Those sceptical about the possibility of public art in Calcutta should visit a certain boating resort in the city that is home to a lot of sculpture. Or perhaps it would be better to call it installation art, made of couples.

You have couples melting into one another, couples fixed in their embrace of each other, couples who seem to be holding their breath or breathing very hard: young lovers all, ready to plunge into the depths of each other. In such a place, where the air is still and all movement seems suspended, you tread softly, for you know not whose limb it is which is sticking out from behind a tree stump. That is no country for single men, or married women with children, if they are virtuous.

So I took myself to another part of the resort, past two mini bridges, over a mini river, past a mini waterfall, past a mini grand amphitheatre-like space made up of several roofless white columns and full of especially animated couples, and it seemed like a long mini journey, though actually I had travelled a distance of only a few feet, to reach a food plaza, which included an ice-cream counter. As I tried to settle my daughter with some vanilla ice-cream, I saw a family of three, father, mother and daughter, aged five or six, approaching.

The mother, who was wearing a heavily sequinned purple salwar kurta, took charge. “What do you want, baby?” she asked the young one, in English.

“Ki achhe? (What’s there?)” demanded the girl, in Bengali. “You have four choices,” the mother stuck out the fingers of her right hand one by one. “Vanilla, butterscotch, two-in-one and mango.”

“Ami pink ice-cream chai (I want a pink ice-cream),” declared the girl.

“There is no pink ice-cream, baby. But there is two-in-one, pink and white,” persisted the mother, in English.

“Ami pink chai, chai, chai! Aar tumi keno amar sathe Ingrejite katha bolchho? (I want pink and only pink! And why are you speaking to me in English?)” asked the girl.

“Semolina, you can’t have pink. There is no pink. Can’t you see?” Mother raised her voice, still in English. The girl’s name was Semolina. At which point the girl tore herself from the counter and began to roll on the grass, shrieking: “Ami pink chai! Ami pink chhara onyo kichhu khabo na! (I want pink! I will only have a pink ice-cream!) Her mother joined her equally, crying: “Semolina! Semolina! Semolina! Semolina!”

In the other part of the resort, the sculptures began to disentangle themselves from each other, rose, and turning into perfectly ordinary young men and women, left. That is why it is said that art cannot survive the suppression of the native tongue.