The buzz in Finance Ministry: a Dalit woman's creations
Swaraj Thapa Posted online: Tue May 18 2010, 01:27 hrs
New Delhi : The next time you visit the Finance Ministry, don't forget
to take a close look at the walls in the offices of its mandarins,
from Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla's spacious room to Revenue
Secretary Sunil Mitra's chamber to Special Advisor Omita Paul's modest
space adjoining that of the Finance Minister or even that of the old
world- style meeting room.
Adorning the walls are exquisite paintings by a rather unassuming
Madhubani painter, Lalita Devi hailing from a Dalit family of national
award winners from Koilakh village in Madhubani district of north
Bihar. Each one of the finely executed paintings, which take between
two to five months of work, narrate mythological stories — of Ram
vivaha or Shiv vivaha or even those paying homage to the reigning
deity of Dalits, Raja Salhesh — in a unique style that have made
Madhubani or Mithila paintings famous.
But there is another interesting story on how the paintings came to
embellish the otherwise plain walls of the Finance Ministry. Lalita
Devi's husband Charitra Paswan is a Group C employee posted in the
Finance Secretary's office. A few years ago he overheard Sushma Nath,
then Joint Secretary in the Ministry, instructing her staff to buy
some Madhubani paintings from the upscale Cottage Emporium for her
room. Hesitatingly, he told her that his wife was a Madhubani painter,
adding that it would probably save the Ministry a lot of money if her
paintings were brought as she could be compensated with a nominal sum.
For Nath, whose job even now as Secretary (Expenditure) is to cut
government expenses, the offer made sense. And soon several paintings
were hanging in the rooms of senior Ministry officials.
Lalita Devi's work spread by word of mouth. Jairam Ramesh, then junior
minister in the Commerce Ministry, was among those who bought one of
the paintings to install it in his Udyog Bhawan office. So did RBI
Governor D Subbarao who commissioned a second one to gift it to former
Finance Secretary Adarsh Kishore when he left as Executive Director at
the World Bank. Corporate honchos who frequent the Finance Ministry
too picked up the paintings — Suzlon commissioned some for their Pune
headquarters. A couple are also hanging at Nabard's Rajendra Place
office.
"In our village in Madhubani district, almost everyone practices this
form of art. I have been doing this for the last twenty years," says
Lalita Devi, adding that eleven members in her family have received
awards. Among them four are national awardees. Her maternal uncle
Shivam Paswan and his wife Shanti Devi won the national award for
Madhubani painting in 1980. Her paternal aunt Chano Devi, an expert in
Goidana, one of the forms of Mithila painting, was awarded the
national award in 2008. Another aunt, Ramsundari Devi, received an
award from the Bihar government. Her two sisters and elder brother are
accomplished Madhubani painters.
Lalita Devi makes at least two trips a year to her village to bring
natural dyes and pass on orders she cannot cope with to the villagers.
"We use natural dyes in the same way that we have been doing for
generations," she says. For rust, it's the bark of the peepul tree,
for green the crushed leaves of the bean plant. Black, of course, is
lamp soot and blue is a mix of powdered rice and soot.
"Saffron is made from the saffron flowers and then we add
preservatives, lac from a variety of tree found locally in Madhubani
and surrounding areas, that gives permanency to the colours."
"I do get offers from abroad also to paint, but because of our
children, we are not able to go anywhere," says Lalita. The Paswans
have three school-going children, two daughters and a son. Needless to
say, all three are expert Madhubani painters.
The Madhubani form of art, originally wall and floor fresco paintings,
used to adorn fresh walls of mud homes in Mithila region and was
practised mostly by womenfolk. It was innovatively transferred onto
paper and cloth in the mid-sixties after the region suffered a drought
and sold through government handicraft shops.
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