History Within

You do things first, you understand the reason for doing those things later. 

Through Draupadi, I explore the essence of human emotions. This makes my Draupadi just another human being, not a queen, not even a woman. She is the symbol of all that humanity experiences. She is my attempt to unravel the essence of all beings, how we feel love and when we find peace. Why have I chosen her? Her story is known to everyone. While my paintings aim to go beyond the stories, their foundations still lie in her amazing saga which makes her the timeless character with the widest range of emotions ever talked about. 

But I understood the reason later. I hadn’t explained why my portrayal of Draupadi was important to me. (I believe that this explanation will keep developing and I will be happy if I can completely understand this in a few years’ time. The explanation below is based on how wise I am in 2014).

I was speaking to this guy who makes movies. And he was sharing his experience of working with other artists. And the summary is this. All artists tend to start with the dark. For some reason, it is important to get the dark out of you before your output actually becomes artistic. All artists (or any amateur for that matter) have something dark inside them. Also, we always paint what we go through. I don’t know Draupadi or you or anyone else. I only know myself. It is my perspective and my emotions reflected in this case through Draupadi. It was just an attempt for the dark inside me to come out through a channel known to everyone around me – the story of Mahabharat. The rest of the explanations are already in my 2013 notes.