Travel,
love and longing
SAUMYA AGARWAL
THIS essay explores motifs of travel as
linked to the emotions of love and virah
(separation) in the wall paintings decorating 19th and 20th century
architectural structures in the Shekhawati region of
north-eastern Rajasthan in India. This region is famous as the largest open air
art gallery in the world, due to the high number of painted buildings that are
covered with figural imagery.
One significant trend that had a formative
influence on the region, and which gives it its contemporary identity as an
open air art gallery, was the migration of merchants from Hindu and Jain
communities from the 1830 onwards. These merchants, who eventually came to be
referred to as Marwaris1 once they travelled out of the Shekhawati region, migrated to metropolitan trading centres
like Calcutta and Bombay to participate in the colonial trade of commodities
like cotton, jute and opium, essaying the role of brokers, insurers and bankers
for the British.
A part of the wealth generated through this
trade was used to finance elaborately painted buildings in Shekhawati
as a way for the merchants to consolidate their identity within the local
community. The building and painting activity started approximately in the
1840s and reached its most prolific stage from the last few decades of the 19th
century to the first four decades of the 20th century. The painted buildings
include temples, residential spaces (havelis),
and cenotaphs (chhatris) built to commemorate
a deceased patriarch.
Historically, these buildings functioned as
conspicuous markers of success for the merchants. In the town of Ramgarh, for instance, the prominence of a merchant family
is measured through the number of painted structures they had built in the 19th
and the 20th centuries. While there were several merchant families in Ramgarh, to be acknowledged as the household of a seth – that is a
merchant of established renown and wealth – the patriarch and the family
were expected to have financed the building of a haveli,
a well, a temple, a dharamshala, and a
cenotaph dedicated to the merchant patriarch’s father .2
To
be acknowledged as a seth
was a matter of some prestige for the merchants. This also means that not all
merchants were considered seths,
and this distinction was significant in the context of the towns of Shekhawati.
Apart from the paintings and painted
buildings being markers of success, I argue that the commissioning of the
elaborately painted buildings produced the space of the towns of Shekhawati as a ‘homeland’ which was articulated in
opposition to the trade cities. With the merchants travelling to Calcutta,
Bombay, and other regions, and living there for extended periods of time, while
their families resided in Shekhawati, the divide
between the home and the colonial city became more defined. Moreover, this was
in no way a mobility involving a unidirectional singular journey, and was
marked by periodic cycles of return.
Towards the end of the 19th century, there
are even instances where the families would commission painted buildings in Shekhawati even when all the members had already shifted to
the metropolitan centres. This has resulted in some havelis
being built but never lived in. The sense of belonging that was evoked by these
structures was thus constituted through the division between the colonial city
and the indigenous hometown. The architecture scholar, Kaiwan
Mehta, suggests that a possible dichotomous relation between the two helped
reify Shekhawati towns as ‘home’.3 The
anthropologist Anne Hardgrove has argued that these
became ‘ancestral’ buildings for the Marwari merchant community .4
While the commissioning of the painted
buildings was linked to the travel due to the merchant’s involvement in the
colonial economy, these paintings were also shaped by the mobilities
which have historically been an intrinsic feature of the desert economy of
Rajasthan. This becomes evident in many of the themes of the paintings,
particularly in the motifs of travel which abound on the walls.
The
themes of the wall paintings of Shekhawati are vast.
The paintings are particularly famous for the hybridity of its imagery where
the traditional and religious intermingle with the ‘modern’. For instance,
Hindu gods are painted flying in cars or listening to the gramophone. While
paintings based on religious themes, particularly the Vaishnavite
beliefs of the merchants are popular, another popular
themes in the paintings, I argue, are motifs of travel. These paintings include
processions made up of people travelling on foot, in animal dependent modes of
transport, as well as the train.
