Fetching water from a river or well, the act the two village women have been portrayed as engaged in, is and has been for ages their song and saga – their pity and pride, in every case an unquestionable truth of life. Sometimes they did it, and still do, humming a melody, loud or low, and sometimes, narrating with some degree of pride how once when the summer was on its peak, for a marriage in the family she all alone fetched over fifty loads of water from the well outside the village, a feat that had continued till late evening, and then adding with a deep sigh : ‘now that stamina is a thing of bygone days’. Not unheard is the note of her disappointment in regard to younger ones who tire even after fetching two loads of it. Wells, or river-banks, where young water-fetchers fed thirsty passersby with water, and sometimes with the doe-like coy eyes, were the spots where many medieval romances were born. Thus the act – single, without a prologue or epilogue, illustrated on this piece of paper, perhaps irrelevant for a modern mind and his canvas, is the epic of Madhubani, or any folk.
Though a set of the leading icons or motifs, or a leading activity, is often the axis or the main theme of a Madhubani painting, it is in its totality, bizarre forms of its nature, strange iconography, assimilation of different elements or rather different worlds and adherence to ages-old traditions that it discovers its appeal. The two women, painted as fetching water from a river, one on her way back carrying a water vessel on her head, and the other, emptying it a little lest when lifting it its water split, comprise the main theme in the painting. The woman on way-back is treading homewards, which an elegantly painted and tastefully designed house thatched with tree-leaves indicates. As suggests the cow behind her with a pitiable expression in its eyes and eagerness in its body-gesture, the other woman seems to be transporting water for her cow and for other household things. Exceptionally simplified and disproportionate eyes of both, the two women and the cow, charged with rare emotionality, and the co-relating gestures, are tales which the pen of a folk painter, more so one from Madhubani tradition, most effectively tells.
The painting draws with an affectionate touch its figures, that of the cow – colourfully costumed and painted, those of the fish, too big for a small patch of river contained in a corner and too colourful as if knitted of soft bright wool, and the birds, as if conceived wearing Rajasthani lehenga-chunari, the children’s play-things mounted on the branches of the tree. It is this personal touch that defines the strangeness of the iconographic vision of Madhubani art. As in this painting, once a Madhubani painting identifies its dimensions on the canvas – a piece of paper or whatever, every centimeter of the demarcated space is covered, either by main icons or activity, or by their unrealistic expansion, and sometimes by jotting in motifs from other domains. In the painting, compulsions of realism do not bar the mango tree, standing on the river’s yonder side, from expanding across the river and extending over two-third of the canvas space. A creeper-like curving tree or rather a slender plant on the extreme left passes across the whole house and joins the mango-tree, the two conjointly canopying the entire space above. The river bank has a dignified row of flowering plants, all identically drawn, and each, with just one flower on its top. All gaps and all spaces are covered with one motif.
This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr. Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of literature and is the author of numerous books on Indian art and culture. Dr. Daljeet is the curator of the Miniature Painting Gallery, National Museum, New Delhi. They have both collaborated together on a number of books.
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