The Blue Lotus Asian Arts and Cultures magazine Special Issue 7

Lotus The Blue

Special Issue 7 2021

Nilofer Suleman Amoy Chitqua Jyotirmoy De KF Choy Lok How Yuan John Ang Mai Trung Thứ Subrata Das Bee Lee Tan 1

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contents p6

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editorial

editor’s comment

deconstruction art backgrounds literature circuit exhibition, china

nilofer suleman

18th c chinese figurine art amoy chitqua

jyotirmoy de

earthly delights

kf choy

photography

kari ayam; a review

book review by martin bradley

lok how yuan watercolour

clamour in cambodia

short story martin bradley

Cover image by KF Choy, 2021

p112 john ang

textile collection

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mai trung thứ vietnam

subrata das

nyonya cuisine bee lee tan

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Lotus The Blue

editorial THE BLUE LOTUS 10th ANNIVERSARY YEAR

The FREE online Asian arts and culture e-magazine Blue Lotus, is 10 years old with 49 issues including this present issue. I founded this magazine, as a solo project, occurring online at Issuu and as a pdf, at a time when Malaysian art had no digital presence. Flip through and read more...

Inside this extended issue, which is coming to you (once again) from Cambodia, is yet another exciting mix of images and stories from Asia and, this time Europe/USA too.

Submissions are encouraged to be sent to .......... martinabradley@gmail.com Take care for Covid 19 is still with us Martin (Martin A Bradley, Founding Editor) lettersfromthejungle.blogspot.com correspondances-martin.blogspot.com facebook.com/bluelotusartsmagazine

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"Blue Lotus takes us down many byways in Asian art and culture, highlighting the great qualities of artists than can be overlooked by mainstream publications. The magazine also usefully doesn't rely on categories such as 'modern' and 'contemporary' to instead emphasize individual merit. And the linking of visual art with literature introduces a necessary dialogue between very different practitioners' Brian Curtin, art critic, Bangkok.

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Gallery Children’s Biennale has been a key programme of National Gallery Singapore since 2017, embodying the Gallery’s commitment to inspiring young, curious minds with art.

For each edition, the invited artists are asked to explore new ways of engaging the public through the development of participatory, immersive, and interactive artwork installations. With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the precautionary measures that followed, the Gallery had to rethink the notion of engagement. The decision was made to present the Biennale in a hybrid exhibition format that features online and on-site artworks.

Every artwork in the Biennale is a space for self-expression and creative exploration, empowering children with a renewed sense of empathy and confidence to engage with the ever-changing world around them while embracing the shared values of acceptance, openness and diversity.

This year, artists were asked to address the theme, “Why Art Matters”. Nine artists from Singapore and Southeast Asia conceived new online interactive works and physical installations. These artists are Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan (Philippines), Nona Garcia (Philippines), Joyce Ho (Taiwan), Khvay Samnang (Cambodia), Dinh Q. Lê (Vietnam), Sandra Lee (Singapore), Nandita Mukand (India), Jeremy Sharma (Singapore), and Speak Cryptic (Singapore).

This edition of the Gallery Children’s Biennale will also include a range of programmes for children and families that aim to inspire young minds with artistic experiences that can transform a child’s understanding of the world around them, and what is creatively possible.

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Isabel & Alfredo Aquilizan

Khvay Samnang

Nandita Mukand

Nona Garcia

Dinh Q.Lê

Jeremy Sharma

Joyce Ho

Sandra Lee

Speak Cryptic X ADDADDADD

https://childrensbiennale.com/about 35

https://childrensbiennale.com/conversations-with-an-octopus/?fbclid=IwAR 36

R0qQ80zOxHKZDu_x8iPm5mErntb8DhUv_EYaUtZEJJmr4GopwlsLH--50s 37

Nilofer Suleman Nilofer Suleman (born Indore, 1963) approaches her paintings in the spirit of a storyteller who enjoys nesting one episode inside another, arranging them within framed narratives and larger, circulating cycles of tales. Visually, her paintings embody the spirit of parataxis or collage through which the artists of the Mughal, Rajput, Pahari and Adilshahi ateliers bore witness to their experience of a complex and multi-dimensional world nourished by diverse sources of cultural inspiration. The movie poster, the signboard, street graffiti, studio portraiture, the devotional oleograph – all these demotic forms of expression inform her work, as do the more restrained painterly idioms of the temple, the court and the marketplace. Importantly, there is no hierarchy of sources or citations in Suleman’s art. Instead, there is a kaleidoscopic relay of imagery.

In Suleman’s realm of exquisite illusions, both windows and carpets open onto vistas, and the elements of her architecture are liable to grow wings. Suleman, who devoted herself to cartography for many years, now maps terrains that are shaped by family memory, fabular narrative, embroidered travellers’ tales and sensory excitements. Her protagonists seem to have stepped out of one genre of miniature painting or another, sometimes displaying the elongated ‘further eyes’ of Jaina manuscript illuminations or folk deities from the eastern seaboard, and at other times equipped with the almond eyes prized in Mughal painting. The bioscope, that portable precursor of cinema, is celebrated in Suleman’s art, its views into secret or distant worlds offering her a metaphor for what art can do for its celebrants. from Art Musings

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the herbal apothecary

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why worry, just marry

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bagh-e-firdaus

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bagh shaheen

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shareef & sons

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bagh- chaman

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Portrait of Chitqua by John Hamilton Mortimer

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18th Century Chinese Figurine Artist Amoy Chitqua

(Tan-Che-Qua c.1728- c.1796)

Part of an ongoing series of articles regarding Asian artists in England

At ‘The Royal College of Surgeons of England’, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, there is an oil on canvas painting. It is a three-quarter-length portrait and is attributed to the renowned eighteenth century British figure and landscape painter John Hamilton Mortimer ARA. The portrait was executed sometime between 1770 and 1701, and is of a man who is obviously Chinese, clothed in his traditional national dress.

The painting is titled ‘Chinese Mandarin’.

Chitqua, who was born in Amoy, Canton (modern day Guangzhou), China, in 1728, was the sitter for the ‘Chinese Mandarin’, and is the first ‘recorded’ Chinese artist to have visited Britain.

According to various sources of the time, Chitqua was a very successful ‘unfired’ clay modeller in his own country. London’s monthly magazine ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine’ (1771, p238) had this to say about him…

‘He is remarkably ingenious in forming small busts with a sort of China earth, many of which carry a striking likeness of the person they are designed to represent. He steals a likeness, and forms the busts from his memory.’

It is reputed, that while in London, Chitqua charged the not insubstantial sum of ten guineas for a small painted clay bust, and fifteen for a whole-length figure, indicating his quick ascendency into moneyed London society.

In his short stay in London, Chitqua quickly began to move in rarefied circles. He became acquainted with Queen Charlotte (Queen of the United Kingdom and Hanover) a known lover of the arts, as well as the biographer, diarist, and Scottish lawyer James Boswell, and Josiah Wedgwood (potter and founder of the Wedgwood

company), and many other British notables.

Chitqua’s status is further confirmed by his being painted as a ‘non-academician’ into Johann Zoffany’s canvas ‘Portraits of the Academicians of the Royal Academy’ (a group portrait of the, essentially but not exclusively, founding members of the Royal Academy, which was established in 1768). This epic painting is now in the Royal Collection.

This esteemed work by Zoffany, of selected Royal Academicians, was exhibited at London’s Royal Academy in 1772. Zoffany himself had painted Britain’s Queen Charlotte with her two Eldest Sons and George III, Queen Charlotte and their six eldest children, and had been inducted into the Royal Academy by King George III, in 1769. Zoffany had exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1770 to 1800.

Standing in front of Johann Zoffany’s large canvas (39.8 in × 58.1 in), to the left, near the back and on a line of heads (and entrapped by two gentlemen wearing grey wigs) separating the bottom two thirds from the top third of the canvas, is an obvious Chinese head wearing a Chinese headpiece similar to that witnessed in Mortimer’s portrait (‘Chinese Mandarin’) round about the same time as this canvas by Zoffany.

In eighteenth century London, the ‘small bust’ Chinese gentleman artist, featured in Zoffany’s array and Mortimer’s portrait was known by many names. He was Tan Che Qua and described as having a bald head except for a long (Chinese style) ponytail. He was

“…. a middle-aged man, of proper stature; his face and hands of a copperish colour; is elegantly clothes in silk robes, after the fashion of his country.”

The Leeds Intelligencer and Yorkshire General

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Joseph Collet 1716

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Dr Anthony Askew 1771

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Advertiser, 29 Aug 1769, Page 3.

Whereas Richard Gough (China tradesman, antiquarian and topographer) remarks of Chitqua...

“He wears the dress of his own country, a pointed stiff cap, with a border turned up of quilted silk, an under vest like a banian ( a kind of loose fitting dressing gown-like robe) of green silk, with a lining; his upper vest a kind of mantelet [cloak]; his drawers the same as his under vest; and his slippers yellow.”

Chitqua often signed his figurine work as ‘Amoy Chitqua’ or, variously, ‘Tan Chitqua’ or ‘Tan Chetqua’, ‘Chitqua’ (with variant Romanisation of ‘Chit-qua’, ‘Chit Qua’, ‘Chet-qua’, and ‘Che Qua’) and was considered exceptional in his ability to model accurate clay (portrait) likenesses.

In the 1700s, when Chitqua arrived, England was already in the throes of Chinoiserie (‘chinois’ from the French for Chinese) which was a European middle class stylistic fad. The Victoria & Albert Museum suggests that …

British Museum, Prints and Drawings Room),that Chitqua was

“...well known to our people who have been to Canton, where he keeps a shop for making figures”.

Chitqua had developed a unique business making portrait figurine ‘sculptures’ of and for foreign traders, merchants and ship’s officers. It was ultimately through these contacts that this Chinese artist was later able to find his way to London accompanied by a Mr John Walton, on the East Indiaman ship (the Horsendon) captained by one Captain Alexander Jameson, on 19th August 1769.

The 18th century (Manchu Qing dynasty) Qianlong emperor (r. 1736–95) had restricted China’s interaction between foreigners and Chinese subjects, as well as restricting the travel of Chinese subjects. This was why, to reach the West, Chitqua obtained travel documents to what was then Batavia in the Dutch East Indies (Jakarta, Indonesia), which had a history of Chinese immigration, but travelled instead to England, taking with him a quantity of Chinese clay to continue his modelling there. Chitqua remained in England until 1772 with a hatter, one Mr Marr, who resided at the corner of Norfolk Street (which then ran from the Strand in the north to the River Thames), London.