As
already discussed, the towns of Shekhawati were
shaped by trade and the circulation of goods and people. The wall paintings
were not only shaped by these movements, but also capture them. People
travelling on horses, camels and animal drawn carts are popular themes in these
paintings. Parties of people travelling together usually represent wedding
processions, military contingents, travelling parties in trade caravans and
processions of folk festivals. For instance, in Figure 1 from
an outer side-wall of a haveli, dated c.1870, images
of travel run through the entire length of the wall. This is evident in
the continuous frieze on the upper band, as well as large individual images of
people traveling on elephants, carriages or horseback in the middle section.
Figure 1: Procession on the side-wall of a haveli
in Ramgarh.
These paintings, over time, also
incorporated depictions of the train. Apart from visually depicting the
constant flows of goods and people that shaped the region, another idea that paintings of motifs of travel articulate is an emphasis
on virah, that is, separation. These thus
reflect the complex flows of separation, mobility and loss that shaped the
region.
An oft found imagery in the wall paintings is that of Dhola-Maaru (Figure 2). It is a love ballad that is popular
all over Rajasthan and is most commonly depicted in the wall paintings in its
archetypal form5 which shows the lovers fleeing on a camel,
with two men on either horses or camels in pursuit. Sometimes there is a figure
of a charan (a peripatetic musician/bard)
leading the lovers. The love tale of Dhola Maaru was popular in the region in various written,
performed and oral formats. While there are many variations between different
versions of the story, the broad strokes of the narrative are as follows.
Dhola, also known as Salhakumar,
was the son of king of Narvar. Maruni, or Maru was the daughter of the King of Pugal.
They were married in infancy when their families met in Pushkar.
Subsequently they went back to their respective kingdoms. After coming of age, Dhola forgets about this marriage and marries again, while Maaru longs for her husband in her natal home. She and her
family send several messages to Dhola, but these are
all intercepted by Dhola’s new wife, Malvani. Finally, a messenger is able to reach Dhola and he sings praises of Maaru’s
beauty, while also describing the pangs of separation she feels for her
husband. Dhola then embarks on a journey to fetch Maaru. On the way he faces a few hurdles but manages to
reach Pugal. On their return journey to Narvar, the couple encounter more dangers. One is when a
jealous man, Umar Soomra (often depicted in the wall
paintings as two pursuers), tries to abduct Maru by
laying a trap for the couple. The couple manage to foil his stratagem and
safely make it back to Dhola’s kingdom where they
spend the rest of their days in happiness.6
Even as there are various versions of the story popular
in many parts of North India, historian Tanuja Kothiyal highlights that in the story popular in Rajasthan,
virah or separation, is the dominant emotion,
and this is linked to the reality of the peripatetic nature of life in the
region.7
The Thar Desert
has historically fostered cultures connected by networks and mobility through
the movements of armies, merchants, pastoralists, ascetics and bards regularly
crossing the desert.8 Therefore, hardships suffered due to
separation between the lovers, as well as ‘absences’ seems to be a pervasive
phenomenon of the desert economy of the region.9 This is evident in the oral and written
traditions that are often woven around the motif of travel. The proliferation
of the archetypal Dhola Maaru
imagery on the walls attests to these paintings having similar metaphoric
significance in the towns of Shekhawati as well. As art historian Molly Emma Aitken has
argued, the prolific presence of archetypal imagery of a narrative reflects the
importance of the tale in popular imagination.10
Figure 2: Dhola Maaru
as part of a procession on a side-wall of a haveli in
Ramgarh.
Figure 3: Dhola Maaru, Detail Figure 2.
Another layer of meaning gets added to the depiction of
the Dhola Maaru imagery
when it gets inserted into paintings of processions. Often the processions
decorating the walls have a portmanteau quality to them, where images from
several different contexts are put together. While there are several depictions
of love tales popular in the Shekhawati wall
paintings, it is the tale of Dhola Maaru which is often inserted in paintings of processions.
