The difficult life of a Gond painter

Patangarh is a village of artists which owes its artistic legacy to the great Gond artist Jangarh Singh Shyam

The Gond painting captivated me the minute I set my eyes on it. It was a peaceful, pastoral scene of two cows with magnificent horns under a tree full of birds. Perhaps I was being fanciful, but I could picture a story in every brushstroke on the canvas. Which is why when I had the chance to talk to the artist who’d painted it, stories were all I wanted to hear. His name was Ram Kumar Shyam, alias Jabbu, and he was from Patangarh from district Dindori in Madhya Pradesh. I told him I loved the cow and bird painting. He especially liked it too, he said, and told me how he came to paint it.

“One day, when I was leaving for work, I remembered the good old days when I’d take our cattle to the edge of the forest,” he said. “The cows would graze gently and I’d lie in the shade of a tree for hours on end, staring at the sky and playing my flute.” Sometimes, he said, when the mood overtook him, he’d sing as well. “The birds and animals in the forest would often emerge from their hiding places to hear the music and all would be well in my world,” he said. “I remembered that feeling and made the painting.”

It sounded idyllic and I asked him why he didn’t take his animals grazing as often now. He just didn’t have much free time, he said. Patangarh is a village of artists, he told me, which owes its artistic legacy to the great Gond artist Jangarh Singh Shyam. “Every other house in the village has at least one artist,” he said. “But today, almost all of them have to do farming or manual labour to make ends meet.”
 

It’s not that these folk artists had an easy time before the lockdown, I re­alised. 

Market access was difficult in this remote tribal belt. Shyam, like others in the village, would sell his works in wildlife lodges and resorts in Kanha and Bandhavgarh. During the high season, he’d earn between Rs 25,000-50,000 a month. This income would tide him through the months of June to Se­ptember when the wildlife sanctuaries were closed for visitors. Almost all of it would be spent on running the household and buying expensive art supplies such as pens, ink, paints, brushes, paper and canvas from Bhopal, 600 km away. “Just getting to Bhopal was so expensive that all of us would buy at least Rs 20,000 worth of material at a time,” he said. The lockdown shaved months off his productive period and eroded his meagre reserves, which would tide him and his family over the present lean season. “I have accumulated expensive raw material as well as the unsold paintings that you’ve seen,” said he. “Now there’s no time for leisure, I’ve to work for daily wages to support my wife and two daughters.” Which is why, I guess, his longing for the good old days had come through so poignantly in his artwork.

“When things are better, perhaps you’d like to come to Patangarh,” he said. “Maybe I could take you to herd cattle.” I sighed. The idea of lying under a tree and singing to the birds was unbearably, impossibly appealing. Instead I bought his painting. Until things normalise, it will have to suffice as my window to a simpler world.