Layout 3 - India Foundation for the Arts - IFA

inebriated monkeys and bears in a
pleasure garden after the victory in
Lanka, painted by Pandit Seu of Guler.
An utter sense of delight and wonder
which lifts the fantastic image of the
Pushpak Viman (celestial aircraft) like
a multi-story palace in flight from the
island of Lanka is shared by the
monkeys jumping into the sea and
swimming to celebrate victory. There is
no end to such wonders and delights
everywhere in the countless magical
folios, scrolls and murals, no matter
where you look.
A page in the Shangri Ramayana sums
up how the magic of these visuals
draws the viewer inside the story, just
as it did to the dolt who dived into the
Ramayana, in the story that A.K.
Ramanujan once narrated. 4
In a small
hand-held folio of the Maricha hunt,
the pale, metallic gold of the fleeing
deer set against an identically pale,
matte, mustard-yellow ground melts as
the two colours fuse, and the deer is
camouflaged, but it shines suddenly
like a veritable revelation as the folio
shifts in one’s hand. Entranced by the
mirages of Maricha materialising and
disappearing, the viewer is left sharing
the golden space of the pursuer.
Gulammohammed Sheikh is an artist
and writer who lives in Baroda.
Reading Visuals – Gulammohammed Sheikh
ENDNOTES
1. J.P. Losty, The Ramayana, Love and
Valour in India’s Great Epic, The Mewar
Ramayana Manuscripts, (British Library,
London, 2008).
2. Ibid.
3. The bird doesn’t always see from above,
apart from its vision covering a larger
diametric space because of the location of its
eyes. The phrase coined by filmmaker Mani
Kaul ‘seen from nowhere’ defines the
composite view of multiple perspectives in
an imaginative manner.
4. The story of the village dolt married to a
cultured woman recounts how he,
persuaded by his wife to listen to the
Ramayana story, falls asleep for three
successive nights until his wife accompanies
him to the recitation. Sitting in the front
row, he listens with rapt attention to the tale
of Hanuman dropping Rama’s signet ring
meant to be delivered to Sita in the ocean he
is flying over. As the reciter describes the
confused state of Hanuman who is wringing
his hands the dolt says, ‘Hanuman, don’t
worry, I will get it for you’ and dives into the
ocean and returns with the ring. Paula
Richman (ed.), Many Ramayanas, The
Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South
Asia, (OUP, 1991).
Pushpak Viman, Mandi, c. 1650, courtesy San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego.
29