“Chinoiserie is characterised by a number of frequently occurring motifs.

In 18th-century Britain, China seemed a mysterious, faraway place. Although trade between the two countries had increased over the 17th and 18th centuries, access to China was still restricted and there were Chitqua returned to China in 1772 and died in few first-hand experiences of the country.

1796.

Chinoiserie drew on these exotic, mysterious Martin Bradley preconceptions.”

The notoriety of items resembling Chinese artefacts became enormously popular with companies such as the Chelsea Porcelain Factory and others, manufacturing faux Chinese figurines, such as ‘Chinese Musicians‘ by Joseph Willems (1755) and ‘Five Senses’ by Agostino Carlini made by the Derby Porcelain Factory (1752 – 55). The stage, it seems, had been set for the acceptance of this Chinese maker of small clay portraits.

Back in Canton, China, ‘Chitqua’ had a store in one of the Chinese areas of Canton which foreigners had been restricted to. Gough (again), had said this about Chitqua in a letter of 3 August 1770 (according to the Whitley Papers in the

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Figure of a European Merchant

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Thomas Todd by Chitqua, c.1770

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Jyotirmoy de earthly delights

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Lockdown has made nature to come back to its old form. In the dense blue sky, the stars have risen in the game of clouds. The brightness of the sun has increased. The seasons have changed. The pollution in the air has decreased. The flower that is supposed to bloom in winter has already revealed its beauty. A flock of birds have come out in search of food and nectar.

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kf choy " Philosophy and concept illustrates my creative direction on how the final print should look.

Crafting from intent, visually narrates emotional expression. The tactile experience of specific medium culminates making a photograph into art form, a timeless appreciation.

Through this action, I advocate Capture to Print a methodology that seeks conscious choice making of medium at the moment of camera capture. "

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Grandma’s Gangsta Chicken Curry

By Azly Rahman The book is divided into several chapters, Azly Rahman presents a mixedgenre memoir-snippets of growing up in a world rooted in the pastoral-ness and ruralness of things. The world of his kampong or the Malay village.

These are stories of separation – of a mind from the body. Of the body from consciousness. Of spiritual consciousness from the reality of things. In these lie the author’s story – of separation from his tribe, so to speak. Of culture, its constructions, and complexities. The strange and the familiar has become me.

Of the anthropology of the self, globalized in all its absurdities. The central theme is “growing up gangsta” in a Malay village that offered the realism and the supernaturalism of things, seen through the lens of a boy in his early teens.

Through the shifting of the narration of the here and then, through poems, rapping verses, and ethnographic notes, he makes the stories accessible to readers of the English-speaking world, primarily in the Unites States where the authors now resides and teaches. It is a story of “boy meeting the strange part of his Malay world” yet rooted in his mother’s love as an inner guide, and sanity.

Dr Azly Rahman grew up in a Malay village in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, and holds a doctorate from Columbia University (New York City) in international education development as well as master’s degrees in six areas: education, international affairs, peace studies, communication, creative non-fiction/ memoir writing, and fiction. He has written more than 400 analyses and essays on Malaysia. His thirty years of teaching experience in Malaysia and the United States span a wide range of subjects, from elementary to graduate education. He has edited and authored eight books: Multiethnic Malaysia: Past, Present, Future (2009); Thesis on Cyberjaya: Hegemony and Utopianism in a Southeast Asian State (2012); The Allah Controversy and Other Essays on Malaysian Hypermodernity (2013); Dark Spring: Essays on the Ideological Roots of Malaysia's General Elections-13 (2013); a first Malay publication, Kalimah Allah Milik Siapa?: Renungan dan Nukilan Tentang Malaysia di Era Pancaroba (2014); Controlled Chaos: Essays on Mahathirism, Multimedia Super Corridor and Malaysia’s ‘New Politics’ (2014); One Nation Under God, Bipolar (2015); and High Hopes to Shattered Dreams: Second Mahathirist Revolution (2020). He currently resides in the United States where he teaches courses in psychology, world history, education, cultural studies, global issues, economics, language, and American studies. He is currently completing his tenth book on gifted and talented education, honoring a prominent educator.

This memoir grew out of his MFA thesis in Creative Non-Fiction written at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, New Jersey, USA. 84

Kari Ayam; a Review

by Martin Bradley

In' 'Grandma’s Gangsta Chicken Curry and Gangsta Stories from My Sixties' Azly Rahman writes of memories. It is another he, another place, as Rahman reveals mankind's similarities from across the globe, while simultaneously opening up his culture's dissimilarity to others. This memoir proves to be the creation of an epicurean event with experience of cautious mixing and satiation of the hunger created.

In 'Snippets from my memory palace' the author explains..."Our mind is like a palace, goes the metaphor, and in it lie these rooms, enchanting spaces that we enter through exquisitely designed doors and in which are objects and thoughts we call memories."

As with the wistful poems of a young Muhammad Haji Salleh, one of Malaysia's National Laureates (and fellow Malay), when he too was sequestered abroad, missing his homeland, Azly Rahman, in his fond remembrances of the land which gave him "union,", "birth" and eventual "separation", fosters fond images of that vert, equatorial land made complete within our own individual mind's eyes, and helps his reader "get high" with thanks to the author's carefully crafted narrative.

Malaysia tugs at my heart strings too. After spending fifteen years writing there and, at present, unable to return, my mind too drifts back to halcyon days of my own retrospective illusions, engendering an empathy with writer Azly Rahman and his recollections of "Ais Kachang" "Cendol" and, of course 'Kari Ayam' (Chicken Curry) "Gangsta" or otherwise, but not the stink, unless you include 'Petai' (Stink Beans) or 'durian' (king of fruits).

I only came to know Malaysia (and its kampongs in Kedah and Perak), later than the author (early 1970s), a decade later, on my first journey to Malaysia, in 1981. I doubt whether village life would have changed that much in that time as I witnessed many of the things the author talks about, in Sungai Petani, Kedah.

Strong images spring from this celebratory meal of a book, from recalling P. Ramlee who, through film, epitomized Malaysian everyman, and LAT who lampooned and cartooned for the local worthy paper The New Straits Times (NST).

The jumping from Malaysia to America, explaining the culture clash is interesting as the book is tailored more to a US audience than, say, a British one. And that is entirely understandable, as are the cultural comparisons and explanations of the differences. It is never going to be easy explaining what is heartfelt and soul deep, to others. Yet this book, quite heroically attempts just that.

Overall, having fed upon (the book) ''Grandma’s Gangsta Chicken Curry and Gangsta Stories from My Sixties' the reader will have ultimately gained an inkling into Rahman's recollections and explanations. They will have experienced the taste(s) of Malaysia and gained a soupçon of insight into both the author and the tropical place of his birth.

Azly Rahman's memoir is a gastronomic platter of short stories, poems and short form extracts of memory, giving samples of another cultural reality. One can only hope that he is able to expand upon these tasters for those whose appetites are surely whetted by this book's Pages.

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Lok How Yuan WATERCOLOR My formal art learning started with pencil and charcoal drawing, watercolour and oil painting. Under the influence of the late Mr. Tew Nai Tong, I had slowly developed the drawing and painting approach just like his style.

There in the art institute, I was later introduced by Mr. Chung Chen Sun into Chinese ink & brush painting and as well as some modern art ideologies, and watercolour painting had been put aside.

When in my further study in USA, it was through my late tutor Robert Colescott that leaded me into the exploration of acrylic painting, and immediately was very fond of its very versatile hues and eminent tactility. I worked on this medium for more than 3 decades, throughout my art teaching career.

Just right before my retirement from the university teaching, I was assigned to teach watercolour painting. It was this time that I came back to resume watercolour painting. I then had 3 years of watercolour painting teaching experiences and explored into this media by all means.

As I had been teaching mostly lecture-base courses in most of my career with art institutions, I felt that it was like an exile into the freedom in my minds-cape, or a compensation in my creative urge. It is entirely a non-tactile kind of art.

Though I painted mostly portraits and figures in watercolour painting teaching, my most favourable subjects are landscapes and trees, without much artificial or man-made themes.

In watercolour painting, I could indulge my mind into a state of sublimation with the mystic fluidity of water, vaporization, absorption of the paper, and the emergence of the images when the water subsiding, and leaving the pigment there.

The whole process in watercolour painting is magical.

2021

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Clamour in Cambodia a short story by Martin Bradley

Hi, I’m Steve Maldon, but if you want to be really

picky the name on my passport is Stephen Muldoon.

I pretend to be a PI (Private Investigator) to pull the ‘birds’ in Malaysia. Sometimes it works, mostly it doesn’t. I have a small office at the back of the tourist enticing Central Market, Kuala Lumpur. I do ‘divs’ (divorces), ‘mispers’ (missing persons), background checks and the usual nonsense we ‘PIs' are known for. Last year I solved a murder. True I had a little help, but it was mostly me...

The AirAsia flight from Kuala Lumpur, (Malaysia), to Siem Reap, (Cambodia), is delayed. I, and a whole host of others, constantly look at the digital display. We are looking for the boarding time, looking at that ominous digital clock read out. The eternal question arises, do I have time to take a pee?

“Should I stay, or should I go”, (those lyrics by The Clash have never seemed more relevant). I go. Just as I enter the cubicle, close the door and begin “Final call for passengers on Air Asia AK 540.” That’s my flight. Of course it is. Damn, my pee takes ages to stream under stress. Now I’m hurried and anxious. I rush the process. Well, I’m wearing dark trousers, no-one will notice.

Just out, rushing to the gate (L8) “Mummy, mummy look. That Mat Salleh peed his trousers” a small Chinese child shouts out for the world to hear, tugging on her mother’s dress. Bugger!

The on-board, ‘complimentary’, ‘Nasi Lemak’ (some airlines give alcohol, this one gives coconut milk rice) doesn’t really make up for the extra half hour I had spent cooling my heels at the overcrowded ‘Gate’, but the tightness of the air hostesses’ red uniforms, does. I am a simple man with very simple needs.

