Before the Coffee Gets Cold

A Kolkata artist paints with coffee the stories of strangers through the art of listening.

- TANISHA SAXENA

Only Kolkata in its eccentric quaintness can have someone like Partha Mukherjee whose art is hearing tales of people he has never met before. He is not a Boxwallah like the "magnificent misfit," Bobby Mitter, or an eccentric filmmaker like Raja Das, or navigator Manab Pal, who built a floating hotel in Kolkata. He is a quiet, bespectacled amateur painter who knows everyone in the world has a story to tell: happy, tragic, doubt ridden, achievements and defeats. Mukherjee is there for them all with a cafe as a living studio.

Known by some as "the Kolkata coffee man" he listens to stories of strangers sometimes for minutes, sometimes for hours. He paints the conversation. Not portraits, but abstract, intuitive renderings of what they carry within.

Based in Kolkata, the 38-year-old Mukherjee posts simple invitations on social media: "I'll be at this café today, from 3 to 6. Come talk, if you need to." He partners with independent cafés.

The sessions are called Mindtalk.

People come in uncertain, unsure.