The difficult life of a Gond painter

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.

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