Figure 2, from Ramgarh, shows a procession painted on
a side outer wall of a haveli. Included in
this is an important personage travelling on an
elephant, along with a depiction of Dhola Maaru that shows a man (Dhola)
and a woman (Maaru) fleeing on camel back. The woman
turns around to shoot at their pursuers with a gun.11
This is followed by two Europeans travelling on a horse
drawn buggy. Below this procession is painted a train which is now significantly
faded. Even as Kothiyal has highlighted that the
emotion of a ballad like Dhola Maaru
is one of separation (virah)
, the meaning communicated from the figural aspect of the painting in
the context of the walls of Shekhawati is also one of
movement and fast paced action. For instance, in Figure 2, the reins of the
camel are taunt, suggesting speed, and the horses
behind the camel are in a galloping stance. Just as long periods of separation
were part of
the lived reality of the region, this reality was also shaped by a process of
travel and geographical mobility. The discursive and figural aspects of the
archetypal imagery of Dhola Maaru
capture both these elements.
The presence of the Dhola-Maaru
imagery connects these depictions to the long history of mobility in the region
which was linked to the desert topography of Rajasthan wherein the love tale of
Dhola-Maaru is an important motif for separation and
absences. In the context of the travels of the merchants of Shekhawati,
these historical mobilities and traditions of
depicting absences
and longing through the emotion of separation is further linked to the
displacement caused by the colonial economy and the dichotomy between the purported
homeland and the trading city.
The paintings thus move both through the
depiction of mobility that these images capture, as well as the emotional
affect that such paintings are meant to evoke. Bhava,
which is a term for the kind of emotional affect paintings are supposed to
generate in the viewer, is part of reception theory in Rajasthani
art.
The idea of bhava
also implies the viewers’ familiarity with that which is depicted. This makes
me think that the coming together of the motifs of travel, along with a tale of
love and separation, must have been particularly evocative for the inhabitants
of the towns of Shekhawati, which included the
merchants and their families, since mobility, separation and reunion were very
much part of their lived realities. In conclusion, even as it is widely agreed
that the wall paintings of Shekhawati
are mostly mono-scenic, that is depicting a single scene instead of a narrative
sequence, a closer look would reveal narratives and meaning being generated
from how disparate images interact with each other on the shared canvas of the
walls.
The wall painting tradition in Shekhawati
came to an end by the middle of the 20th century, as the merchant community
moved out of the region. The paintings survive due to the resilience of the ala-ghila technique, a form of painting on wet
plaster akin to frescoes. These then become important historical sources to
understand the history of the region through the visual.
Footnotes:
1. The term Marwari became common parlance to describe the Hindu and Jain merchants from Shekhawati once they had moved to centres like Calcutta and Bombay. This term often had pejorative connotations associated with it.
2. Ilay Cooper, ‘Shekhawati’s Architecture and the Building Boom’, in Abha Narain Lambah (ed.), Shekhawati: Havelis of the Merchant Princes. The Marg Foundation, Mumbai, 2013, p. 33.
3. Kaiwan Mehta, ‘Picture Urbanity. Towns in Shekhawati and Empire Cities’, in Abha Narain Lambah (ed.), Shekhawati. Havelis of the Merchant Princes. The Marg Foundation, Mumbai, 2013, pp. 75-77.
4. Anne Hardgrove, Community and Public Culture. The Marwaris in Calcutta. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2004, p. 93.
5. An archetypal image is a model which cites a specific narrative without the need to illustrate all narrative sequences from the tale.
6. There is a large amount of variability between versions of the story across all its different formats. For a short contemporary written version of the story see, Rani Lakshmi Kumari Chundawat, Love Stories of Rajasthan, Books Treasure, Jodhpur, 2008, pp. 151-158.
7 .Tanuja Kothiyal, Nomadic Narratives. A History of Mobility and Identity in the Great Indian Desert, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2016, p 259.
8. Tanuja Kothiyal, Nomadic Narratives. A History of Mobility and Identity in the Great Indian Desert, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2016, p. 264.
9. Tanuja Kothiyal, Nomadic Narratives. A History of Mobility and Identity in the Great Indian Desert, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2016, p. 259.
10. Molly Emma Aitken, The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting, Yale University Press, New Haven, London, 2010, p. 180.
11. Since the love tale is primarily an oral genre, innovation in its retellings and visual representations is common practice.