DRAWN TO LIFE
Ina Puri
Every great drawing—even if it is of a hand or the back of a torso, forms perceived thousands of times before—is like the map of a newly discovered island. Only it is far easier to read a drawing than a map; in front of a drawing it is the five senses that make a surveyor…. And this scale is then filled with the potentiality of every degree of hardness, yieldingness, force of movement, activeness, and passiveness that you have ever buried your head in or knocked it against. John Berger
The rays of the sun streaming in were blocked out, and in the pitch-dark caves, the frescoes on the walls were aglow with an intensity that was almost celestial. The figure of Buddha in meditation loomed large eyes closed, fingers delicately composed in mudras. A hush fell over the gathering as the artists almost reverentially took in the spectacle of the magnificent friezes on the Dunhuang cave walls. The spell was broken when the group spilled out into the sunlit area fronting the caves and wandered off in different directions to explore the heritage site. All but one. Rini Dhumal stayed back, her sketchbook clutched in her hands as she scribbled away furiously, capturing the images before they faded from her mind. It had been reassuring within the darkness—the serene Buddha so intensely present before them, but the gentle expression was already ebbing. She knew well how fickle the ways of seeing were, how easy it was to forget! The composition of Buddha, with a thousand alms-bowls arranged in a semi-circular curve around the seated figure, and the sun and the moon in distant heavens, had mesmerized her. She wanted to remember always the intricate way in which the two dragons had twisted their lashing tails beneath Buddha’s lotus throne. She had to sketch her observations immediately…lest she should forget the blue of the sea and the deep crimson of the lotus blossoms. And so her fingers flew over the blank pages, filling them with images of the Jataka tales, the apsaras and Buddha.
Drawings of Fantasy Black felt pen 17.8 x 17.8 cm 1999
Rini Dhumal traces her tryst with drawing, back to her early girlhood when she spent long summer holidays at her grandfather’s ancestral home, a rambling mansion in Itakumari, now in Bangladesh. While her other siblings busied themselves elsewhere and her twin brother sat patiently by the pond waiting for the fish to bite, Rini wandered around the vast house. She befriended the elderly widows the family had given shelter to and begged them to tell her stories of their lives, of when they
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