Calcutta becomes her mentor. He is hard task master who puts her through the most basic paces. Gupta goes through the grind ungrudgingly. The  little girl who found her potential for drawing in her  Botany and Zoology classes, now unfurls her wings and soars as an artist and an eternal learner. . She could paint on any fabric, and use  different materials for her art work.  Meeting a Guru like Sri Sri Babathakur through her Danish friend Sushmita is a mystic experience. Perhaps unwittingly, they realise they need each other in a guru-shishya bonding that is one of the  most  nourishing happenings in life. Her teacher in Carmel School, Tripti Banerjee awakens in her a love for literature. Gupta writes poems in Hindi, allowing painting and writing to feed on each other in subtle, indelible ways. Her  a section Creative Togetherness includes the renowned Mahadevi Verma who writes  a Foreword for her first collection of poems Antas Se. Other writers mentioned are  Mahasweta Devi, Sunita Jain and the most courageous of writers Mridula Garg on whom she makes a perceptive documentary film. Dr. A. P.J. Kalam, Ashapurna Devi and other names enrich the list.   

   Calcutta was a transformative phase during which time she meets Mother Teresa who inaugurates her first solo exhibition in 1995. On her advice, Gupta donates the entire proceeds of the sale to CRY, to be used for its educational center for children.  Shifting to Dhaka to her son Tanmay’s house, she resumes writing in a tranquil ambience that reminds us of what Virginia Woolf meant by a  A Room of One’s Own for women writers. With a caring son around, Gupta wrote and edited this  memoir, met many eminent artists through  Nisar Hossain, the Dean of Fine Arts Department, visited Kala Kendra that displayed art work on denim textile and did small mono prints and the National Museum of Bangladesh. At Dhaka, she buys lots of indigo stoles for herself, and some handmade paper made in Bangladesh.

These lines by Gupta would resonate with writers and artists:

‘Finding oneself’ is very important for an artist, a writer and anyone in a creative medium. Much as we hype about what a writer or an artist seeks to do, the medium and style also chooses a writer’.  How true

   Sigma Woman has life lessons. It is a book to be treasured for oneself and gifted to friends.       

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*Sigma: The 18^th letter of the Greek alphabet.

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Setu, May 2025