Painting Post

Sunil, 'Irrawaddy', 82" X 70", Oil on unstretched canvas, 2008

It has been a while since I have done an oil painting. The long weekend over Labor day offered me an opportunity to finish a painting that I was planning over the last couple of months. This painting is representative of tribals from the Lower Irrawady delta that was recently flooded.

The monochrome painting was done in burnt umber. Please note that I took the liberty of digitally adjusted the image in the middle to darken splotches where the camera flash distorted the actual dark brown color underneath. Which also brings to mind that one of these days, I need to take up all of these canvases and have them photographed in natural light. Not too sure when that is going to happen. As is usual, I completed the painting by tying ends of a 6 ft X 8 ft unstretched canvas to overhead rafters in the basement using the concrete retaining walls as a vertical ‘easel’ support. Crude, but it works under the circumstances. As always, I used paint directly from the tube without any intervening linseed oil.

Novel Sexual Slavery

Men over the ages have been fairly creative in finding out multiple avenues to address their sexual needs. Gentle coercion, trickery, prostitution, rape, blackmail, war booty and casual encounters with the opposite sex are but a few of the avenues readily available to the physically stronger of the human sexes. The method used may vary depending upon circumstances, the environment and local mores but the primal need to sexually subjugate and control members of the opposite sex remains. The New Yorker magazine profiles yet another form of this subjugation highlighting an ancient Hindu practice in southern India where pre-pubertal girls were initiated into becoming a sex worker (devadasis) by making the girl believe that she is a demi-goddess and the services she performs are actually a service to the lord. An elaborate medieval legend involving gods, goddesses, sages and wontons also provide for sufficient moral ammunition for purveyors of the trade to explain to themselves that all they are doing is just another form of worship which in the end will lead to salvation. It is indeed interesting to see the absurd lengths to which we men go to satisfy the primal urge. Indeed repulsive, pathetic and nauseating.

The writer goes with the two devadasis to see the goddess Yellamma at her temple in the southern state of Karnataka. Tells the legend of Yellamma, who was the wife of a powerful rishi, Jamadagni, who punished his body and performed feats of great austerity. After fathering four children, these included a vow of chastity. One day, Yellamma saw a heavenly being making love to his consort. The rush of desire she felt destroyed the yogic powers she used in her husband’s service. Jamadagni guessed what had happened and cursed his wife. According to one version of the story, Yellamma became sickly and ugly, covered with boils and festering sores, cursed to wander the roads of the Deccan begging for alms. Devadasis believe that the tale of Yellamma shows how the goddess is uniquely sympathetic to their fate.

The ‘sex through religion’ system which has been extant for the last thousand years (in some format or other) is starkly illustrated in Telugu poetry from the fifteenth century from the collection ‘When God Is a Customer’

I’m not like the others.
You may enter my house,
but only if you have the money.

If you don’t have as much as I ask,
a little less would do.
But I’ll not accept very little,
Lord Konkanesvara.

To step across the threshold
of my main door,
it’ll cost you a hundred in gold.
For two hundred you can see my
bedroom,
my bed of silk,
and climb into it.

Only if you have the money

To sit by my side
and to put your hand
boldly into my sari:
that will cost you ten thousand.

And seventy thousand
will get you a touch
of my full round breasts.

Only if you have the money

Three crores to bring
your mouth close to mine,
touch my lips and kiss.

To hug me tight,
to touch my place of love,
and get to total union,
listen well,
you must bathe me
in a shower of gold.

But only if you have the money


Abstracted from a study here are results of a survey conducted by Joint Women’s Program, Bangalore for National Commission for Women listing the top reasons for the dedication of pre-pubertal girls into a life of sexual slavery:

1. Being a blind, a deaf or a dumb or a crippled girl
2. Well being of the family
3. No male issues in the family
4. Mother was a devadasi
5. Only female child in the family
6. Followed from generations
7. Poverty
8. Father had undergone an operation and vowed to fulfill religious promise
9. It was a religious ritual
10. To appease Gods for the well-being
11. Father’s brother made her a devadasi
12. Due to skin ailments


Suggested References:
- Altekar, A.S., The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, Benaras: Motilal Banarasi Das, 1956..
- Dubois Abbe J.A and Beachampes H.K., Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928
- Dumont Louis, Homo Hierarchius: The Caste System and Its Implications, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1972.
- Gough Kathleen, “Female Initiation Rites on the Malabar Coast”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, No. 85, 1952.
- Kadetotad, N.K., Religion and Society among the Harijans of Yellammana Jogatiyaru Hagu Devadasi Paddati (Jogati of Yellamma and Devadasi Custom), Dharwad, Karnatak University Press (Kannada), 1983.
- Srinivasan, K., Devadasi (a novel), Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1976.

Lucian Freud, “Naked Man on Bed’, Oil on canvas, 32” X 28”, 1989

Painting post

Sunil, 'Boomer', Oil on canvas, 84" X 72"

Inspiration for this painting came from many sources, but the following incident came to mind as I was starting to undertake this one. I had recently ran into a colleague of mine at work who was remarking that he had about three years before he retires and starts to confront a world where he does not have to wake up and fight the morning commute at 6am every morning, five days a week. On asking him what he was planning to do, he said that he was not relishing the prospect but was still piecing together a post-retirement life in social services and volunteerism. Our talk veered into social security, healthcare and a host of other issues that one starts to think a little more seriously as they start to approach the sunset of their careers. He also talked about growing up as a teenager in the 60's, the free wheeling, artsy culture that pervaded then, the liberalism in the college campuses and the general feeling that ‘it was much better back in my times’. We live in interesting times. Baby boomers like him will be retiring in droves over the next two to three years putting untold stresses on the social net that many take for granted. Medicare and Medicaid will be overtaxed in trying to expand its support for the sudden influx of new participants - willing or unwilling. Faces like this remind me of the coming storm.

Work in progress

Painting Post

Sunil, 'Rendile', Oil on unstretched canvas, 72" X 101"

Detail of above

Relative size

Painting Post: Born!

Title: Born!

Medium: Oil on MDF

Size: 48" X 48"

Our second son was about a minute old when I took this picture of him. I painted this from the resulting photograph. He is now a month old.