Hungarian born, Indian soul

Artists, spiritualists and seekers, Hungarians Elizabeth Sass Brunner and her daughter Elizabeth Brunner found 'home' in India. While this invaluable memoir by Dr Imre Lazar pays tribute to the younger Brunner, it also captures the duo's journeys across the Indian landscape and their intimate connect on canvas with India's thinkers from Tagore and Gandhi to Nehru

It started with a dream on Elizabeth Brunner's 19th birthday. On July 1, 1929, she dreamt of being in a cellar in Nagykanizska, where an old man with a white beard appeared holding a candle in his hands.

Elizabeth Brunner, Bombay, 1932; Photograph by M. Desai. Mother
and daughter arrived in the city on February 17 1930. As they were
dressed in hand-woven clothes the British authorities mistakenly
thought they were followers of Mahatma Gandhi and almost sent them back.

He gave her the candle and told heru00a0-- "Take this light to every nook and corner of the world." When she narrated this vivid dream to her mother, she exclaimed that the bearded man was Rabindranath Tagore. Taking this as a sign to travel to India, mother and daughter set out to Santiniketan, after writing to Tagore.

Here, both artists' flourished. They found peace and lived the life of most Indians in the decades to come. The mother-daughter duo went on to paint canvases across the length and breadth of India, every stroke dabbed with a brush of divinity.

Elizabeth Brunner:
Her Life ufffd Her Words; edited by Imre Lazar, Niyogi Books,
R 2,595.
Available at leading
bookstores or log on to www.niyogibooks.com