Art in the time of rains

Every time this season comes around, I feel like the nayaika of a Raagmala painting, for my heart sings with joy as the dark clouds envelop the sky, their bosom heaving with incandescent rain, the silver streaks of lightening flashing to illuminate the jubilation of a burgeoning earth… Today being Haryali Teej, I can’t help point out that in India, more than spring, it is monsoon that is the season that is looked forward to with great anticipation.

The optimism of the koels who have been singing their melancholic yet seductive songs in an attempt to inveigle the clouds has finally paid off…and the skies open in a veritable deluge of sparkling drops that touch the earth and the magic unfolds…the papiha calls out to its mate to be united with its beloved as the earth rips open in a celebration of rejuvenation and reaffirmation…

The monsoon in India comes laden with a myriad moods and connotations, romance and viraha (or separation), poetry and puddles, fertility and floods, art and affection woven in the colours of the rainbow in a joyous abandon. It is no wonder then that Indra, the lord of the heavens, is also the thunder god and paeans are sung to him in the Vedas, for his role in bringing rains is perhaps the most proactive.

It is said that Vritra, the cloud-dwelling demon of drought-held-back rains once and Indra had to use his arsenal of thunder and bolts of lightening to defeat him in battle and push him out of his cloud-built tower. The word monsoon comes from the Arabic word mausim, meaning weather. Strangely enough, the origin of the word for torrential rain is in a desert that doesn’t even know the beautiful and sensual pleasure of a monsoon downpour!

Origin notwithstanding, the monsoon has had a literally cascading impact on Indian literature, art, dance, music and architecture, where the monsoon months are clubbed together as Chaturmasa – the four months of Asharh, Shravan, Bhadra and Ashvin. Kalidas’s lyrical poem Meghdootam – the messenger cloud – when a divine Yaksha is separated from his Yakshini by the gods, his pining messages of love are carried by monsoon clouds, is arguably the classic example of monsoon related poetry. I find that my own paintings take on hues of the rain clouds and the amazing colours of the dusk as the sun paints the monsoon skies pink, tangerine, purple and red and the clouds dance with delighted abandon.

The poignant smell of the earth as the first raindrops fall is something that has inspired the romantic in all of us. No surprise that the ittar-maker or gandhi then created that incomparable aroma of the first monsoon showers on a parched earth and called it Mitti or earth! In the Baramasa miniature paintings from Rajasthan, the monsoon pictures have women on perched on swings, white cranes flying across a dark sky, peacocks with the plumes fanned out, parakeets and blooming lotuses with the musicians singing the Malhar or ragas of the rains. 

Everything speaks of rain without the painting actually depicting a shower! For it is said that rains had to be depicted with “ropes of pearls”! Some of the most evocative paintings from the Bundi, Bikaner and Jodhpur school of miniatures depict the moods of monsoon with Krishna and Radha enjoying the dark clouds and women on swings on mango trees and more such romantic imagery all sans a speck of rain!

The two ragas of this season are Megh and Malhar. Not merely shade differences of the tonal mood of the season, but actually different symbols and pictorial illustrations of the monsoon, Megh is of a dark and serious mood. It is a time when the sky is heavily overcast and rolls of thunder growl threateningly and its gripping aura suggests a somber depth. Megh has the distinction of being accepted in all the four major matas or groups of raga classification.

When the custom of visualising these forms became an accepted practice, Megh was represented as a dark, handsome man with a formidable appearance. In his left hand he carries a naked sword, flourishing it in the air as if rending the sky to bring rain. At a recent Kathak recital when Pandit Ram Mohan performed, I couldn’t help but recall another performance of his where he epitomised the dark God Krishna in the rains.
From the major form of Megh are derived the six raginis of Malhari, Sorathi, Sawani, Kaushiki and Gandhari. The ragini Malhar is draped in white and sits on a bed of jasmine, holding a do-tara. And just like the intensity of the downpour almost like an arc, there is a distinct bearing on the placement of the ragas’ singing schedule. At the onset, Dhulia Malhar is sung — as the dust or dhul still blows in gusts, the semi-dry harshness is interspersed with startling intermissions of welcoming raindrops. The logic is that it is not merely the ragas, but the swaras that dance to the rain. The various forms of Malhars include the more popular Mian ki Malhar named after Tansen, Gaud Malhar, Surdasi Malhar, Ramdasi Malhar to the rarely heard Jayant Malhar, Nat Malhar and Kedar Malhar.

Of course the kajris and jhoolas in the so-called light classical genre have been immortalised by Girija Devi and have the power to haunt as the incessant rain beats against the window panes. The viraha songs of the women who await the arrival of their beloved touch a new depth of poignancy as they are sung in monsoon in Rajasthan, eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. A particularly evocative one likens the bridegroom’s sehra woven from the fragrant jasmine flowers of the season and the lightening akin to the silver and gold zari of the cummerbund wound around his waist, the thunder reverberations from the gallop of his white steed…

Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@yahoo.com