Every household in this ancient village of 100 houses is engaged in the preservation and propulsion of the ancient art form of the pattachitra. SHAlINI SAKSENA visits this heritage village in Odisha to tell you how doggedly these artists have been working on maintaining the originality of these complex but colourful paintings
It is a quiet village just off Puri, yet it occupies a prominent place on the art and culture map of India. Raghurajpur, in Puri district of Odisha is famous for its artmanship — the pattachitra and ancient wall paintings. The artisans from this village have been producing brilliant paintings on cloth and dried palm leaves for centuries.
Situated on the banks of Bhargavi river and surrounded by coconut, palm and betelnut trees, Raghurajpur has an idyllic setting.
As one walks into the village — there are two neat rows of houses with a temple and a village choupal in the middle. What attracts you to these houses are the murals/paintings on the outer walls from Ramayan and Mahabharat and the artists inside who are busy either painting on prepared cloth or carving on dried palm leaves.
At one of the houses, Kirtan Das comes forward and tells you that the reason behind the murals is ageold, as old as the art of painting on cloth and or dried palm leaves.
“It is a village of artists. It is natural that we would want to use every bit of space and whatever canvas we can get to paint something that is such an intricate part of our lives. This starts from our doorstep,” he explains.
Pulling out a chair for you while he sits on a chatai himself and takes you into the fascinating tale of how this beautiful and intricate art form began.
Back in the 10th century, when there was no means to show that one had visited the Jagananth Temple — people wanted to carry with them a memento and what better way than the painting of the lord Jagannath himself.
“It was called yatripattachitra. Pilgrims would take this, prasad and betel nuts. Yeh praman thha ki woh Jagannath mandir key darshan karney aayen hain. Use samany free hand se banatey thhey paintings ko. No scale was used since the concept of drawing with a pencil and then painting didn’t exist,” Das explains.
To begin with, there were just a handfull of artists who would sit outside the temple and draw free hand paintings of lord Jagannath and other deities. As the demand for these paintings grew, the number of artists who came from Raghurajpur, a mere 15 km away from Puri, also increased.
Today, modern means of transportation has made travel comfortable and easy for tourists to reach this village so the artists stays at home. Back then, it was the artist who had to walk to the temple and sell his art. It would take him a good part the morning to reach the venue.
To draw, they needed a canvas. Pieces of cotton cloth or silk were used since paper was yet to find its way to this remote village. But the process of preparing the cloth canvas was tedious.
“Pehle, char-paanch din tak usko imli ke paani mein (seed and all) rakhtey thhey. Phir kapdey ko dhoop mein sukhatey thhey. Aisa paanch-chchey baar karna padta thha. Phir charr-paanch pieces ko chipkane ke liye gum use karna padta thha,” Das tells you. (One has to soak pieces of cloth in tamarind water for four-days. They are then dried in the sun. Once, dry, these pieces have to be glued together to form a canvas). The process, one is told, is call niryaskalpa.
It would take at least a week to prepare one canvas. Everyone in the family would be involved in it while the husband was away at the temple. Since the region has plenty of coconut trees, its leaves became canvas too. To give strength to the leaf so that it would not tear while drawing, more or less the same technique. Instead, they would be sun-dried and then layers were pasted using gum.
The glue too was not easy to make. The artists had to make do with whatever they could from the resources available locally. The fluid of the Babul tree came in handy. Using a mixture of the fluid, water and tamarind seeds, the gum was made. Once in a while, some artists would also use bones of various animals but this was rare as the paintings were of Gods and Goddesses. Prominent among them were Krishna, Ganesh, Vishnu and Shiv.
“People liked to buy the paintings that had these Gods even though there were pattachitras that had stories to tell from different epics. So much so, that even today, people, especially foreigners, who come to the village only want to buy these Gods. We make what is in demand. Once in a while, we do paint animals and other objects. But that is rare,” Das tells you.
As you walk away, another artist beckons you and explain why this art form has undergone a sea change. Some artists have started using chemical paints and even paper. “This is because it is much easier and less tedious. Artists want to produce more work and earn more money. For this, one will have to compromise somewhere. But, in this village, artist only use traditional methods. After all, the village is known for its artworks the world over and people come here to buy traditional paintings. This means cloth — cotton and/or silk and dried palm leaves — and natural colours,” Sundarshan Sahu says.
Das tells you that if they didn’t make paintings using traditional methods nobody would come to buy paintings from them directly which are much cheaper than what one pays in the open market. But it is not as if these artists don’t have pattachitras that are less expensive.