On arrival in Siem Reap, I receive more good news. My black ‘Pilot’ bag, the one I bought on 98

the Costa Brava (Spain) a couple of years ago, has one of the locks broken off. Now, it’s either that my clothes were in such a hurry to get out and sample Cambodia that they impatiently broke the lock, or some nefarious individual was too eager to gain egress. He (or she, for it’s an equal opportunity world in which we live) would have been most disappointed to see only a collection of cheap, white, Cambodian shirts, Marks & Sparks black underpants and black socks, and my practically antique leather belt. Or, there again, maybe not, it is an ever increasingly strange world in which we live.

I continue trying to keep a brave face on as I make a report at the airport office, and fill in the (probably unnecessary) form.

“Can I help?” A tall, thin, man dressed in the tight dark blue of the local Police, asks. His name tag identifies him as Saroeun Sok, his stripes as a sergeant. I explain. He smiles, and walks off. Now what the hell was all that about?

I think no more about the strange Police Officer, and go outside to change my phone SIM card to a local ‘Smart’ SIM ($3).

In the burgeoning heat (and have you noticed that Asian heat generally is, burgeoning, that is) I take a brown dust covered tuk tuk, (which is basically the local taxi comprised of a small motorcycle and rider at the front, and an open sided four seater ‘cabin’ at the rear). My tuk tuk, for whatever reason, is made out in Batman livery. Its painted all shiny black, with the yellow bat insignia on both sides, all of which is covered in the local red laterite dust. I jolt up and down the long, straight, dusty, brown, road from the airport, the tuk tuk constantly dodging potholes and green motor-cycle lorries (which are pretty much tuk tuks but with a lorry flat bed attached). I enter into a very busy Siem Reap town.

Along the way there is constant construction.

New hotels have continued to sprout up inbetween shops selling ‘Apsara Angkor Silk’, and shopping arcades being renovated. Each time I travel that Siem Reap airport road, there is ever more building going on, what with restaurants and shops catering to the new hotels, and the hordes of tourists they have attracted. The December tourist season is visibly underway. The traffic too has worsened since my last visit. Now Siem Reap somewhat resembles an Indian city, without the wandering cows.

Kandal is in the Krong area of Siem Reap. It is being re- imagined as an art hub, aiming for the young and the trendy. My hotel, the KP (Kandal Place) hotel, with its Artist Cafe, is part of that overall gentrification. The Kandal area is on the opposite side of town from the more infamous ‘Pub Street’, which is nearer to the Old Market and is where the tourists hang out.

Day and night it’s filled with tourists, though it’s much worse at night with drunks staggering around, just like my former sea-side home in Blicton-on-sea, in Blighty. My hotel is near the Siem Reap Hospital for Children, and has, obviously, been recently refurnished. There’s the stench of fresh paint everywhere. I’m particularly sensitive to smells, so this gets right up my nose, so to speak. “ Stephen Muldoon.” Some times you have to give what’s on the passport. The Khmer receptionist looks at me blankly. I repeat “ Stephen Muldoon, it’s there.” I point to the passport.

“I have a reservation confirmed from Extra Travel.

Seven days, Kingsize bed.” The receptionist moves slowly to his Dell computer screen.

“ID”. “ There, you have my passport” “Extra Travel ID.” Ok, so it’s already one of those days.

I pass my phone across to the chap behind the counter. The receptionist has a droll sort of face which looks intently at the email from Extra Travel.

“Extra Travel ID.” I point, pointedly, at the

screen.

“This no Extra Travel ID.” He says.

“Well” I say pointing at the only number Extra Travel have given in its communication to me, “ This is it. This is all I got”.

For the next half hour we deliberate. He checks and rechecks his computer screen. I check and recheck all the correspondence I have from Extra Travel, both to no avail. I’m about to get into my Englishman abroad mode (raise of voice, flush of blood to cheeks etc.), when a youngish, and quite attractive, Khmer girl appears.

“I help? What problem? I Honey Lyly, call Lyly.”

If I was to hug her, which might have been a distinct possibility in an alternate universe, her head would have come up to my shoulder. She is slim, has a round face and distinctly Khmer eyes. She is sporting a ponytail tied with a scrunchy, and has on what could be a man’s plaid shirt, and those jeans that my mother would have sewn up long since. You know, the ones with the torn slits over the knees. I’d not be surprised to learn that they were made in Cambodia, because most things are these days. Cambodia or China, one of the two. My attire, on the other hand is entirely practical for air travel - a cheap, white, Cambodian shirt bought in Siem Reap Old Market (Psar Chas) on a previous visit, with a breast pocket to hold passport etc. My Marks & Sparks trousers are loose and made of cotton dyed a dark indigo, (and according to the label are made in Bangladesh) but their most important feature is the ties which enable me to travel without a belt. My shoes are simply Adidas Alpha Bounce, built for comfort and not for speed, like me. Not at all suitable for impressing freshly made female acquaintances.

Slowly, I explain my problem. She fires rapidly away to the receptionist, in Khmer. Sadly, Khmer is one of the many languages I have failed to grasp more than three words in. I don’t think that a sentence containing Soksaby, Arkun and Som ket loy (how are you, greetings and can I have the bill) is going to help somehow. So I resign myself to the expertise of others.

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“No record of you reserve,” she said, then machine gunned the receptionist again. “No, sorry, can give room, check Extra Travel next day.” And that is precisely what I do, after I give Lyly my Malaysian PI business card, swap WhatsApp and Facebook details, because it seems crazy to pass up on a gift (sent by whichever guardian angel), even though I have no idea who she is, or what she does.

Waking after a solid night’s sleep, I brandish the fresh email from Extra Travel at a new receptionist, explaining my predicament.

I agree to get breakfast - Eggs (somewhat) Benedict and a pot of Earl Grey(ish) tea, which may or may not be a cliché, while I wait. Then I re-approach the receptionist.

“Okay”, he says.

“Okay, what”, I say.

“Okay seven night, confirm” he replies.

“You mean that you have now confirmed my booking, and I can stay with no extra charges for seven nights.” Okay I am being awkward and it’s not this chap’s fault, but I have to vent.

He, literally, scratches his head, smiles and says.

“Can stay,” like he was giving me an Oscar.

I mumble a thank you, return to the room and consider my options.

Mr Nathan Thiagarajan, in Kuala Lumpur, had been most insistent.

“My silly daughter, Rajini has eloped.” He had stopped for a dramatic pause before continuing, “that girl will be the very death of me. I want you, Mr Maldon, to bring that ungrateful girl home, kicking and screaming if need be. Her mother, my beautiful Lakshi, is beside herself with worry. Do whatever it takes Mr Maldon, but do bring my foolish daughter home.”

“And where has she eloped to.” I had slipped in. “ She, and that useless fellow Paul Menon, have run off to Cambodia, to see Angkor Wat. I want you to follow, post haste, young man. Go. Go now!” And, with that, he had thrust a roll of Malaysian Ringgit, which turned out to be all one hundred Ringgit notes tied with a red elastic band and to the tune of eight thousand Ringgit, into my hands along with a photograph of the couple, then had ushered me out of his Brickfields 100

Semi-D door.

That’s why I’m here, shaking my legs on the side of a single bed, one of two because there were no kingsize beds available. On my ageing I-Pad air, I am going through all the tour guides to Angkor Wat, using the official Angkor Wat guide name list. Did you know that there are over five hundred official English speaking guides to Angkor Wat? There are French speaking guides, guides speaking Thai, Japanese, Russian, etc. etc. etc.. And they are only the official ones. Needles and haystacks spring to mind. Hey Ho! However, there are only twenty-four Indian restaurants in Siem Reap, and there is a pretty good chance that the eloping couple will visit at least one during their stay. Next stop is the photocopy kiosk. I am looking for somewhere convenient, to print up twenty four copies of the photograph that Thiagarajan had given me.

Siem Reap does not look especially large on the map. No more than a small town really.

But, in reality, it has taken me the best part of a day walking past sellers of small, skewered and grilled, bananas and those with wooden flat carts laden with cockles (liberally sprinkled with salt and chillies), to visit all the Indian restaurants on the list, press a suspect A4 printout of the unlucky couple into several grubby hands and elicit promises of them contacting me (should the couple enter, or even pass by their establishment). That would be a miracle. Some proprietors, severely lacking in community spirit, needed added incentives. I must make up an ‘additional expenses’ list for Thiagarajan.

Back in my hotel room (301), and just as I am to remove my shoes prior to ‘resting’ (a term used by the over 50s for an afternoon nap) there is a very loud, and a very shrill, scream. It feels like my world is exploding, or maybe just my ears. I drop my iPad on the bed, hurriedly get clothed, and dash out of the hotel bedroom, grabbing the key from its plastic wall holder on the way.

I dash down two flights of narrow terrazzo stairs and almost collide into a couple of Khmers. There are standing at the bottom of the second flight. On that landing, the door is open to the first room (201). The room directly below my own. A crowd of people mooch around outside, talking animatedly in the narrow

corridor and trying their best to avoid the large black plastic bag full of bedlinen beside the housemaids’ mop, broom and dustpan, all lined up opposite room 201.

One (obviously) distraught girl is in floods of tears. I see the receptionist on his hand phone, just inside the room. From where I am standing, all I see is a pair of legs laying supine on the large, grey, floor tiles, and a rather large patch of a dark liquid. The receptionist is shooting Khmer words into his phone, getting more and more hysterical as he does so. More people are trying to crowd into the room, which I now recognise as belonging to the Chinese artist Mr Foo. I only met Mr Foo briefly, and that was in passing, but he seemed okay. He struck me as a man happy with his own company, so a cursory good morning, or good afternoon is all that had passed between us. I understand that he is from Singapore, and is in Siem Reap to sketch. But beyond that, I haven’t a clue. Some detective I am, hah!

While the receptionist is otherwise busy, I push past him a little. Yup, it’s Foo laying face up on the cool, hard, tiles, his glazed eyes stare, wideopen, and his head oozing that dark liquid, I now recognise as blood. There is a red fire extinguisher laying on its side. A patch of dark something around its base, and on one side.

I’m feeling a little queasy, as I notice that blood has spread over the tiles and collected around the bottom of a complimentary pair of rubber slippers, protruding from under the double bed.

The blood glistens in the light seeping through the light blue curtains. I want to close those eyes, give the man a little dignity, for there’s little doubt that he’s dead, but I daren’t disturb a crime scene. The internet indicates that there are seven murders everyday, in Cambodia, can we expect six more? I do hope not.

