Dayal Kaur Khalsa: A Childhood Remembered; A Childhood Transposed
Tales of a Gambling Grandma, Dayal's first book, inspired by her warm and loving relationship with her wonderfully eccentric Grandma, was a winner of numerous awards. Her second book, I Want a Dog, expresses other dimensions; her sense of humor, expressed by poking fun at great art, combined with her love of great artists. The cover, for example, is a parody of Surat's monumental "Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of Grand Jatte". It also expresses her dissonant relationship with her mother.
| In this story we are again introduced to the little girl character from Tales of a Gambling Grandma, but she now is named May, after May Cutler, President of Tundra Books, now retired, who became not only a staunch admirer of Dayal, but a very close friend. In an interview Dayal said that she wanted to honor her friendship with May in a meaningful way. May Cutler was indeed honored and touched by this gesture. |
|
Photo of May Cutler, former President of Tundra Books, Dayal's publisher |
Page three of this book reveals Dayal's playful sense of humor and her passion for dogs, as she superimposes dog faces on her second grade classmates and her teacher. She exhibits her cunning, creative ideas when she brings home a trail of neighbourhood dogs while holding a piece of salami behind her. She expects this to prove to her mother how much dogs adore her, and convince her that she should have a dog. Mother is not fooled, and tells her to use the same technique to lead the dogs back where they belong.
Photo of Dayal's real second grade class, Dayal (Marcia) is in the first row at extreme left |
Class portrait from I Want a Dog, Dayal (Marcia) is in the first row at the extreme left |
Illustration from I Want a Dog, showing the trailing dogs |
| Later, a furious temper tantrum gives May an idea. As she kicks her roller skate with all her might, the roller skate bumps all the way down the stairs looking like a little dog. So May ties a rope to the skate and it rolls after her like a pet dog. |
Photograph of the street corner near Dayal's home
in Queens |
The same corner, illustrated in I Want a Dog |
Photograph of the school yard at Dayal's elementary school |
Illustration from I Want a Dog showing Dayal and her friends practicing in the school yard which clearly resembles that of her elementary school |
After practice with the skate indoors, May takes it outdoors. When her friends say she looks funny dragging a roller skate around, May tells them she is practicing. After that they all want to practice. May takes her skate everywhere and where it says "No Dogs Allowed" she leaves it outside tied to a tree. Her parents are very impressed and say she is getting ready to take care of a real dog.
|
Photograph of the Schonfeld family when Dayal (Marcia) was a child |
In her third book My Family Vacation, Dayal relived what must have been a happy remembrance of her early childhood. The planning of the family's first trip to Florida, the excitement and anticipation, packing in the dark, the snowstorm before they depart, all show an amazing recall of detail and the feelings associated with the occasion. |
Ilustration of May's family in My Family Vacation |
Father and mother are excited, and it truly seems like an ideal time in her life. At the first motel, Mother saves the day for May when she calls Richie, May's older brother, for dinner just as he challenges her to jump off the high diving board. However, when they arrive at the next motel, Richie double dares May to jump. She does, and Richie is really impressed. He never calls her a baby or a scardy cat again. Happy times conclude the vacation with May dancing with her father and Richie sitting with mother at the table having a drink. |
Dayal's mother had high intellectual expectations for both children. Try as she might to satisfy her mother's expectations and to win her love and approval, she found this impossible. Their worlds were too far apart. Dayal was an explorer, an adventurer and grew up in the early 60s when rebellion and drugs damaged the lives of many teens and young adults. Experimenting with alcohol and drugs took its toll on her. She had several unhappy years trying to unravel her emotional problems.
| Dayal graduated from City College of New York in 1963. She majored in English and minored in Art. She attended The Arts Students League from 1964 to 1965 where she met Diane Goodstein, with whom she shared work space in a loft in Lower Manhattan. During the early 60s, when a mutually influential group of artists, teachers and students came together with rule-breaking experiments in avant-garde work, Dayal attended the gallery parties of many famous artists. Those meetings with Roy Lichtenstein and his friends, gave Dayal a unique opportunity to become acquainted with great artists of the time. |
|
Portrait of Dayal (Marcia) around the time of her college graduation |
Photograph of Dayal (Marcia) with her wild hair, probably taken at Millbrook Ontario |
Her loft experience gave her a new perspective on life, although she still lived at home with her parents. Her wild, curly, reddish brown hair, sparkling blue eyes and dynamic personality attracted many bohemian artists and writers. She was truly a character of enormous fascination to all who met her. |
In 1966, her mother became ill with breast cancer. This news was the second sobering family shock for Dayal. As you recall, the death of her grandmother when Dayal was 10 years old was her first traumatic experience. She visited with her mother often. She noticed that her father was unwilling to allow her mother to have pain medication and Dayal was devastated over the sight of her mother suffering. Her mother died in June 1967. Dayal's greatest fear if she became ill was that she might go through the agony that her mother suffered.
In September 1967, her father, and her brother and his wife took a trip to Mexico. Dayal left them after awhile. In a chance meeting in December 1967, she met a Canadian artist, Brian Grison, in San Miguel Allende. Dayal was looking for an inexpensive place to stay and work on her art. Brian had been renting a small adobe cottage and he helped find one for Dayal. They became fast friends, toured Mexico, worked on their art and frequented local cafés. Dayal was working on the illustrations for another unpublished book about Billy The Kid.
|
