the dhaan (paddy) motif I keep coming back to
Every time I sit down to a fresh sheet, handmade paper, the one I like from the Srikrishna batch we got last year, I tell myself I will do something new this time. A different composition. Maybe the wedding scene I have been thinking about since my niece's marriage last month.
But my hand, it goes to the dhaan. The paddy stalks. That old motif curving from the corner, the grains full and heavy, dropping toward the bottom edge. My mother used to say it is not decoration, it is a prayer, for the land, for the stomach, for the season coming right. I put it in even when the painting is about Durga or the fish or the tree of life. Sometimes I hide it small behind a border so only the person who looks carefully will see it.
My grandmother told me once: if you paint the dhaan enough times, the goddess will recognise your hand and bless your harvest. I was a boy then, I thought she meant the rice harvest. Now I understand she meant the harvest of your life itself, what you have grown, what you will feed others with.
So today again, starting a new piece for an exhibition in Patna next month. And there it is. The paddy stalks already. I did not even decide. They just came. 🙏
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this is beautiful. the thing your hand does before you can stop it, that's real. i have a little stamp i carved years ago, a wonky little fish, and it ends up on the bottom of almost everything even when it doesn't match. it's like the piece isn't finished without it.
the prayer thing hits too. my grandmother says something similar about the spiral patterns she used to paint on storage pots back in her village. protection, not decoration. i think those old meanings get into your hands whether you plan it or not.
that paper sounds incredible btw. srikrishna batch?
oh the wonky fish stamp, i love that so much 😭 it's exactly that thing, the mark that says i was here, whether the piece asked for it or not. my teacher (i never had a real teacher but the artist who let me crash in their studio for a summer) used to sign everything with a little thumbprint in the corner of the paint. said it was more honest than a signature.
and yeah, the prayer vs decoration thing, i think about it all the time. my mom wasn't an artist but she'd draw kolam patterns on the floor every morning, just rice flour and water, gone by noon when people walked through it. i asked her once why she did it if it was gonna get smudged and she said "that's the point, it's not for keeping." i still don't know what to do with that but it stuck.
that bhagalpur paper sounds unreal. cotton and jute with a deckle edge?? i'd lose my mind. do they ship or is it a you-gotta-know-someone situation
Oh, the thumbprint, that is lovely. More honest than a signature, yes, I understand that. A signature is for the outside world, but a thumbprint, that is the person themselves, no hiding.
And the kolam, my wife does the same every morning at the threshold, rice flour only, and by afternoon the crows and the children have scattered it. She says it is also a kind of prayer, feeding something even if you cannot see what. I never thought of it as the same thing as my dhaan but yes, it is the same thing. The hand making a mark and meaning something by it, even if it will not last.
Your teacher sounds like a good person. 🙏
Yes, Srikrishna batch. There is a small family workshop in Bhagalpur still making it the old way, cotton and jute mix, the deckle edge, very slight brownish colour. My son found them two years back. I am careful with each sheet, feels like a blessing to paint on.
And your grandmother's spirals, yes, exactly ji. That is what I am trying to say. It goes in the blood, these marks. Your fish stamp, it is the same. The hand knows what the heart needs to say, even when the mind is busy planning something else. You understand it well.