Instead of doing nothing, I start talking to some of the non-Khmer quests, hoping against hope that they might speak some English. The hotel isn’t full. Many guests were here only for the weekend. My enquiries end when a bunch of loud talking (shouting) police arrive, accompanied by the man I met before, Sergeant Saroeun Sok. Is this a coincidence, or is this

something else. The sergeant and his men start prodding everyone out of the way with their wooden batons. I decide to melt into the background before the sergeant notices me.

Which is not difficult, as the formerly peaceful nosey parker brigade, when poked, turn their orderliness in melee. I slink back upstairs and leave them to it.

There is so much shouting below, that I can’t hear myself think. Looking out the bedroom picture window, facing the road, I see an ambulance appear and take something, which could be Foo’s body, away. There is more shouting. I hear loud crying, and peek out of my window just in time to see the housemaid, she who had discovered the, now late, Foo, being practically dragged out of the hotel, roughly, and thrown into a white police car. She is in handcuffs. I expect a knock at the door at any second. None has come so far. The police, leaving the door to Foo’s room bound with yellow ‘Crime Scene Do Not Pass’ tape, have got their man (woman) and that’s that, case closed. It’s all very bizarre.

Then, this morning, two things are happening.

My phone is ringing.

“Er, hello.”

“Mister Martin?”

“Yes” “This Lyly, met, help you room, remember.”

Of course I remembered her. How could I forget the only fanciable Cambodian I’ve actually had a conversation with.

“Can come, see you? Need talk.”

I asked her to meet me at The Little Red Fox Espresso (a cafe just down the road a few yards), at nine. True the coffee is a bit pricey, but it’s some of the best in Siem Reap, and I fancied their All Day Breakfast bagel, thus effectively killing two birds with one stone, or seeing one bird and eating a mixed metaphorical bagel.

I have become quite fond of bagels. That stems 101

from when I lived in Roman Road, in London’s East End. There’s this great little 24 hour bagel place called Beigel Bake, in Brick Lane. I loved to drop in there, late at night, when it was quieter, stand and eat a salmon and cream cheese bagel with black pepper and a squeeze of lemon, served up with the best mug of tea in London. From there, I would watch the world (and his brother) buy salt beef sandwiches, or fantastic pastries. Kandal area’s Little Red Fox Espresso is not quite up to that, but it’s the best bagel place in Siem Reap.

Then the phone rings, again.

“Mister Martin, Amir here, Bukhara”, “Hi Amir, d’you have news for me.”

“Yes, yes, you were looking for a couple from Malaysia, well they were here, they enjoyed their meal and are coming back tonight.”

“Why didn’t you let me know when they were there?

That was our deal mate.”

“I know, I know, but I was just too busy, and I forgot. I am so sorry. But they made a reservation for eight tonight.”

“Okay, many thanks, see you tonight, thanks again for calling.”

Well, at least I can wrap that up, and what with the date with Lyly, things are certainly looking up.

After running the gauntlet of exceedingly small parked dogs, and their much, much, larger owners, outside the front door of The Little Red Fox Espresso, I sit, upstairs, in the Foxy Den, as Middle Eastern fusion music brings to mind the Medina in Tangier. I notice that all the tables in the room are rectangular and wooden.

The chairs too are wooden, and screech on the earthenware floor tiles as I move. The walls are painted medium grey on two sides, magnolia on another while the final wall is glass and gives a view to the second storey of the opposite shops. All walls display square boards replicating 1960s/70s Khmer ‘singles’ record covers. I order a very Derridian ‘Deconstructed Salmon Bagel’, which comprises of all the 102

ingredients you might need to construct a Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese bagel, thus saving the staff time (I imagine) and, for my sins, order a Large Flat White coffee (it’s a New Zealand thing).

Still being pestered by that haunting music, the digital clock first displays 9.00, then 9.15, 9.30 and finally 9.45am. Lyly hasn’t shown. I ring the phone number she gave, three times. It goes straight to voicemail. I can’t pretend that I’m not disappointed. That, and a tad worried too.

What had she wanted that was so urgent, just to see me, or something much more important?

I arrive back at the hotel. The receptionist is in floods of tears being, or rather not being, consoled by one of the housemaids.

“Sorry to intrude, can I help.” I say realising that there is nothing practical I can do to help.

“My sister, Lyly, she dead.”

“I am so sorry.” Thinking just how inadequate that is.

“Traffic accident. She ride motorcycle, big black car no see. Hit. Finish.” He says. “Police call. Go hospital, identify.”

I say sorry again, then.

“Lyly, was she the young woman I met here the other day, the one who tried to help me.”

“Yes. She come see me.”

“Fuck”, I say to myself, and wander upstairs to my twin-bedded room (don’t ask!). I’m a bit shocked too, and with a thousand and one thoughts running through my head, like - “Just what the fuck is going on here. First Foo, now Lyly.” I can’t get the thought out of my head that Lyly was no accident. It’s all too much of a coincidence, and we (ex) coppers don’t believe much in coincidences. But, there again, it is Cambodia, and we can expect another five deaths.

Someone knocks on my bedroom door. There’s no spy-hole in the solid wood door. I open it to the length of the fake bronze, curiously oblong

shaped, door latch, being on guard against knives, guns and any or all other weapons that can be wielded in a hotel, in close proximity. “ Well, bugger me!” Quite needless to say really, but I’m shocked. “Anaïs Souaïdia.”

now don’t go shouting the odds, I won’t have it.” I sit on the corner of the nearest bed, a bit broody, with the wind gone out of me.

Anaïs Souaïdia looks somewhere in her twenties. She’s got raven hair, brown eyes and high cheek bones, with dark, curved, eyebrows and lips which have been known to be quite luscious. Today, she’s wearing tight black motorcycle leathers, as if in some S&M fantasy. I look for a whip. She has none that I can see. She looks hot, and hot.

“Apart from prostitution, paedophiles and the odd murder or seven, what is Cambodia, or more specifically Siem Reap, known for,” she asks matter if factly.

“Hello Steve” says the darling of Interpol and Mossad so seductively, that my knees start wobbling. “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

I fumble with the door, do a quick scan to make sure that nothing untoward is lurking on either of the twin beds, and let her in. Anaïs and I had met over that previously mentioned murder in Malaysia. She, it had turned out, is an Interpol agent, seconded out of the Israeli secret services. So what the hell is she now doing in my hotel, in Cambodia, I’m wondering. How does she even know that I’m here.

“And so, here you are again, right in the thick of it.

Just how do you manage to do this Steve?” It would have been a fair question, if I had even the slightest inkling what the hell she was talking about. All I can muster is “Huh!” “Foo, downstairs, or should I say Pua Hwong Tan, and that girl Honey Lyly, my informant. Don’t tell me you know nothing about all this, as we found your name-card on her body, and you were observed talking to the man who called himself Foo.” She said.

“We? Well firstly, I haven’t a bloody clue what you’re talking about. Lyly was killed in a road traffic accident before we could speak, and I only just about passed the time of day with Mr Foo. Of course I wondered who and what he was, but he and I were just guests in the same hotel.”

“Sorry, okay. Let’s start again.” She suggested.

“Er, knock-off designer wear, knock-off perfume, dried, stuffed crocodiles. Hmmm drugs.”

“Yes, drugs. But in this case it’s not coke, not snow (heroin) or even ice or dope.”

“Then what,” I venture.

“I am so glad you asked that question.” She says, with a wry smile on her lips. “Counterfeit Viagra.”

I admit to blushing, and raising one eyebrow (Roger Moore fashion).

“Cambodia, but more especially Siem Reap,” she continues “has taken over the mass trade in producing and supplying fake Viagra, from China.

China used to be number one, but Cambodia far outstrips it because of its tourist trade.”

“Why is fake Viagra such a problem.” I limply enquire.

“Because it’s a killer Stephen. It can contain just about anything from blue household paint to road paint, detergents, talcum powder, heavy metals, amphetamine and plaster etcetera. Between 1998 and 2007, there were over 1,824 deaths, and 26,451 adverse events in the USA alone from these different types of fake Viagra.”

“Okay, okay I got the picture, no need to go on. I get it. It’s bloody dangerous. I see your point.”

“Now I need to share something with you. Come.”

“Steve, I find that very hard to believe.”

“Okay, but I have to be back before 8pm. There is something I need to do.”

“Hard or not, it’s the truth, and don’t you come here making accusations either, you deceived me before,

Then. “What on earth is that.” I am looking at a very odd, mat black, motorcycle. It’s no 103

motorcycle type that I have ever seen before.

“It’s my new ride. Like it? It’s an Indian made prototype I’m testing. They call it the Mankame EP1. It’s all electric, has a top speed of 250 kmph, is as silent as the wind, and this special edition is vantablack, the blackest black that you ever will see. Vantablack absorbs 99.96 % of light, making it virtually invisible at night, and looks like a hole in the fabric of the universe in daylight. Cool eh!”

I cling for dear life as a pillion passenger, on the back of Anaïs Souaïdia‘s bike. She collapses the stand and shoots off without a sound (other than my involuntary groan). I see blurs as she swerves in and out of tuk tuks, around parked vans, other motorcycles, cycles, pedestrians and the odd stray dog undecided which side of the road it wants to be on. Anaïs barely slows at crossroads. She shoots down Pokambor Avenue, onto Sivutha Boulevard, then catches Street 63 all at silent speed. We rush alongside the river, past brightly coloured small and larger temples.

It’s Saturday, and obviously the day marked out for khmer weddings, or at least their receptions.

Music blares out, as we pass golden clad young ladies trying to cross the road for at least three wedding receptions. There are waving banners, percussion music and golden swathes of cloth tweaked by a breeze as we pass. We silently throttle past open fronted general stores displaying fruits - small watermelon and bananas and dirty glass bottles of petrol, stacked next to huge woven rattan baskets. The hot day is a little chilly, as my shirt becomes puffed with a cooling wind, my hair blown all over my head. Anaïs wears a vantablack crash helmet. I don’t. I’m very visible, and more than a little nervous. The rushing cool air is interfering with my bladder. I am just not cut out for this spy lark, anymore.

