A Red Light for All Other Men....

This painting represents a damsel applying vermilion to her hair-parting. The painting presents a pleasant blend of the skills of a jeweler who endows it with finest details and the vision of an aesthetician that shapes the figure adhering to the highest beauty norms. One gives it its glittering adornment and the other its proportions, unique figure and over-all impact.

The maiden, represented in this statue, has been modeled on the line on which Khajuraho sculptor, working at its Parasanath temple, modeled his Srangar-rata nayika holding a mirror in her left hand and applying vermilion with the other. This painting however, marks a subtle improvement over its stone counterpart. It shows the lady using a long stick to mark her forehead with red vermilion, signifying her married status and thus for red light to all, except her duly wed husband.

As a matter of fact, it is the unique treatment of beauty and grace and the great artistic skill that the figures carved in Khajuraho stones, or even here in this painting, appear to be the inhabitants of a world beyond the world of man. But, in reality, the artists, working on them, had in their minds only the human figures as well as human aesthetics as perceived by ancient masters. They identified the Indian maid, the nayika, not only in her various characters but also in her various roles and wove around such classifications their aesthetics. Each nayika type had its own demeanour as well as the specific attributes of physique, that is, the body aesthetics and the body language. This painting depicts one of the steps of solah-srangar, that is, the sixteen steps of dressing and adorning a maid. In Indian tradition, it is essential for a married woman to have vermilion mark above her forehead on the hair-parting. She is wearing various ornaments as these aesthetics prescribe for a married damsel. In a pleasant gesture, the damsel is holding a mirror in her left hand and is applying vermilion with the right. This gesture slightly curves her figure correspondingly. Her lean belly tilts to right and the fascinatingly moulded breasts with a deep cleavage make the forward thrust. The face tilted slightly to her left, diagonally angled arms and the geometry of the entire figure create its own music and produce its own rhythm, which a sensitive ear listens and eye perceives.

This painting was created in the city of Kishangarh, Rajasthan. The artist is Shri Manohar Saini.

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