On 19 January 2003, it will be ten years since I first met Francis Newton Souza, the most phenomenal man and artist I ever came across. This was the man who changed my entire life, by letting me paint with his brush, and by listening-to and understanding all the secrets of my soul.

I have been exceptionally blessed to have been the Muse and closest friend of Souza for ten amazing, unbelievable years.

On January 19, 1993, I was a painfully-young art critic for the TIMES OF INDIA in New Delhi. The reclusive and enigmatic Souza had just flown-in from New York, and was opening an exhibition at Dhoomimal Gallery that evening.

I had known Souza's art and writing for all my formative years, but had never seen this man, who was the ultimate legend of contemporary Indian art. His words and lines rivetted me: his scientific and philosophical essays, 'SEARCH FOR AN INFINITE UNIVERSE' and 'REDMONISM: THE NEW UNIVERSE' were always kept on top of my clippings-file, for years.

I was in search of my Guru, and Souza's ideas were like mantras for me. I knew, instinctively and immediately, that we were kindred souls: that the age-difference of forty years was irrelevant, and that these were ideas ahead of their time, untapped by any other mind.

This is why I had to be present on that fateful evening in Connaught Place.... I was to come face-to-face with my Guru. It was ordained!

Souza was fashionably late: but the moment he entered --- a slight, fey, other-worldly, radiant figure, with his delicate, pale right hand raised gently, as if in benediction --- I noticed that he took me in. He recognised me fully, with his blazing painter's gaze.

Souza was to initiate a dialogue with me on that mysteriously-fateful evening, that was to continue and last for a magical decade -- from India to New York to London and Paris. I became this great artist's chosen muse; and for that entire decade, my face and figure appeared in all of Souza's depictions of young womanhood.

Souza asked me to be his muse. He went down on his knees before me, and, as if at an altar, he offered me a red rose.

When I asked him --- why me? I considered myself ordinary!

Souza said: "Srimati, your beauty is divine and goddess-like! --- You are magnificent!"

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From January 19, 1993, until his passing into Eternity on the eve of Good Friday on March 28, 2002 in my presence in Bombay, Souza took hundreds of amazing photographs of me, all over the world, on which he based hundreds of his most powerful and beautifully-romantic paintings.

Souza began photographing me from the very first day he set eyes on me. He said that he had found, in my face and stance, a classical ideal: a face that transcended race and nationality. Most people do not know that Souza's vision as a photographer was as profound as his images on canvas. He connected his work deeply with photographs; he always kept hundreds of his cherished photographs close to him, wherever he went.

I have selected, below, some of Souza's favourite photo-portraits of me for this website. These were the images that he always kept close to him; they were either kept carefully in his red bedside-drawer in New York, or carried by him, carefully and lovingly, in envelopes beautifully labelled by him in his pure handwriting: 'PHOTOS OF S': wherever he would travel, on this beautiful earth which he so loved.

Souza was of the opinion ( -- much to my amusement! -- ) that I looked exactly like his favourite actress, June Duprez, who was the heroine of one of the first-ever colour movies made, 'THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD'. He would watch this movie with deep joy very often in New York.

Souza said to me, "Such beauty is so rare and precious that it must be kept concealed from the raw gaze... Srimati, my lovely, believe me! -- I know what true Beauty is ... You look exactly like that exquisite Princess, who must keep a curtain drawn between herself and the Sun."

Souza called me his "Heavenly Flower": a name that, he said, came to his mind the very moment he set eyes on me. All this was heady praise indeed, for a young girl who adulated this genius!

May these images speak their own Truth. They were all taken by Souza; except those that depict him, which were taken by me.

It is only now, when this saint of an artist and other-worldly genius Souza is with his Heavenly Father Christ, playing forever with his blazing colours in his Infinite Universe, that I realise that I have been the luckiest girl on Earth to have basked in his exceptionally-dazzling light for ten mystical years.

Francis: thank you!
I miss your presence beside me; but you are closer to me now than ever before: and your pure light shines dazzlingly upon me from above, forever into Infinity.

--- Srimati Lal,

Calcutta, May 2002.