Street 63 follows the Siem Reap riverside for kilometres and would, eventually, lead to Tonle Sop (lake) if we continued on that dry, dusty road. Anaïs slows, there is a minuscule pathway, hardly more than a pot-holed dirt track, off to the left. She is being more cautious now. We take a right, then another right, and then bounce along until there is an even smaller track off to the right again. We are parallel to 104

Street 63, and in some small village with a tiny jerry-rigged shop. Anaïs stops the bike. With one hand she motions me to keep still, and quiet. She then edges behind a small moringa (drumstick) tree, and points.

At first, all I see is a newish rectangular bungalow with a large front awning spread with some sort of dried leaves. “There”, she whispers. Then I see, and count, one, two, three, four very beefy men, possibly carrying firearms.

Nothing, apart from the men, seems out of place. Then I notice some plastic barrels dotted around, some fallen over. The bungalow is situated on a sizeable plot of land, waterlogged rice fields on three sides, easy to guard, I imagine.

“But what am I looking for?” I whisper “We think this is their local lab.” She replies.

“They could take their product across land and into Thailand or Vietnam, it would be quite easily from here.”

I’m still trying to get my head round the idea of viagra being dangerous. But then, looking at those large men, the isolation of this place, I can easily imagine some nefarious activities going on.

Finished spying, Anaïs Turns the bike around, re-starts the engine without even the tiniest of sounds, and motions for me to climb on. I do, and off she goes again, smoothly, swiftly, carefully at first but, as we get back to Street 63, she opens the bike up. I can’t hear the bike at all, and I’m sitting astride it. There’s no vibration either. I’m mulling this over as she slows and stops, about ten minutes into our journey. She pushes the bike round the back of a small street-side eatery, which doubles as a general store. “I doubt they understand much English here, so it’s safe to talk.” She says.

“I need to go back to that place tonight, have a look around. What do you think?” She’s still talking softly, keeping our privacy.

“After about 10, perhaps, I told you that I have something to do. Anyway, why’re you asking me. I though this was your hush, hush, Interpol mission.”

“It is, but aren’t you just a tiny bit curious about what’s going on? Later, I’ll tell you about the man you call Mr Foo. Be ready at 12, midnight. At your hotel.”

Interested, of course I bloodywell am. Once I get this eloped couple sorted out, I want to find out what really happened to Lyly and Foo. I feel that I owe Lyly something. It’s silly really as we only met briefly, but it was that phonecall. I feel guilty about her. She was trying to tell me something. And Foo, well, curiosity really. Anaïs drops me outside my hotel, and disappears on her contraption.

The Bukhara Indian (halal) Restaurant has freshly opened on Two Thousand Street, next to the Blue Pumpkin French bakery and patisserie.

It’s five doors down from the Viva Hotel and Restaurant, probably Siem Reap’s best Mexican restaurant, on the corner of Two Thousand Street and Street 9, and is opposite the burned out Soup Dragon restaurant.

I am here early, just in case. Dev motions me into the usual shop lot, freshly converted into a restaurant. Everything is ‘ping’ new. New heavy wooden chairs, rectangular wooden tables with glass inlaid, and magnolia walls.

Nothing like the flock wallpaper of the British equivalent. No sitar music either, just Western pop muzak. And the place is packed. There are only two tables left. Both tables have a small tent of white plastic, with ‘reserved’ printed on both side, one table for me and one for the expected couple. It’s dinner time, so I order. I am tempted by the sampler dishes of a ‘Tali’, but settle just for ‘Naan’ bread, and tiny blue ceramic bowl of dhal.

I don’t have long to wait. Amir nudges my elbow as he passes. I swivel my head to catch the couple coming in. I look at all the images Thiagarajan has sent over the last day or two.

I look again. Enlarge the images, one by one, focus in on the faces, and curse. Whereas Thiagarajan‘s daughter is a very fanciable young woman who could easily be a model, this woman isn’t. The chap she is with isn’t even of the same race. He is obviously of Chinese extraction. I come to the conclusion that Amir has led a very sheltered life, and pass him the bill for my untouched food. Bugger.

Against my better judgement I use the ‘app’ on my phone and call a ‘Grab’. And, before you question, yes they do have ‘Grab’ here, in Siem Reap, but they tend to be tuk tuks rather than cars. Progress huh!

It’s 11.30pm. I’m back at the hotel and all freshly showered. Anaïs is early. She has just sent a message. ‘Come on Steve,’ it’s an oblique reference to the Roland Davies comic strip creation, ‘Steve the Horse’. I teeter a laugh (Okay, it’s a Brit thing). I finish dressing and clamour down the four staircases, knackered before I start. She’s in a hurry and shoots off as soon as my copious backside hits the passenger seat, such as it is.

The bike is silent, and so are we. Entering the final ‘road’, Anaïs turns the bike’s lights off and navigates via the ‘night sight’ built into her motorcycle helmet, courtesy of Mossad. She stops and allows me to climb off, then hides the bike in some very handy bushes. There is only one security light shining at the front, and one at the rear of the building we have come to enter. No one is about. There are none of the armed guards evident during the day. It all looks too easy. And it is.

The path to the building is narrow, comprised of compacted earth. Each side of which, is what looks like rice fields, with small shoots poking through water. Rather than march straight up the path and attempt to gain access, Anaïs opts to approach the hard way, that is, on her belly through the rice field, motioning me, the amateur, to stay with the bike. I’m happy to do so, and try her bike helmet on for size and, suddenly, everything becomes varying shades of green. I cannot look towards the building as the lights are so blinding, so I wimp out and take the helmet off, feeling a bit sick.

As Anaïs emerges from the water, looking every inch a ‘Bond Girl’, two previously unseen dualcolour (black and brown) Doberman Pinschers attack. They must have been waiting in the long shadows each side of the building. Anaïs is quick, I’ll grant you. First one, then the other security canine receive hefty kicks to the sides of their heads and lay flat. Unconscious but otherwise unharmed.

105

Anaïs slips into shadow. There is a small door to her left. A weighty chain and padlock secure it. Unseen by Anaïs, a small red light snaps on as she starts to manoeuvre the lock. The light corresponds to a small black key pad, the size of a fingerprint, to one side of the door and scarcely noticeable in the dark. I see the light come on and run to warn Anaïs. But I am too late. As she stealthily picks the lock, the red light flickers rapidly. I am half way up the path when all hell breaks loose. The door blows off the building. Anaïs is hurled into the paddy field. The roof shoots up under the force of a second explosion, and the building’s contents burn crisply under the fierce heat. There is a strong smell of roasted dog. Anaïs is saved from most of the damage, but is out cold.

I run, jump into the paddy, never mind the noise. It’s too late for that now. The whole front of Anaïs’s clothing is burnt. The flames put out by the paddy water. I expect to see her skin, charred, like BarBQ ribs. But she has something on underneath. I’ve seen it before, but never used it....the latest, sleek fitting, Kevlar fullbody armour.

“Anaïs, Anaïs, are you okay, where does it hurt. Oh! My god ARE YOU OKAY!” The last just jumped out in my panic. I start giving her the ‘kiss of life’ and maybe am getting a little carried away when....

“Steve, Steve, you can stop now. I’m okay and, besides, you’re the wrong gender.” Having stopped the attempted resuscitation, she has given me something to think about. “You mean..”

“Yes, Steve, I’m sorry, you’re a lovely man, but I prefer women. And no, I’m not okay, but I’m trained in Krav Maga, so I’ll survive. Probably.”

Then softly she says “Get me to the bike, someone will come soon. We have to get out of here before they do.”

“But can you ride.” It is an honest question.

“Steve, if I can’t then we’re buggered, aren’t we?”

She has a point.

I help her over the paddy, and out to the bike.

106

People are switching on lights in their homes as we ride silently out, like a two- headed shadow.

On the road we drive in stealth mode. Anaïs is once more wearing her helmet, with the bike’s lights out, until we reach the main road, then she switches the lights on. On the other side of the road pass fire engines, and Police cars, as we speed away silently from the site of the explosion, and the rosy red glow it has given to the rural sky.

I can see she’s hurting, so I sneak Anaïs past the sleeping receptionist, and up the four flights of stairs to my dingy room. I dampen a towel and set about cleaning her up. Her energy levels spent like some undercharged cell phone. When I am done, she is asleep. Luckily it’s a twin-bed room, so I don’t have to disturb her.

Eight o’clock. I’m awake. She’s gone. I’m surprised that I am surprised. I stagger into the shower, dress and wander down to The Little Fox Espresso for breakfast, only it’s closed. I look in at Common Grounds (cafe), which us just opening up, but really don’t fancy anything they have on the menu. I walk on. I walk along the riverside under a decidedly warming sun, until I reach the Sister Srey Cafe. I sit, order ‘Eggs Bene-licious’ and a ‘Flat White’ coffee, and think over the night’s events.

Back in Blighty, when I attended classes at Hendon, there was this triangle diagram in a section called ‘The Effective Detective’.

Yes, admittedly I took little in, except the questionable name and ended up drawing an eye just below the apex of the triangle, similar that found on American Dollars. I Googled and found it to be called the ‘Eye of Providence’.

But, what I want to say is that triangle was supposedly representative of the ‘Integration of Skill Clusters’. It took into account ideas such as ‘ Role Management’, ‘General Management’, ‘Investigative Ability’, ‘Knowledge Levels’ and ‘Investigative Management’. In its way, that triangle suggested how to move on with an investigation. It reminded its reader of the obvious. My brain is telling me to think, consider and reflect. So, back in my twinbedded room, I do.

The, what ever that was, was well defended.

The people behind that hidden enterprise were

more concerned with secrecy, than with their property. I imagine that the building must have burned to the ground and its illicit substances with it, leaving few clues. Essentially, we are back to square one. If there is a ‘we’ that is.

Who did kill Mr Foo, if Mr Foo was Mr Foo. Was Lyly’s accident an accident, or something else. Did that building really contain a lab to manufacture fake viagra. And who the fuck is this Sergeant Saroeun Sok. Too many questions, and zero answers. Intriguing but frustrating.

Somehow, I need to get some information from someone, somewhere..

