The Blackened Mirror

By Madhu Bazaz Wangu

An exceptionally gifted painter lets his art consume. Buried in work and wealth he trades his creative freedom for popularity and wealth, a jail of sorts, as what once freed him now becomes his cage.

His wife, Shanti, suggests a vacation to the picturesque village of Manipur Inside a s

• Language: English
• Publisher: Year of the Book Press
• Release date: Sep 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781646493661

Madhu Bazaz Wangu

Madhu B. Wangu is an award-winning author and the founder of Mindful Writers Groups and Retreats. She has a doctorate in the phenomenology of Religion from the University of Pittsburgh (1988) and a post-doctoral Fellowship from Harvard University (1989-1991). For fifteen years she taught Hindu and Buddhist art history at the University of Pittsburgh, Rhode Island College and Wheaton College. She joined Pennwriters Organization in 2005 and served as a Board member from 2007-2012. In 2020 she won Pennwriters Meritorious Award for being “a valuable asset to the writing and publishing world.” Dr. Wangu has also serves as a board member for Books Bridge Hope, the non-profit organization with a mission to promote reading, writing and literacy to community members residing in shelters and on the streets of Pittsburgh.More than three decades of meditating and journaling led Dr. Wangu to teach meditation and to journal. The work resulted in a practice she calls Writing Meditation Practice. You are welcome to join her every morning at Online Mindful Writers Group.Madhu Wangu’s CDs, Meditations for Mindful Writers I, II & III, inspire professional as well as novice writers to improve focus, remove blocks, and increase writing flow and productivity. Her CDs include: Meditations for Mindful Writers: Body, Heart, Mind (2011), Meditations for Mindful Writers II: Sensations, Feelings, Thoughts (2017), and Meditations for Mindful Writers III: Generosity, Gratitude, Self-Compassion and Trust (2019)Dr. Wangu has written books about Hindu and Buddhist goddesses: Images of Indian Goddesses: Myths, Meanings and Models, (Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 2003) and A Goddess Is Born, (Spark Publishers, 2002). Her illustrated books for young adults are, Hinduism (Facts on File, Inc., New York, 1991) and Buddhism (Facts on File, Inc., New York, 1993). Madhu has also held five one-person shows of oil paintings and prints and has exhibited with art groups in India as well as USA.Dr. Madhu Bazaz Wangu's fiction includes Chance Meetings: Stories About Cross-Cultural Karmic Collisions and Compassion (2015), two novels, The Immigrant Wife: Her Spiritual Journey (2016) and The Last Suttee (2017), and a second collection of short stories, The Other Shore: Ordinary People Grappling with Extraordinary Challenges (2021).This year, 2023 she published her magnum opus, Unblock Your Creative Flow: 12 Months of Mindfulness for Writers and Artists. Currently, she is writing her third novel, Meaning of My Life.Read the daily posts about meditation, journaling, reading, writing, walking in nature and related topics Online Mindful Writers Group at facebook.com/groups/706933849506291/

Book preview

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Fiction

The Last Suttee

The Other Shore

The Immigrant Wife

Chance Meetings

Non-Fiction

Unblock Your Creative Flow

Images of Indian Goddesses

A Goddess is Born

Hinduism

Buddhism

CDs

Mindful Meditation for Writers: Body, Heart, Mind

Mindful Meditation for Writers II: Walking Through the Forest, Awakening the Senses, Mountain and Lotus,

Animating Seven Energy Chakra

Meditations for Mindful Writers III: Generosity, Gratitude, Self-Compassion and Trust

Contents

The Blackened Mirror

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I was a portrait painter. Young and self-taught, I started by copying black-and-white images of wrinkled old people, famished children, laborers carrying loads, and farmers plowing fields: all working for food and shelter. I knew their pain, their suffering. My mother was a bricklayer, and I, a dreamer. Each of us owned two sets of clothing. One covered our body and the other hung daily in the sun to dry. My mother worked hard for the builder to provide us with two meals a day, but I was content with only one if I could buy art supplies to depict moments in people’s lives.

From the time I was nine until I turned sixteen, my aim was to feel at one with the person I painted. I also became conscious of my mother’s struggle to survive. I sold my first work for a pittance. My mother tried persuading me to be a bricklayer, but she did not succeed. The day she discovered what I did while she was at the construction site, she hit me hard, so hard that I bled. From then on, I hid my work from