Preetirathod’s Weblog

Think Bihar and the larger than life image of a toothy Laloo Prasad Yadav springs up. Think Bihar again, and you’re most likely to envision a bright Madhubani art piece.

Madhubani – forest of honey – a non descript district located in the north of Bihar is today being talked about fervently among artists, NGOs, interior designers, corporate houses and yes even humble souls like moi, for its centuries old painting viz. the madhubani paintings.

While I leaf through the pages of a glossy art book featuring madhubani art, in Landmark (one of the popular and modern book-houses in Chennai); while my sister is busy registering herself for a three-day ‘madhubani workshop’ at Dakshinachitra; while students of Fine Arts in Stella Maris College and Government Arts College are busy learning about Indian folk-art designs, the women of Madhubani are in all probability doing what they do best – the Madhubani painting. This art form is second nature to these village belles, and while we trace designs and struggle to learn the technique, they deftly sketch the vivid designs freehand, borrowing images from everyday life. They are the real artists who have learnt the nuances from their mothers and in turn pass on the skill and knowledge to their daughters.

The origin of Madhubani is multi-pronged. Legend has it that the King of Mithila had ordered that the walls of the city be adorned with paintings at the time of his daughter, Sita’s marriage. Folklore claims that the Gods visited the homes of the people living here to bless them and this was a welcoming act, in anticipation of the Supreme Beings. The art form was mostly confined to the region until the 1960s, which is when it took a commercial turn. The women were told to transfer their designs on hand-made paper instead of the traditional cow-dung coated walls and voila, that was the beginning of the journey from local to glocal.

Madhubani paintings have very distinct characteristics. Images quite naturally are drawn from everyday life and mythology. Common themes are: women at work, shown as either drawing water from the well, carrying pots of water, caring for cattle; animals, cows, fish and birds being the most prominent; village celebrations, like a marriage or festival; nature, like the sun, moon, tree of life and flowers. All paintings have a border and is usually a double line, with the gaps being filled by diagonal lines and other geometric designs. The women folk are portrayed in saris which have intricate designs and jewellery. Their heads are usually covered and they are shown to have large eyes and a stubby nose. Other designs are drawn from mythology and showcase Krishna and his consort Radha or Rama and Sita. Madhubani paintings can be very bright and colorful – blue, pink, red, yellow, black and green being the primary colors. There is no shading and no mixing of colors. The other category is the non-color or line painting, just done in black and white lines. This looks very chic, smart, classy and sophisticated – a bit somber though.

Colors were traditionally natural dyes – black was from soot, yellow from turmeric or pollen, blue from indigo plants, red from the kusum flower, green from the leaves of wood apple trees, white from rice powder and orange from the palash flowers. The paint brush was nothing but a piece of cotton wrapped around a bamboo stick. This definitely sounds exotic and I would crave for such natural dyes, but urbanization leaves me with a box of poster colors or a set of Indian ink bottles and a couple of thin paint brushes. I can neither draw from memory because if I did, I would only draw cars and buildings and women in corporate attire working behind a computer. Now that isn’t a very pretty picture is it? So I enroll myself in an art class and I am given a stack of designs (once the art work of the Madhubani women) to trace from and then I go on to create “my very own Madhubani painting”.

Today Madhubani paintings have gone places. Several NGOs are mobilizing efforts towards promoting this art-form, popularizing it in urban India and even taking it abroad, trying to give the real artists exposure and commercial value as well. Corporate houses often sport a Madhubani mural in their reception area or try and incorporate the art form somewhere in their business space to render that touch of elegance and ironically, contemporary Indian art feel to their office interiors. Expats fancy such art work on their walls. Interior designers recommend this art-form heavily to their clients.

I just returned to my writing after attending to a phone call from my sister. She wanted to know if I wanted a madhubani painting done on a khadi raw silk kurta. She was sending hers to a village in Bihar (somewhere in Madhubani I suppose) and reckons it would look smart. She can have it delivered here to Singapore just in time for Diwali. What demonstrates better, the story of the Madhubani painting going from local to glocal.