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| Village Wedding Scene Warli Painting |
Exploring any art form also opens your eyes to the time and place that it originated in. I spent the weekend working on this piece. Many aspects of this scene reminded me of the visits to my father's village Kakanur in Karnataka. It was here that my parents spent the first 7-8 years after marriage. Then, when I was born, last one of four, they shifted to the nearby town Shimoga, for the sake of children's education.
Cooking was done on mud stoves that used firewood. Two of my aunts, both beautiful tall women, would start the fire every morning to cook for a large joint family and all the visiting relatives. I remember this is what my mother used as well when I was little. She walked to a nearby woodlot to put in the order. It would be delivered in front of our house on a bullock cart, a wood cutter would then be hired to slice them into stackable pieces. All of us kids would carry them on our stretched arms, careful not to get splinters into our skin, and bring them inside and to the back of the house where amma would stack them up neatly to pick from everyday, for cooking in the kitchen and to heat water in the bathroom. Firewood was the only source of fuel for domestic use at that time. Then of course, we saw it evolve to kerosene oil stoves, electric coil stove, then the gas stove with detachable gas cylinders that needed to be replaced/replenished when empty, and were lighted using a matchstick. Now, I just have to turn the knob and tik,tik,tik, viola! ready to cook on four/five different burners.
Back to Kakanur (our village), those large black clay pots occupied the corner on kitchen counter, one with water and the other with seasoned buttermilk. I always preferred buttermilk over water because it was well-water and hence tasted different from the Tunga waters in Shimoga. What a relief it was to run to the kitchen after playing out in the sun, and be able to dip the steel cups and drink from those pots which kept the beverage nice and cool on hot summer days. These clay pots also evolved, with a tap attached to it, which was a common thing in everyone's kitchen until refrigerators occupied the kitchen corners.
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| Another village scene with birds in the sky, fish in the water, people going about their activities with a large tree sheltering them. |
