The images flit somewhere in mid-space between the concrete and the abstract. In the art exhibitions of city galleries, one is disgusted many a time, gazing at the topsy-turvy world of abstract lines of modernity. Many a time, the artistic timidity, and lack of the skills of the mind and the brush are deftly hidden behind many a vague and cumbersome brush stroke. It is not that here on the walls of the villages around Swai Madhopur, that art is without a tinge of abstraction. The abstract — however elemental — is very much present here. The forays into the dark and abstract space of the unconscious have a natural connection, a spontaneous growth that is governed by the primacy of a ritual or a celebration, or that of the pressing need of an event embedded in the flow of country-life.

Occasionally, the algebra of triangles, rectangles, and circles culminates into some configurations of flesh and blood that appear to be the hybrid of a tiger and a peacock.

A massive tree-trunk turns into a tower, while the branches become serpents with the peacocks — serpentine too — dancing on them. Everything seems to be becoming serpentine in the pictorial representation and a quirky imagination may have a feeling that one is watching a creeping cockroach or a crawling scorpion. Quite clearly, not only such an amalgamated pictorial representation is used on the conscious occasion of a particular religious or cultural event, but quite unconsciously, it percolates into the dark springs of vitality,where a ritualised answer is provided to some cultural, or psychic dilemma. The mythical relations between the peacock, serpent, scorpion, and other creatures of the dark world are reestablished figuratively.

Serpent is a magic wand of transformation and peacock dances when the fructifying water is to fall over the waiting earth to change everything into living leaves, flowers, and branches of trees. Indeed, in the pictorial representation in the mandne in the hamlets of Swai Madhopur, it seems that it is the mysteries of fructification that predominate. Drawn by a woman’s auspicious hand, it is clearly the feminine that is the driving spirit here. The woman has become not only the presiding lady of the beasts, but of the plants as well. In this cultural portfolio, not only grinning cats and ferocious tigers are tamed, but even the basic distinctions between the plants and animals tend to disappear. It is difficult to recognise sometimes whether what we are watching are peacocks, branches, or snakes. The feathers of peacocks turn out to be the corn-laden twigs. In this cosmo-cultural fructification, even the paniharins the village lasses bringing water from a well — get their braids changed into interwoven vines. Suddenly the two of them break into a dance while another lass gets busy into a furious churing of the milk —her odhni billowing into the air.

At Swai Madhopur, this wall-art seems to be a monochromatic art, unlike its counterpart at Bundi. This was possibly because of the developed tradition of the Bundi kalam of Rajput painting, the element of colour has made a very strong impact. At the mandne of Bundi, folk art has acquired a new sophistication. The free elements of Swai Madhopur have lost their freedom. Peacocks, tigers, and their other old kin seems to have received some setback. In a wide assemblage of birds, all appear to be similar until by closely observing, one starts distinguishing one bird from the other through their stances, short or extended legs, webbed or unwebbed feet, bills or beaks, and their feathers and wings.

Now one finds that the elements are not free to spring away from each other — there is an attempt to bind everything into a pattern. Birds as well as plants have been fixated into the mandala configurations. Here the art of mandne has attained a new elegance. Unlike the mystics of open wilderness of the region of Swai Madhopur, at Bundi the folk art is informed by a disciplined and maybe a little sophisticated tradition of painting.

Photos by the writer