Going back in time with Raja Ravi Varma

Oh my God!” muttered the budding writer to a socialite-friend, “you look so different, well, I mean so nice and…” And then she stopped abruptly midway through her sentence, realising that she was about to stray into blunder-land with the OMG hype.

You see, the amply-endowed friend usually wears ill-fitting designer western clothes or designer saris with rhinestones and loads of other semi-precious stones that hurt the eyes, like full-on headlights. All of which makes her appear quite gauche, when not gaudy.

This evening she looked like a heavenly beauty who had just stepped out of a Raja Ravi Varma portrait — courtesy a traditional South Indian silk sari with a resplendent border, set alight by the kind of jewellery that adorns Raj Ravi Varma’s women. Mercifully, she was following the dress code of the evening.

It was the Delhi launch last Saturday of Rupika Chawla’s book, Raja Ravi Varma — Painter of Colonial India (Mapin Publishing), for which the guests, both men and women, had been requested to wear clothes inspired by the painter’s canvases. Sportingly, a large number did, with flowers craftily incorporated into the coiffures of several enthusiastic women.

It was a wonderful, moving tableau. Moreover, there was even a deliciously piquant irony in the setting — The Imperial Hotel. A showcase of Delhi’s imperial past, its walls are adorned by portraits of the rulers of the Raj and original works of the Daniells, Zollanys, Emily Eden and several other British painters. 

The launch was in the Royal Ball Room where the almost-ceiling-high banners with exquisitely produced images from Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings were souciantly juxtaposed with imperial art. The painter emulated European academic realism — and the use of oils — but his subjects were Indian: scenes from the Mahabharata and Ramayana, vignettes from Kalidasa’s plays, portraits of national leaders, Indian nobility and ordinary people — and much else.

Long after the iterant aristocrat painter’s death in 1906 — and one might add a man ahead of his times — his huge body of work (amplified manifold through oleographs) was used by leaders like Lokmanya Tilak to propel the nationalist movement forward.

The lavishly illustrated and designed book is a coffee table tome alright — and full marks for that. But for me the book’s value lies in the sleuthing talents of the author. Chawla has in dogged pursuit traversed the country over many years, sniffing out the faintest of clues. This is a pithy book with new insights. The result is the publication of many Raja Ravi Varma paintings that have never been seen before; letters, archival material and insights into the way he painted gleaned from the diary of the Raja of Aundh (near Pune), in whose court the prince-painter spent a lot of time painting.

The Raja was obviously an acute and obsessive observer barraging the painter with a volley of questions. Explains Chawla: “He writes about the way Raja Ravi Varma painted, the hours he painted and about the time and trouble he took to get emotion on the faces he made, reworking them several times... He also writes about the painter’s fascination for the nine yard sari because it showed the body so well.”

Biography is all about getting under the skin of the subject. Not only does Chawla do so, but also portrays the times the painter lived in. She shows us how this modern man with a vision was able to use turn-of-the-century technological innovations such as electricity, the railways, newspapers and oleographs.

During the Jaipur Literature festival, the renowned biographer Claire Tomalin compared the biographer’s craft to putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The skill lay in filling in the “empty bits”, according to her. For Tomalin, writing biography was also like crafting lace, “making the narrative round the holes”. Well, Chawla’s getting quite deft at lace-making.