There is nothing funny about being kidnapped, or overweight and over the hill mannapped in this case. I have just come too. My pounding head feels as heavy as hell, and my tongue has all the feeling of Roy Harper’s ‘Chinese wrestler's jockstrap cooked in chip fat on a greasy day’ (from his album ‘Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith’). I had been ejected from my reverie by a loud thumping on my room door. I’d no sooner opened the door a fraction, than I was assisted into oblivion, and found myself here. Here, is somewhere, I have no bloody idea where, because I have a very smelly sack thing over my head, and it itches like buggery. My hands are tied, possibly by a plastic tie. My wrists hurt. But, there again I don’t think that my capturers give a damn about my comfort. There is Cambodian ‘pop’ music playing, loudly, which is obviously the first stage of my torture.

A soft Khmer voice, only just discernible above the music, and with an obvious lisp, whispers...

“Misster Muldoon, it iss soo nicess to meet you again.” I can’t help thinking that this chap is deliberately putting on a ‘Gollum’ accent (from Lord of the Rings). He continues...

“We alwayss sseem to be bumping into each other don’t we.”

“I really couldn’t say with this incredibly itchy, scratchy, thing on my head. You could be any random kidnapper with a James Bond fetish.

Random being the operative word here.” Then I remember. That sergeant mooching around after the death of Mr Foo, or whoever he was really, he too had a speech impediment.

Hmmmm, I wonder....

“Ah, about that.”

“Yes’, I say very patiently” (patiently for me that is).

“It sseemss that you, Misster Muldoon, have involved yoursself in ssomething rather unssavoury.”

“And that might be?”

“You are an innocent, are you not Misster Muldoon, and you have involved yoursself with Anaïs Ssouaïdia and Interpol, I believe. Caught yoursself up in ssomething above your punching weight Misster Muldoon. You being such a humble PI, former beat Policeman from your essteemed country.

Perhapss Misster Muldoon, you might want to leave well alone. Take this ass a ssimple messsage of good will between friendss, ass it were.”

“Friends do not kidnapped each other mister……"

“Nisse try my friend”.

A heavy blow descends on the back of my neck.

“Ow, Fuck!”

So here I am. Hands untied, but wrists still hurting from the ties. I’m laying at the bottom of what appears to be a boat. I lean and look out under the bright morning sun, and see a large lake, is it Tonle Sop lake? It, seemingly extends as far as my miserable life. My head throbs badly. The sun is painful to my eyes. My entire world is governed by this very prominent pounding, not to mention the stench of slowdrying fish. What the hell is that by the way?

But I am thankful that my neck isn’t broken, thought it feels as thought it should be.

My world of pain continues as I try to look around. I see that this boat is adrift, but tied to a larger craft, by a thin rope. The larger craft looks all the world like a floating blue bungalow. WTF! I am alone. Having nothing better to do, and no immediate plan except to survive, slowly, I pull that rope, my wrists screaming their own agony. I edge the boat closer to the larger craft. When the front of the smaller boat is kissing the ‘bungalow’, I quickly tie it off, then crawl the length of the boat, 107

keeping the floating bungalow in my hand. It is slow, painful work, with lots of bumping and wrist pain. I have now reached the end of the boat. Luckily there’s another rope. I tie this end of the boat also to the larger floating craft. Now all I have to do is move from one to the other without immersing myself in the mud coloured, stinking, lake. This proves not an easy task. My boat wants to play. It is not content with a mere brushing, side by side, with the larger craft, but wants to play bumps-a-daisy too. So here I am, with one foot on one, and one foot on the other and, with one mighty heft, I shoot forward onto the floating blue bungalow. Phew! Wonderful!

Now my knees are as painful as my wrists. A big thank you to whichever deity, for this.

As I stagger through the first room of this bungalow ‘boat’, I realise that it doubles as a restaurant. Folding chairs are stacked beneath fading pictures of Khmer royalty on the wall.

Folding tables are stacked up against another wall. In another, smaller, room at the back, a little old mahogany brown Khmer lady is just rousing from her nap, in a dirty antique hammock. Perhaps my noise awoke her.

Beyond this lady is a small general store/cafe.

It’s the sort of place where I might to able to get some water and a strip of Panadol Rapid, perhaps.

I hadn’t noticed, but there is another large ‘bungalow boat’ beyond this one. Maybe attached to the ‘shore’. There is also a collection, nay a virtual armada, of small boats, also painted blue, arranged so that some weary foreigner (whose energy is sorely depleted) could, dare he to do so, step, or make that climb, from one boat to another and reach that similar bungalow boat adjacent to the shore, which seems not too far away. And so, armed with a 1500 ml bottle of Angkor Puro (pure drinking) water, and having taken two capsules of Panadol, I begin my hurdle race.

In writing, this seems such an easy task. In reality it isn’t. The first small boat is easy enough, once I lower myself into it, adjust my footing, and attempt to climb into the next.

And that is where the trouble begins. Climbing ends as falling. I spend the next twenty minutes painfully falling into boat after boat, after boat after boat, and loose my water bottle after the 108

first. But I have arrived. There are even wooden steps for me to shakily climb onto the larger, moored, craft. But no one said anything about dogs. I am not a dog fan at the best of times, so I certainly do not appreciate coming face to face (literally) with some snarling mongrel hybrid.

“Oh just fucking piss off!” I scream into the dog’s face with all my pent up anger and frustration.

And it does. There is a doggy whine. Its tail hangs between its legs and it slinks off, suitably chastised. Then I see a tall, slimmish, Khmer chap, with a dog whistle in his mouth. And a pistol in his hand.

Oh! Come on fucking fate! What fresh nonsense is this?

“Language Misster Muldoon. Did you enjoy all that? I have to ssay that it wass certainly intriguing, and mosst entertaining, the way you went about esscaping your fate. Well done you. But, of coursse I wass jusst having my little fun with you. But, now, of course, I musst kill you!” Spoken like the true villain he is.

I have resigned myself to my fate, as I have no other option. However, the words have barely escaped from Police Sergeant Saroeun Sok’s mouth when there is a ‘pssssst’, pssssst’, and the gun flies from his hand. He falls over. His right kneecap is in tatters.

Anaïs Ssouaïdia emerges, from somewhere at the rear of the floating house, with a BUDK sports 8mm ballbearing throwing catapult in her hand. “Thought you might appreciate a little assistance at this point.” She calmly says, then “Grief Steve, your face looks like a freshly boiled lobster.”

“What, how?”

“How did I get to be here just in the nick of time?

That the sort of phrase you’re looking for?” I nod dumbly.

“Well, unsurprisingly, I tracked you via the transmitters I placed in your ‘trainers’, one in each, just in case. They are called GPS Smart Sole trackers. My bike has the receiver built it.

Simple really, I had observed your trainers and got hold of insoles similar, complete with trackers.” I

continue to look on dumbfounded. “Huh” is all I can manage, and “Anaïs, you’re a lifesaver, er literally.”

Sap police station. Reverse message ask us to wait until an officer arrives to sit with Sok, as a guard in the hospital.

Saroeun Sok lays on the floor nursing his knee the best he can. His right hand is also injured due to Anaïs’s marksmanship in shooting his weapon from him. Sok looks a sorry site and, unless he can give the answers we need, will be a whole lot sorrier, soon.

All around are tree skeletons, burnt out in the 2015 fire which swept across the lake.

Thousands of trees were destroyed in just a few hours. Now the only inhabitants seem to be filthy plastic bags.

“Best we tie this creature up. I have some questions for him.” She replies.

Anaïs binds Saroeun Sok’s shattered knee with things discovered in his house, just so he doesn’t bleed to death before she can question him. Anaïs slips Sok a hip-flask she has found containing, what tastes like, very poor whiskey, and lets him take a few gulps for his immediate pain. All this I leave to her. I am really not an expert in interrogation.

“Right, you sorry son-of-a-bitch, time to talk, and this is for Honey Lyly.” I hear Anaïs say, as I leave the room to find something non-alcoholic to drink. All I hear, in reply, is what sounds like Khmer cursing and Sok’s screaming. Women can be hard sometimes.

I hear Anaïs washing her hands. She’s been ‘questioning’ Sok for about half an hour.

“Okay” she says. “You rested? I’ve a phone call or two to make, then we can be off to see the fun.” And, with those few words, I imagine that she got all the info she needed from her captive.

The news from her team, is that there have been reports of ‘ghosts’ in the old school. Night after night, wandering lights are seen. The locals are afraid to go near. “My team leader, Seyaha, expects that’s the gang we are after. They’re hold up in that abandoned school. We go tonight.”

After some heavy debate (Anaïs wanted to out another ballbearing in Sok, this time in his head) we decide to drop Sok off, in the care of the local floating blue and white police station.

However, Sok, is loosing a little too much blood through his ruined knee. Further phone-calls take place. Anaïs makes contact with her local man. He in turn contacts the local floating Tonle

“Come on Steve”. I smile, not a big smile, because my face still hurts from being out in the sun. “You want to be in on the kill, don’t you”, she says, and I hope she means that metaphorically.

After maybe half an hour the local officer is here. We all climb aboard (a little precariously when it comes to me), and set off in failing light towards the hospital. The hospital comes as a bit of a shock to me. It’s on dry land. A little island in fact. We have to manhandle Sok up the many stairs, get him a room and a doctor to see to his wounds. The local officer (Officer Soben Hour) stays. We dash back, using the police boat, to Sok’s houseboat. To further await Anaïs‘s team. As we cross the lake, the water resembles the colour of British milky tea, which is perforated with floating plastic bottles. There are few inhabitants to see except for men going hither thither in small craft, and various lake birds flying over.

According to Anaïs‘s intelligence, the school we are about to invade is 10 minutes from Sok's boat house. We are, officially, on the Batambang side of Tonle Sap lake and two hours away from Siem Reap by boat and car. Using her Sat phone, Anaïs contacts her Interpol team once more. Directions are given. Plans made. This time they are to go in full force, dragging me with them. So we wait as Anaïs collects her team of local swat officers (in full protective gear, for this is to be a massive operation to shut down the entire drug manufacturing).

It is a very long wait until 2am.

“Steve. Take a rest. We have a while to go and you’ve had a busy day.” What Anaïs really means, is that I am the weak link in the assault chain, and need all my personal resources to see me through. She’s not wrong. I doze. The next minute, I feel Anaïs shake me gently awake.

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“Ready Steve? It’s gone one in the morning, we’re just getting ready.” I look at her, make a silly face, and try to grasp the night.

