My First Madhubani

Maybe it's my affection for primitive art, or maybe it's the fact that I never had my fill of coloring books at the age of 5, but I just love Madhubani art--one of India's oldest folk traditions, practiced by women in the dirt-poor state of Bihar, where we're hoping to travel. (Madhubani itself is a village in Bihar; the word means "honey forest.") Originally, these colorful, supremely detailed drawings were decorations for their huts on the occasions of weddings and festivals.

The imagery comes from Hindu mythology--there are several set motifs--or from local flora and fauna. Now, however, it's done on paper (treated with cow dung if you're really lucky) and sold to tourists, collectors, and corporate honchos for gifts.

A mere five days ago, I got in touch with an artist whose address I got on the internet; she promised to teach me Madhubani. Chitra turned out to be a Ph.D. in economics who could not teach and write books like she wanted to because her banker husband kept being transferred from place to place. (This story of academic hardship begs the question: Why does she keep asking me about how things are "in the Soviet Union")?

So Chitra turned to her first love--art--and now fills her days with a multitude of creative pursuits--her house is choc-full beautiful frescoes, side tables with shell inlays, oil paintings, you name it--and she also teaches, usually several students at a time, interspersed with feeding her kids and mother-in-law and overseeing house repairs, Indian-style.

For the past few days, I've been practicing intricate line work--Madhubani is all about repeating design patterns, and all space has to be filled--and coming up with the picture on the left, done with permanent marker and acrylic paint. The subject is the god Krishna playing the flute inside the stomach of the fish who swallowed him. It's a version of Chitra's own (which is itself based on a popular Madhubani motif), but I had to start somewhere! (One real Madhubani done by a villager, on the same subject, is shown on the right).

Misha told me I need to make the art my own by adding a Russian folk element, potentially with Putin and Medvedev playing flutes. That picture is, naturally, coming in a later post...