Un libro di illustrazioni sulla vita di un mungitore immigrato. Poeta.

Le poesie di Jagjit Rai Mehta raccontano la sua storia, dal Punjab alla Lombardia. Un libro che parla di solidarietà e umanità. Anche in Italia.

Un racconto a tavole grafiche, "una fusione di culture diverse che crea un nuovo linguaggio artistico".

Gli autori:

Flora Rabitti

Jagjit Rai Mehta

A cura di:

Lega di Cultura di Piadena

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

I come from afar (and I’m not going away) 

An illustrated book about the life of an Indian milker. Immigrant. Poet. 

The poems of Jagjit Rai Mehta tell his story, from Punjab to Lombardy. A book that speaks about solidarity and humanity. Even in Italy.

“The poems/songs of Jagjit weave the precision of the concrete details with the intangibility of imagination, the maturity of experience with the enchanted innocence of a child’s sight, wondering on familiar objects like they’ve just created by a magnificent new world”.

“They are the fruit of a brand new experience, beyond borders. The encounter between traditions, which generates a new unpublished form”

(Sandro Portelli)

“The drawings that Flora Rabitti is publishing in this book are born, like the words of Jagjit’ songs and poems, from the encounter of worlds far away, from friendship, from the necessity of expressing a new point of view, sentimental yet political.

There are moments, places, people that became crucial for expressing the possibility of creating new utopias”.

Flora “draws the resonance of the words and the songs of Jagjit in her immagination, building up an authorial and dialectical scenario. She offers a truth made of curiosity, interest and amazement of the vivid stories of other possible lives”.

(Paolo Barbaro)

A story of images and sounds, a “fusion of different cultures that creates a new artistic language”.

The adventures of the milker’s life are tell by poems and drawings. Our point of view is from a country of solidarity and humanity. 

Help us making possible this publication and the diffusion of an optimistic message in such a dark moment.

This dialogue was born in the Lega di Cultura party, a celebration of a community that already lives in the future: where cultures are mixed and create new languages.

The donation will be used for the realization and the publication of the book, to which will follow an exhibition (free) in Piadena (CR) and a presentation in Lisbon.

The book will be in Italian and in Portuguese but, in case of orders from abroad, we’ll attach an English translation for all the texts. 

THE AUTHORS:

Flora Rabitti

Born in Mantua in 1992, graduated in Fashion Design at Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan. Meanwhile working as a fashion designer (Prada, Emilio Pucci, Alberta Ferretti) she draws of character she meets or she invents, of natural worlds real or imagined. 

In 2019 she starts to make drawings inspired by the poems of Jagjit, after participating to the Lega di Cultura parties and deciding to contribute with her art to this celebration of different cultures.

Jagjit Rai Mehta

Born in 1963 in Punjab, 7 brothers. He moves to Italy in 1982. After working in the circus, or as a dishwasher and a cook, he becomes milker in the Cremonese campaign. By meeting the Lega di Cultura di Piadena community, an eclectic mix of identities and stories, he’s inspired to write poems and sing them, wearing his traditional Indian clothes.

To a journalist, asking if after having earn money in Italy he’s going away, he answers back: “I come from afar but I’m not going away!”.