Sahu and Das show their fathers’ and grandfathers’ work that costs anywhere between Rs 25,000 to Rs 75,000. “This is very old work. If you compare it with the work that we are doing and have been taught by them, one can make out the difference. They had patience. They took almost a year to make one piece. We take a couple of months. We can’t afford to spend six to nine months on just one painting. We have to earn a livelihood. Workmanship will get compromised,” Das says, adding that one can get a good pattachitra anywhere between Rs 500 to Rs 1,000, depending on the intricacy of work. This is mostly by students who come to the village and apprentice with the artists.
Though the work may not be so fine today, the method has not been compromised upon. For the brush, hair of horse and goat were (and are still used) knotted at the end of a bamboo stick. As for the paint, these too were derived and extracted from different stones, leaves, fruits, seeds and other natural elements.
Again, making these colours was not easy. For white, artists used, (even today) conch shells and chalk dust. This is ground into a fine powder and mixed with gum to get a smooth colour. Burnt soil or Hingula (a stone which is powdered and mixed with water and gum) was used to get the red colour. Yellow was made with Haritala stone or turmeric. Green was derived by boiling neem leaves in water and gum. Blue was derived from indigo while black was made from burnt coconut shells, burnt ash and even how one makes kajal at home.
With these primary colours, the artists get secondary and tertiary colours to bring the pattachitra alive. Interestingly, while there are so many colours that are being used on the paintings, it is the black and white pattachitra that are most popular. It has nothing to do with which colour, the paintings are traditional. It is the customer’s choice.
looking more closely at the paintings, one understands why. The colour pattachitras have several colours — green, red, yellow, black, pink, blue, white, purple and even a turquoise. While the art work is beautiful and colours filled in brilliantly with not even a single dot of paint outside the line, the overall effective is a bit too much. In comparison, the black and white pattachitras have a more soothing effect.
“The key traditional ingredients for the pattachitra are — piece of cloth (cotton or silk) and or dried palm leaf, brush made from horse or goat hair, natural colour and gum. No self-respecting artist from this village will use any other method of drawing a pattachitra,” Sahu asserts.
But over time, a few have changes have crept in. First, instead of free hand painting, the artists today make the drawing with a pencil and using a scale to give the frame-like border to the pattachitra. Once the drawing is complete, colours are filled in. Second, since the drawings have become more complex, technology has stepped in. Artificial brushes are popular and different sizes are used for drawing thinner lines, like a face, and for detailing. Mouse hair with wooden handles and are used to paint intricate details like a face or ornamentation.
“What has not changed is how we draw on the palm leaf. Once the palm is prepared, we use a sharp iron pen to draw on the leaf. The effect is the same as one would while tracing. The imprint is left on the leaf. Care has to be taken not to put too much pressure or the leaf will tear and the canvas ruined. Since the palm leaf is small in width one needs several of these to create one single pattachitra. These small pieces are attached to each other with a thread,” Das says.
But before the pieces are strung together, the colour is filled in, not painted. Black colour is spread over the drawing. Due to the grooves created by the pen the colour gets embedded in them and the rest is wiped away with a damp cloth.
The beauty of these paintings is that they better with age. “The older the painting, the better it becomes. The colours become more vibrant since they are natural. If these were chemical-based, they would fade away with years. But you can keep our paintings for decades and nothing will happen to them — neither will their colour fade, nor will the canvas lose its sheen. If one gets them framed, they will last you for over a 100 years,” Das says with conviction and shows you one such scroll which has the entire Ramayan written on it in Oriya.
“This was made by my grandfather when he was young. Even I don’t know how old this one is. My father says it is at least 90 years old if not more,” he says and opens the pieces carefully.
“It is very old and the threads holding the pieces have now started to break at some points. We don’t open it much, only for VIP customers who want to understand the art. If you see the palm leaf, that has also started to break at the edges. But this is because this has not been kept under wraps. If we had done this, it would have been as good as new,” Das tells you.
Raghurajpur is the only village in India where every family of the 100 households it houses, is engaged in one craft or another. “Every villager is an artist and every house is a studio. Women are taught this ancient art form too. Yeh hamara profession nahin hai. It is a way of life for us. That’s why our women can draw them too. We don’t earn much but are happy with what we have. Our houses are not big and we don’t have fancy gadgets. But we are doing what others are not — painting in lord Jagannath’s land. Not everybody has that privilege. We are honoured to be the chosen few to keep this tradition alive,” Das says. In 2000, Raghurajpur was declared a heritage village by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage in a bid to revive the ancient wall painting art and the pattachitra. It is the first village to be developed as part of the rural tourism promotion project. The village also hosts Basant Utsav every year in February/March.
To reach this village, one can hire a taxi either from Puri or Bhubaneswar. One can also take a bus and get down at Chandanpur and take a cycle rickshaw to the village. The actual village is a bit in the interior though there are a few shops just as one takes a turn from the main road. Though the artists will tell you that the village starts from the road itself, truth is that Raghurajpur is 500 yards away. So, don’t get waylaid!
