Narail, Khulna
The riverside home of the painter S. M. Sultan on the Chitra, now a museum of his life and work, with his grave and his children’s boat nearby.
The Sultan Mela, held around the painter’s birthday in August, brings art exhibitions, music and a village fair to Narail, often with boat races on the Chitra. Dates and programmes vary, so check locally.
Sheikh Mohammed Sultan — S. M. Sultan, called Lal Mia at home — was born in Narail in 1923. He studied art in Calcutta, then wandered for years across the subcontinent, painting and exhibiting in cities from Kashmir to Lahore and Karachi, and travelled to the West in the early 1950s, where his work was shown alongside that of well-known European painters.
He came back to Narail and lived there for most of the rest of his life, in a riverside house full of cats, birds and other animals. His best-known paintings show the farmers and fishermen of Bengal with huge, powerful bodies — not as poor and frail, but as the true strength of the land. He received the Ekushey Padak and the Swadhinata Padak, and died in 1994.
His home on the Chitra is now a memorial museum with his paintings, belongings and photographs. His grave lies in the grounds, and the large boat he had built so that the children of Narail could learn and play on the river — Shishu Swarga, “children’s heaven” — is kept nearby.
Leave Jashore in the morning; the ride takes about an hour.
See the paintings and belongings, the grave and the boat Shishu Swarga.
Walk by the river or take a short boat ride if one is available.
Eat river fish in town and head back to Jashore in the afternoon.
October to February; August for the Sultan Mela
On the bank of the Chitra in Narail town: a short rickshaw or battery auto-rickshaw ride from the centre. Narail is about an hour by bus from Jashore.
