The Raised Eyebrow
I never thought I’d see an Elayaraja painting outside of his fan page until I came across a short story by Atiya Sumar. For the uninitiated, Elayaraja is a contemporary Tamil painter who has always been compared to the prolific Raja Ravi Varma due to their similar style. I chose to call him a Tamil painter and not an Indian painter for a very specific reason. I believe that Elayaraja is completely unique and in some ways the antithesis to Ravi Varma. Whereas Ravi Varma paints women from Hindu mythology to represent the nostalgic ideals of his religious identity, Elayaraja chooses to paint women from rural Tamil life to showcase the simple beauty of his materially manifested Dravidian cultural identity.
There are some clashes in this painting, but it isn’t between the Hindu and Tamil cultures. Take a moment to just look at the painting. Observe it, don’t analyze it. Done? I now invite you to join me as I clumsily attempt to locate this painting in the same time-space continuum where you and I are lost together. I only have one request: please look past my condescending, smug, and sometimes overly melodramatic tone - I’m just happy that I felt something today.
In this painting, we see a seated young girl leaning against a moss-covered pillar, looking straight at the viewer, with two birds in the background. At first glance, it is a very common rural scene, but deconstructing the symbols reveal a multitude of stories. She is young, but she wears a small red Bindi on her forehead, representing her womanhood. There is no matrimonial thread on her neck: she’s unmarried. There’s a horizontal white line on her forehead, meaning she’s a Shaivite. Her hair shines from coconut oil and is in a tight braid. It was probably braided after her ritual morning bath, either by her mother or an older sister. She is cared-for.
She is probably from a southern Tamil district. However, the half-saree she is wearing is a Kanchipuram-style silk saree with gold borders. Perhaps it was a gift that someone brought back for her from their travels to the northern Tamil district. Someone had her in mind when they bought it. Since the gift is rather expensive, the giver was probably someone very close to her, maybe her father. This would also mean that she is from a Vellalar family, who are a successful class of farmers and traders. It is a rather generous gift and she is loved. This is also evidenced by the many gold bangles she wears, and her gold earrings studded with tiny rubies.
While jewelry are gifts of love, they are shadowed by the birds behind her. They are her pet lovebirds, a species of small parrots native to Madagascar. It is an imported gift, another symbol of tradesmen successfully interacting with the outer world. I know what you’re thinking. How can birds be kept as pet outdoors when they’re not caged? The answer is a little sad. Their wings are clipped: a common practice to keep them from escaping. Lovebirds are always kept in pairs because they are extremely sociable and require constant companionship. A solitary lovebird suffers from psychological and behavioral problems such as depression, anxiety and aggression. They’re not so different from us.
It is twilight, and she soon has to return indoors to light an oil lamp and say her evening prayers. However, she is sitting on a porch at the threshold of her home. Sitting in that exact spot is both her restraint and her rebellion. She is waiting for someone, hoping to catch a glimpse of them across the street. So who was she waiting for? A young man or old? She is wearing her favorite saree and jewelry. She perhaps yearns to leave, but cannot. The threshold represents the edge of her home, and in a traditionally conservative and patriarchal society, it’s as far as she’s allowed to go by herself. Yet she sits there in defiance. She is not in a cage, but she cannot go far. She is loved, but also controlled by that love. Her wings, too, are clipped.
Or perhaps there is a different side to her story. Perhaps she is at the threshold because she is waiting for someone to return home. Someone who loves her, someone she misses, someone who travels far, someone who always thinks about her and returns laden with gifts. Perhaps she is wearing that particular saree and those exact bangles and earrings just to show that she too had him in her thoughts. She probably has chores to do, but she doesn’t want to go indoors. Not yet. Maybe he’s late, but he’s just around the corner. Perhaps he’s gone for years and she doesn’t know when or if he’ll be back. So she waits there every evening, dressed in her finery, wistfully looking into the distance waiting for a familiar face to appear.
Maybe she’s forgotten the face. Maybe she never even saw the face, but only heard about it through whispered stories in the dead of sleepless nights. Does it matter? Does the weight of love fall any differently in the pit of her stomach? Does it change how sharp and piercing the pain of separation is? Don’t you nervously clutch your knees close to your body the same way? That pain is hers. That love is hers. She owns it. It is not ours to know.
This is a timeless scene and could have occurred at any point of time in the last four hundred years. Time moves on but traditions remain. It could have been a thousand years or more, but lovebirds were only introduced to the Indian subcontinent in the 17th century. However, there is some evidence that this is a contemporary scene. But that doesn’t matter. Take a look at her hands, focus on her fingers. Zoom in to her thumb. That little telltale red smudge gives it all away. She’s wearing nail polish. Red nail polish probably purchased at a local store. It’s a product that wasn’t introduced in India, especially rural India, before the country opened its doors to economic liberalization in 1991. It used to be a luxury until it was available for mass manufacture and distribution, rushing in to fill the hungry mouth of consumerism that washed up on the shores in the last twenty five years.
The final clue to locating this scene in time lies outside of the painting, in the artist’s process. In an interview he gave in 2009, Eleyaraja explains the source of his inspiration. He walks through the villages of Tamil Nadu, looking for common and everyday rural visages. He carries a camera with him to document what he sees, before bringing it back to his studio and translating them into oil paintings. This implies that this scene is something that he observed and documented as it happened. Sometime between 2006 and 2009. So close to us, yet in another world.
Perhaps the painter was searching for his own nostalgic memories of a childhood growing up in the town of Kumbakonam. What we do know, is that on one of his journeys, he stopped by this particular village. He walked past a wistful girl on her porch. He had probably hoped for a candid picture of her vulnerable moment. But she caught him looking. A wry smile begins at the edge of her lips. He takes her picture just as she raises one eyebrow in disapproval of his intrusion. His presence challenges her solitude; she wasn’t waiting for him. “You’ve taken your look,” the raised eyebrow says, “now move on.”
And he did.