A slicker boat awaits us. On board are some of Anaïs‘s team. The rest are on ‘stakeout’ at our destination. The team is mostly composed of local Gendarmerie Royale Khmere, and all personnel, except for me, are dressed in sleek black and are carrying very dangerous looking M4 carbines, and various handguns. I have no weapon.

The officers are emerging from all sides of the school, now. There are three entrance/ exits. Black clad officers climb stealthily up all three. The previously hidden moon makes an appearance. There is a shout. A firearm barks, followed by a cacophony of weapons fire.

Doors burst and windows smash. More barks of weapons fire, and softer pht, pht of suppressed weapons. People are jumping, diving or falling out of the building into the dark lake. I see bright flashes of ‘flash bangs’ light up the interior, hear more gun fire. Then. Silence.

It takes about ten minutes to approach the former school. The school was abandoned because of structural difficulties, and left to rot.

Or so one of the English speaking police officers informs us. The building is constructed of bricks and concrete, built upon concrete pillars rising from a tiny island. Local police already had their suspicions about the place, mostly due to reports of ghosts; figures in white and spectral lights floating through the building at night. Locals, having respect for spirits, have stayed well clear, and just let them get on with it.

There’s a coms squawk. The bud in my ear says “hostiles down, running checks”. But it is too early. The coms are still alive, as I hear a very loud gun shot, and the death rattle of the officer.

Another gun shot explodes. Another coms, “Clear.” Bullets spray the river immediately near the small island. I hear cries of pain from those in the water. More gunfire, then, silence once more.

The officer in charge undertakes a ‘coms’ check.

Making sure everyone understands their role, their position and checks that the channels on their devices are working properly. I can’t make out if I’m scared, or excited. Or both. The officer’s hand goes up, asking for preparedness and silence.

I step onto the base, work my way upstairs, watching out for dead bodies. The place is a mess. With all the lights on, I can clearly see the elaborate laboratory set up. Anaïs rushes over with some sort of mask. “Here you’ll need this” she says as I put it on. “Too much unknown white powder around. We don’t know what it is. Better be careful.” She explains. “And don’t go nosying around, it is, after all, a crime scene.” I nod and stay where I am, just moving my head to see the carnage. “Phew!” Blood everywhere, pink where it comes into contact with whatever powder that is.

All lights are out on the boat. We can see the target ahead of us and, yes, it does look as though ghosts are wandering through the upper part of the building. Two officers slip silently into the water, and swim to the base of the old school. We hear nothing, but a brief ‘click click’ on the coms, indicating that their mission to remove the two downstairs guards, is successful. We wait, barely breathing. The Cambodian Police officers prepare the way for their onslaught. Another ‘click click’. Okay, that’s mission go, targets observed.

Most of the remaining officers slip over the side, along with Anaïs, who motions for me to sit down and observe. In other words, keep out of the way, which I’m happy to do.

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“Okay Steve, ask someone to get you closer, then you can take a look at our prize.” Says Anaïs, in a very jubilant mood.

Later, or is that earlier, I never know with 6 am, we have all taken showers in the Teuk Vil Commune (Siem Reap) Police Station , changed into fresh clothing and can finally start talking.

“Sorry, Steve, but some of what has happened is secret. But I can give you the overall picture. I have permission from both Interpol and Gendarmerie Royale Khmere to tell you some things, but not others. Hope you understand.” I nod.

“Steve, you’ve heard of the phrase putting the cat

amongst the pigeon. Okay, well, say meow!”

“Bloody hell.” It’s all I can think of to say.

I say “meow”, perhaps a little disgruntedly .

“I’m sorry to have dragged you in Steve. But I had faith that you would manage in your own exceptional way. Managing under stress really seems to be your forte, doesn’t it. Your talents were never really appreciated by ‘The Force’, were they?”

“But how could you know that I would come here.

It was quite by chance that Nathan Thiagarajan’s daughter went missing, and asked me to find her.”

“Er, actually, that was Officer Ram, one of Interpol’s more talented undercover officers.” Anaïs Says.

“And the daughter?”

“Never existed.”

“So I been running around on a wild goose chase.”

“With the smell we were getting earlier, it’s more like a red herring, don’t you think.” She quips.

“Anaïs, I’m not laughing. You and Interpol used me like a, well like a staked out goat. Bait.”

“Oh, but you are laughing Steve, you just don’t know it yet.” She says.

“What about that Singaporean artist, Foo.” “Actually, Leonard Chow, and yes from Singapore, but no artist. He was one of our undercover operatives. He had discovered that Sergeant Saroeun Sok was not only bent, but was a ringleader for both smuggling, and the manufacture of the fake ‘Viagra’.

This I found out from Sok himself in our little question and answer session earlier. Sok either had Chow killed, or killed him himself. I hadn’t worked with Leonard before, and we were just working out our roles when he was murdered.”

It is a hell of a lot of take in. I still don’t know how I feel about being used that way, even though it was for a good cause. Anaïs can really be troublesome at times, but we seem to get on okay, even though I now know that I am the wrong gender for her. In a way, it makes it easier to like her without all that unrequited passion stuff. I have no doubt that our paths will cross again, some day. But, for a while, I’m going to be a little more cautious about which cases I accept. Maybe take a rest, for a while, somewhere different, like, say, Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, Anaïs has promised me a slap-up meal in one of the more salubrious eateries in town, perhaps Malis, it’s not too far away either, on Pokambor Avenue, beside the whiffy river but with none of the whiff. It’s her shout.

Perhaps she knows some local girls who aren’t gay.

“So where did Honey Lyly fit in.”

“She was a dear, dear girl. I didn’t, really, have time to know her, if you know what I mean. But I should’ve like to have done. She didn’t know anything about Leonard but, by chance, had heard him being grilled by Sok, before he died. Sok must have found out what she knew, and arranged that ‘accident’. She was such a sweet girl too, and before you say anything Mr Muldoon, that wasn’t a pun, well it was, but she was sweet. We were just starting a relationship when her brother got that job at your hotel. In a way it’s all my fault, that and the job.”

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John Ang

Avid collector of textiles of th

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he Malay world

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John Ang received his M.A. in Asian Art History from the University of Michigan and worked in Tokyo as an art journalist for Japan Times. Later he moved to Taipei where he established a gallery handling fine Asian art and antiques. Under the auspices of his gallery, John has lectured, advised and sourced for major museums in the USA, Taiwan, Singapore (ACM), China and Australia. John has published articles on Asian Art for international magazines and journals, and published the book, 'The Beauty Of Huanghuali Furniture.'

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colors of c

school

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# 270 Mundull 1 Village, Sway Don Tel: 855 (0) 63965021; Tel: 855 (0) 122

cambodia

l of art

Colors of Cambodia Provides free art education for Cambodian children through our gallery and in local schools. We also host various workshops and lectures by local and internationally renowned artists and hold full-scale art exhibitions regularly.

The art gallery at Colors of Cambodia features art by our students and teachers. Proceeds from the sale of art works by students, teachers, and our founder go directly to assist students and schools.

Advanced art-training classes are offered to children showing special talent.

Advanced teaching in drawing and painting is available to assist students in higher education, and to prepare them for a possible career in the arts. One long-term goal of Colors of Cambodia is to be able to offer scholarships to exceptional students.

ngKum Commune, Siem Reap District, Cambodia 214336 - Phany; Email: colors@colorsofcambodia.org

siem reap, cambodia

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Mai Trung Thứ

La Calligraphie (Calligraphy) 1941

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Portrait de Mademoiselle Phuong 1930

Mai Trung Thu, one of Vietnam’s founding modern artists, was born in 1906, in Do Nha village, An Duong District, Kien An Province (Tan Tien commune, An Duong District, Hai Phong), (North) Vietnam. He first studied traditional Vietnamese art and craft (such as cabinet making, pottery, embroidery, inlay work etc.) at Hanoi’s ‘Professional School in Hanoi’ (founded by the French in 1902) then, later, underwent the very first entrance examination to study at the newly opened (1925) Indochina Art School (Ecole des Beaux- Arts de l'Indochine). This school of art was one treasure that colonial France gave to colonised Vietnam, with French artist teachers and workshops organised by Vietnamese artisans. Nadine Andre-Pallois in her excellent article ‘The Ecole des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine: A Striking Shift in Vietnamese Art’, (when talking about the founding of art schools in Vietnam), reminds us that…

“In the first instance, there were schools for applied arts where the teachers were French and Indochinese and where the teaching look into consideration regional traditions Since 1902, the ‘Professional School in Hanoi’ has trained artisans in skills such as cabinet making, pottery, embroidery and inlay work.

Some of the students like Le Pho and Mai Trung Thu who trained there later joined the Ecole des Beaux- Arts de l'Indochine and became famous in their own right. Teachers were French, but the workshops were organised by Vietnamese artisans. Gustave Hierholtz, a French sculptor, was director from 1919 to 1930.”

While Gustave Hierholtz, a French sculptor, was director of the ‘Professional School in Hanoi’, Victor Tardieu was the founder and first director of the Indochina Art School (Ecole des Beaux- Arts de l'Indochine), with assistance from local painter, and former student at Paris’ Ecole des Beaux –Arts, Nam Son. As Nora Taylor (Crossroads 11:2) has attested, it was in the French colonial time (late 1880s to 1954) that Vietnam saw its “...modern art tradition beginning.” The founding of the Indochina Art School (Ecole des Beaux- Arts de l'Indochine, was a great leap forward for the arts in Vietnam, away from the traditional and the Chinese styles arts (mostly calligraphy) and the Vietnamese craft centred arts, and into a bright ‘modern’ future. The gaining of knowledge concerning western ‘Modernism’ was not, as you might suspect, a mere imposition of western values onto unwitting recipients cloistered in what the French

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had name ‘Indochina’, but a truly revelatory experience for young artists in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, enabling those artists to grow into their own unique styles while remembering their homelands.

Nadine Andre-Pallois mentions that…

“The curriculum was supposed to combine Western art with Far-Eastern traditions. The teaching was close to that of the Ecole des Beaux- Arts in Paris.

Topics taught there included life drawing, linear perspective, open-air painting, and oil painting……..In addition, there were classes on the history of art and techniques specific to the Far East, such as silk painting and lacquer painting.”

