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The Ramayana, seen through folk eyes

I do not claim this as an artistic project unmatched anywhere else. But the Bengali Ramayana patas are indeed distinctive in that taken together they represent a commonality of form and substance, a remarkable cultural achievement precisely because it is the product of so many hands and minds working together.

The Ramayana, seen through folk eyes

One epic, many tales: The Agni-Pariksha of Sita: the Fire-God appears to bless Sita



B.N. Goswamy

I do not claim this as an artistic project unmatched anywhere else. But the Bengali Ramayana patas are indeed distinctive in that taken together they represent a commonality of form and substance, a remarkable cultural achievement precisely because it is the product of so many hands and minds working together. It is in this coming together of a community of imagination that the Bengali Ramayana patas have created a niche for themselves.

— Mandakranta Bose

I do not know how many would be able to recall the excitement of a ‘byeskop-walla’ arriving in a small Punjab town, setting up a visual ‘machine’ on a tripod in a chauk, and begin shouting out aloud, asking everyone to come and see sights they had never seen before. For a small fee of course. And children would crowd around, taking turns, peeping wonder-eyed through large glass-cased windows shielded with their hands, and seeing one image after another passing in front of their eyes. “Dekh Bambayi da sheher nageena/,” the byeskop-walla would start reciting in a sing-song voice, narrating what his ‘audience’ would be seeing, “gaye ik din waastey lag gaya mahina/ chaure chaure bazaar/ aidhar sadkaan odhar pahaar….” Or something like this. There would be ‘seeneries’ of exotic cities; fading photographs of some film stars; some imagined ‘paristan’; the almost obligatory, buxom, lounging half-clad woman: the ‘baarah man ki dhoban”. Simple slides illuminated with lights from behind. But magic.

It seems to have all but died out. But something not too dissimilar still keeps happening in some areas of Bengal, where patuas — traditional folk painters/reciters — move through the countryside, carrying painted scrolls and telling, in their own sing-song fashion, stories depicted in them. The stories are often all too well known — episodes from the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, some Purana or the other, even a local folk-tale — but the telling can still be magical, for as each frame is pulled down and ‘revealed’ from the vertical, narrow, rolled-up scroll, the level of excitement does not flag, anticipation keeps mounting. How is Shurpanakha, with her bleeding nose and ears, going to look like? Will Kumbhakarana wake up from his sleep, or will he not? From which peak is Hanumana going to get the sanjivani herb? Questions unasked even if half-formed keep rising in the minds of the patua’s audience of young and old. And they keep getting answered, as the scroll keeps furling down.

The whole phenomenon of patuas and their work has been the subject of many a learned study. Questions, some answered, others not easily so, keep hanging in the air: how far back does this tradition go; what religion/caste do the patuas belong to; why do they bear dual names, one Hindu and the other Muslim; what are the visual sources of their images; how often does their recitation change; do they work alone or in groups; will all this survive? Here, however, I need to move on to a Ramayana pata that Manadakranta Bose has drawn attention to in a recent publication. For what interests me is the visual language that the patuas — whether Niranjan Chitrakar, or Khokan, or Tapan — use in this series: the conventions, the understanding of space, the coded gestures and stances, the treatment of things like flora, fauna, water, clouds, fire, and so on. It is clear that in the background of this painter group’s work stands the work of Kalighat painters, occasionally even of Murshidabad miniatures. But everything changes in their hands. The emphasis remains not on refinement, not on sophisticated detail, but on direct telling, creating recognizable figures and investing them with the character that resonates with the image that the general reader bears in his mind. The painters know thus that when Rama and Lakshmana are shown together, Rama is distinguished by being darker in complexion — in this case a tinge of bluish green — like all the avataras of Vishnu are in classical work; when the dead are shown, the first indication is that their eyes must remain closed; an extended hand with the open palm facing the viewer is suggestive of abhaya, ‘freedom from fear’; water must not only be blue but must have little wavy lines in it. The simplest of things, in other words.

But, all naïve telling of the story apart, the painter/s bring in at times renderings that take one completely by surprise. When king Dasharatha mistakenly shoots down young Shravana Kumar (called Sindhu in Krittivasa’s Bengali Ramayana), not only do we see the filial son struck with an arrow, but there are indications of the gurgling sound which emerges from the pitcher being filled with water; as Rama and Sita walk through the plains, Lakshmana holds a large banana leaf over their heads to save them from heat and rain; as Sita enters the fire to prove her chastity, the onion-like globe of fire takes the shape of the fire-god Agni who saves and blesses her.

So it proceeds in this uncommon Ramayana: like the sound of a bird singing in the open air; untrammelled, heart-warming.

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