Dressed in the traditional white panche, or dhoti, paired with a salmon pink kurta and angavastram, artist Raghupathi Bhat is intently painting the scene of King Dasharath’s putra kameshti yagna (ritual sacrifice for a son) when I meet him in his modest studio on the leafy road to Chamundi Hill in Mysuru. He makes a few final strokes in chalk on the terracotta background and the scene comes magically to life: Dasharath, placed at the centre, towers above his entourage, who respectfully bow to him. This huge canvas, measuring 6’x4’, is part of Bhat’s latest series of 12 back-to-back line drawings on six wooden boards, each depicting a scene from the Ramayana .
These out-sized chalk drawings are a first for the artist, who is known for his exquisite Ramayana miniatures on tiny 4”x 3” cards. Bhat had created 60 of these for the V&A some 30 years back and the series remains the pièce de résistance of his oeuvre.
White lines
The present series of chalk drawings is expected to have a brief life. But the size of the frames gave Bhat the space to make extensive use of folk art, to which he is partial. The panels accompanied the theatrical adaptation of Kuvempu’s Sri Ramayana Darshanam, which was staged at Mysuru and Bengaluru in November last year as part of the 50th anniversary celerations of the awarding of the Jnanpith to the poet laureate.
There are personal connections between Bhat’s sequence of mega drawings and his other Ramayana- based paintings, which number a whopping 900. His all-time favourite is the ‘Sugriva Sakhya’ , a tribute to the strong bonds of friendship between Rama and Sugriva that blossomed out of adversity. Another favourite, the ‘Jatayu Sambhavna’ , also stands out for the way the gigantic bird dominates the frame.
The walls of Bhat’s home are alive with paintings of rishis in vibrant natural colours. “I am fascinated by our ancient Indian sages and use these images frequently in my work,” he explains over cups of steaming filter coffee. He considers art a spiritual exercise and meditates or recites a mantra before he picks up a brush.
While he paints within a traditional style, Bhat’s works are not mere reproductions of archetypal images. “Artists cannot afford to be mere imitators of their forebears if they are to stay relevant. So I have interpreted ancient themes in a contemporary way, based on my own understanding of mythology,” he says.
Much of Bhat’s artistic career has been spent in the revival of the traditional art of Ganjifa — paintings on oval playing cards, each around 8 cm in diameter. Ganjifa cards have a fascinating history going back to the first Mughal emperor, Babar, who introduced them to India in a card game, also known as ganjifa. The game spread like wildfire across North India. Traditional artists enthusiastically adopted the form and the Hinduisation of Ganjifa followed, spawning a new variety of cards and games. Ganjifa has almost disappeared as a game now, surviving mostly in small pockets such as in the environs of the Jagannath Temple in Puri, Odisha. But the cards stay alive as collector’s items. They have inspired Bhat and a handful of traditional artists in Odisha, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat to take up the art as a form of miniature painting.
Bhat had been fascinated in his childhood by the tiny ganjifa cards called chhadas commissioned by the Mysore maharaja, Krishna Raja Wadiyar III, in the 19th century. He developed a passion for the fast-disappearing art and decided he would do everything in his power to preserve it. That was 40 years ago. There were no artists in Bhat’s family, no mentors from whom he could learn this delicate art. So he had to teach himself.
Wet cloth and clay
Having mastered the art, he now trains upcoming artists at his studio, in a continuation of the guru-shishya tradition. There is art even in the way the cards are made — by soaking pieces of old cloth in a mixture of tamarind seeds and gum, priming the cloth with ganji or rice gruel and then coating it with a layer of clay to strengthen the material and give the painting longevity. Then the cards are cut to size and the background is filled in with vegetable colours. A few strokes of his squirrel-hair brush, and an amazing world of thought, feeling and creativity comes magically to life on the tiny card.
Attention to detail and complex iconography characterise Bhat’s ganjifa cards and it is these two qualities that marked his V&A miniatures too. “Some of the figures were so small that they had to be drawn and illuminated by a brush containing a single hair — as in the episode of the final battle between Rama and Ravana. The clean, clear lines pulsating with life capture the great energy released at that time,” he says.
The writer is an English teacher who sets off on quirky quests in Bengaluru.
