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The Mandana art of Rajasthan, a unique women's art passed down from mother to daughter
Guest Blogger Pallavi Vadhia is Book Building Manager, Tara Books.
A rare treat afforded staff and visitors at Book Building in Chennai last Saturday.
Watching Sunita, a talented young artist from the Meena tribe, mixing and working with her hand in just two colours – white and terracotta – was a joy to experience. Her calm, yet focused demeanor made all the more pleasurable for the viewer as we gazed at the menagerie of animals skillfully taking shape on large kraft paper sheets.
One could only wonder where her fingers would create the next line and curve. Hailing from Rajasthan’s Meena tribe, Sunita is part of a public art tradition passed on from mother to daughter through the generations, and was with us working on the illustrations for a children’s book project.
Sunita at work
In the Meena villages of Rajasthan women paint not just the walls and floors of their own homes to mark festivals and the passing seasons, but public and communal areas as well, working together and never leaving individual signatures. The living art that they create is known as Mandana.
It is extremely rare for women of this tribe to travel outside of Rajasthan, and this weekend was the first time that Sunita’s work had been displayed publicly, making the visit even more special for us.
Animal motifs in Mandana art
[You can read more about this extraordinary tradition of women’s art in the book Nurturing Walls, which focusses on a common theme found in Meena art: animals and their young]
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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