The Ramayana

Bharat Tripathi’s art is inspired by an engagement with enduring themes drawn from the religious And philosophical tradition of the Indian subcontinent. In the Navdurga series (2009), he addressed The manifestations of the Devi, the great mother; in the Dashavatar series (2011), he drew out the nuances of the ten form assumed by Vishnu, the protector in the Hindu trinity, Over the to redeem the world from evil. In the story of Shiva (2012), Bharat attended to the narratives Associated with Shiva, the great ascetic from whose dance the universe is born. in the Tirthankars series (2014), he invoked the ‘peaceful liberators’, the twenty-four spiritual guides whose teaching from the foundation of the Jain world-view. In his current solo exhibition, Bharat turns his attention to the Ramayana, which, with the Mahabharata, is one of India’s perennial epics: an encyclopedia of human experience, vulnerability, wisdom, sorrow, and serenity.

While the Mahabharata is classified as an itihasa, a ‘history’, the Ramayan is regarded as a Mahakavya, a ‘great poem’. Attributed to sage Valmiki and later re-interpreted by Kamban and Tulsidas, among other writers, the Ramayana tells the story of Rama, the prince of Ayodhya, the seventh of Vishnu’s ten avatars. It tells of his birth and youth, his marriage to the princess Sita.

His fourteen-year exile to the forest with sita and his brother Lakshman, Sita’s abduction by the demon-king Ravan, Rama’s alliance with the Vanaras or monkey-people of Kishkinda, and of his campaign to subjugate Ravan’s island-kingdom of Lanka and rescue Sita. Rama and Sita’s return to Ayodhya cannot recapture the happiness of their early years. In a melancholy turn, the blameless sita, under the shadow of rama’s unfounded doubt, is banished to the forest, where their sons, Luv and Kush, are born, as Valmiki’s acolytes, they come to Ayodhyas as boys. In an extraordinary literary move, the Ramayana tells us that attend the sacrifice hosted by the king their father, and sing to him the story of his own life: the Ramayana itself.

In these twelve painting. Bharat revisits the scenes of the Ramayana, re-creating in the his own idiom its familiar and well-loved characters: the dignified but troubled prince Rama, his steadfast and loyal brother Lakshmana, the beautiful and noble Sita, the unswervingly faithful hanuman, and the brave old bird-king Jatayu, who lays down his life to protect sita from Ravana. Bharat’s visualizations imbue the events of the epics with a measure of human Tendeness, suggesting the general contexts of the narrative though a spare imagery white focusing on the drama of the passions that lies at the heart of the story.

Ranjit Hoskote
(November 2015)