Mai Trung Thu graduated from the Ecole des Beaux- Arts de l'Indochine’, in 1930 and became adept at painting with gouache and ink on silk, as well as oil on canvas. He proceeded to teach at the Hue’ National School (Lycée Français d Hue’), Hanoï in 1931. It was in 1937, before Mai Trung Thu left for Vietnam to live in Paris, that he painted ‘La Jeune Fille De Hue’, (‘The Young Hue Girl’) an oil on canvas. A Christies ‘lot essay’ for that painting (by Jean-Francois Hubert) suggests that the painting’s subject was Mai Trung Thu’s student at Hue’. There is the merest of hints of his fondness for this student (though nothing untoward happened) in the back story, with Mai Trung Thu returning to Vietnam in 1962 to look for her and, finding her, became disillusioned by her being married and with a large family.

In the 1937 of Paris, France, Mai Trung Thu entered the ‘International Exhibition of Decorative Arts’ and, later that year, both Mai Trung Thu and Le Pho left Vietnam to exhibit in various countries (Italia, Belgium, USA and France) before finally settling in France joining Vu Cao Dam who had arrived in 1931 and, later, joined by Le Thi Luu (1940).

While in Paris Mai Trung Thu participated in annual exhibitions such as the Salon des Indépendants and Salon d'Automne (from 1938 to 1940), in 1941 he exhibited with Le Pho, in Algeria (1941), and then underwent military service in Mâcon, France. With assistance from Mâcon’s notable Combaud family, Mai Trung Thu was commissioned to paint portraits for members of Mâconnaise society. He was also commissioned to decorate the memorial chapel in Mâcon’s Saint-Pierre church, and (returned to Paris in 1944.

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Portrait de Jeune Femme 1937

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La Jeune Fille de Hué 1937

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Mai Trung Thu, who spent the greater part of his life living in France, became a film maker and made a documentary concerning Ho Chi Min’s visit to Paris, and another documentary of his own work. During the 1950s, with professional representation by Jean-Françoise Apesteguy, Mai Trung Thu’s fame began to grow and has been growing ever since.

In 1974, he visited Vietnam again.

Mai Trung Thu has chiefly been known for his practically illustrative images of Vietnamese women and families, sometimes gouache, on silk, and occasionally oil on canvas. To some these images might represent a form of Asian kitsch; to others they represent the artist’s longing both for tradition and for his homeland, using knowledge gleaned from the west but using styles more familiar to the east. Mai Trung Thu’s background in Chinese imagery, and the traditions of Vietnam are given form and substance by his training in western modern art and filtered through memory and expectations of a Vietnamese artist living in Paris.

Mai Trung Thu died in 1980 of a heart attack, aged seventy four, and is buried in the cemetery of Vanves commune (southwestern suburbs) Hauts de Seine, Paris France.

Both Le Pho (1907–2001) who’s painting ‘Les deux enfants et les roses’ (an Oil on canvas) recently sold for $50,000.00 in 2018, and Mai Trung Thu who’s 1930 "Portrait de Mademoiselle Phuong" sold for US$3.1 million this year (2021) have gained world recognition since their days at the first intake at Vietnam’s first school of art – ‘Ecole des Beaux- Arts de l'Indochine’.

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La_lecture (reading) 1956

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Poème sur soie (A poem on silk)

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Maternitè (Caprice)

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Femme et fleur Young lady with flower-1943

The Jade Necklace 1959

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Nu (nude) 1970

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Subrata Das

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Subrata Das’s works is an engagement with divinity mostly in its sublime manifestation. Born in Calcutta, Subrata Das had done a foundation course from College of Visual Arts under the tutelage of Shuvaprasanna Bhattacharya. Having won accolades in exhibitions like the Gold Medal in Avantika International Art Exhibition, 2003, and certificates of merit and appreciation in the Annual Challenge Trophy, Emerald Isle Gallery, Kolkata and All India Youth Art Exhibition, Das’s works are well sought after for decorating homes and office spaces because of the positivity it exudes.

The works of Subrata Das exudes his poetic imagination and his deep interest in depicting characters from the Indian mythology. His most famous series focuses on the divine love of Radha and Krishna. His canvas tries to capture a celebrated mythical love that exists beyond the mundane conjugal relationships.

Subrata Das experiments with mixed media and acrylic to create a mood of mystique that surrounds Krishna and Radha, with a layer of surreal flowers and twines that intersperse these art works. The flute is a recurring motif, which speaks of the allure of Lord Krishna and the divine love that Radha is mesmerized in. Unlike the usual depictions of Gods, which tend to be very ornate, Krishna and Radha are painted as young lovers in simple village attires, austere yet evocative in their bearing.

A reflection of notions of the aesthetic beauty in Bengal can also be seen in a series of paintings done by Subrata Das where he depicts Bengali women. His art shows Bengali women in sarees wore in the traditional Bengali style with a calm smile on their faces, adorned in shringar and vermillion which is slightly smudged. The backgrounds of these paintings sometimes have goddess Durga, showing the fortitude of these women beneath their calm selves. These paintings of Bengali femininity are as sought after as his portrayals of Radha-Krishna, and his paintings adorn the walls of the famous and have been exhibited across India and abroad. https://www.galleriesplash.com/artists/118/ Subrata-Das

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Amar Durgaa

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Shuvo Asthomi..

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Subho Buddha purnima

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Tune Of Love

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Tune Of Love

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Cuisine

by Bee Lee Tan

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Kong Ah Sam, Sweet and Sour vegetables and Jiu Hoo Char 161

Penang Char Kuey Teow

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The traits of a ‘Nyonya’ are easily spelt out.

Basically, there a few distinct features that identifies a ‘Nyonya’.

‘Nyonya’ enclaves are found in Penang, Malacca, Singapore, Medan Jakarta, Bali, Sulawesi, Bangkok, Hattyai, Mandalay, Rangoon, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and so on – there are many other places which might not have been mentioned.

These enclaves mirror some centuries of dignitary entourages and settlement waves of immigrants from China, and with it the splendid traditions that came along with them and their wide-eyed hopes and aspirations.

Current generations of the community have harmonized themselves with the environment.

As a result, the diaspora communities prospered and became resilient part of the socio-economic and political ecosystems of Southeast Asia, to become must know, see and experience tourists’ attractions.

Of these enclaves, the Malacca enclave is reputed to be the oldest, but the vibrancy of the community has flourish to other areas as economic and social drivers attract the community to settle and invest their future elsewhere.

Each of these more recent enclaves has its own reputation, but the basic trait, food culture, are still relatively homogenous and very relevant.

And this is explained when you meet a ‘Nyonya’ on a street in Penang, that ‘Nyonya’ will most probably greet you saying, “Chiak Pa Ah Boey?” in Hokkien which means “Have You Finished Eating Yet?” Be assured, the same goes for other places in Southeast Asia, but may be in other languages.

The ‘Nyonya’ communities in Southeast Asia have held on to their uniqueness of its customs and food strongly, to wherever they go, even to non-traditional places like United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

Quite clearly, and more than popularly, the ‘Nyonyas’ hold on to their food culture wherever they go, because it presents a stunning blend of tastes and aroma which most would salivate at the thought of it, not forgetting having their nostrils seared.

The senses awaken and the adventurism into “Nyonya” cooking begins with selecting recipes for favourite dishes, that can simply motivate the zest for living.

Do not be mistaken that ‘Nyonya’ food culture is highly sophisticated in cooking preparation methodology. It is not.

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Cooking ‘Nyonya’ food does not require expensive high-tech kitchens, and other pretentious utensils, pots and pans and because often than not, dowdy old kitchens with fired clay pots, clay charcoal stoves, and smokey musty atmosphere, lend their magical ‘spirit’ to harness the best outcomes for all to share.

Add on……… Using charcoal produced the best fragrant and slow cooking is healthy and good for digestion benefiting best for the young and the elderly over the years.

The real sophistication lies in the unforgettable lethalness of the blending of tastes and aromas using a variety of tropical spices and good quality fresh food that can be bought from the neighbourhood wet markets.

Sophistication can only be derived from years of practice, appreciation, and unpretentious criticisms from family and friends – the word ‘Connoisseurism’ surely can’t be enough to describe the level of sophistication when one hazards to travel the regal corridors of ‘Nyonya’ cooking.

But what’s the meaning of ‘Nyonya’?

There are many definitions of who or what a ‘Nyonya’ is. Some are atrociously loud because the word is getting popular to be associated with new brand names, whilst some simply missed the point altogether.

‘Nyonya’ can be divided into two portions: - “Nyo” and “Nya”.

Here, if you speak Hokkien like we most do in Penang, you will quickly understand the former means “Young Girl” and the latter means “Aunty or Mother”.

Combinedly, they represent and simply mean “Women Folk”.

And now we understand why “Nyonya” cooking has been a rage since a long time ago because traditionally, “Women Folk” are always doyen maestros of cooking, and through their cooking, they have kept the prosperous enclaves and communities alive and well in Southeast Asia, not forgetting the reputation of “Nyonya” food has in fact globalized.

However, like the ancient, but evergreen Chinese saying, “Journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”, my books contribute to pushing the envelope of taste and life-style extravaganza.

Bee Lee Tan

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Achar Fish traditional recipe

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Tau Eu Bah

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Kilat Fish Head Curry

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Gulai tumis.

Appetising gurupa curry with lady fingers, tomato, green chilli and an egg.

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Kueh Lapis, Pulut Tai Tai and Chai Tow Kueh.

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martin bradley

Singapore

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Martin Bradley is the author of a collection of poetry - Remembering Whiteness and Other Poems (2012) Bougainvillea Press; a charity travelogue - A Story of Colors of Cambodia, which he also designed (2012) EverDay and Educare; a collection of his writings for various magazines called Buffalo and Breadfruit (2012) Monsoon Books; an art book for the Philippine artist Toro, called Uniquely Toro (2013), which he also designed, also has written a history of pharmacy for Malaysia, The Journey and Beyond (2014).

Martin wrote a book about Modern Chinese Art with Chinese artist Luo Qi, Luo Qi and Calligraphyism from the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China, and has had his book about Bangladesh artist Farida Zaman For the Love of Country published in Dhaka in December 2019.

He is the founder-editor of The Blue Lotus formerly Dusun an e-magazine dedicated to Asian art and writing, founded in 2011.

Malaysia 2012

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Bangladesh 2019

hilippines 2013

China 2017

Malaysia 2014

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THE BLUE LOTU

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US CHAP BOOKS

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THE BLUE LOTU

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US BACK ISSUES

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