Life in its fullness

Here is a picture of life, full of delight and no trace of gloom. A man on the top close to the dancing ring is dragging his female partner to the dance, as if everyone’s participation was a mandate, social or religious. As it begins with a trumpet-player in its centre and ends with a dancer holding a flower in her hand, the sound defines its axis and beauty its end. In painting’s centre is a bride with her groom riding a horse. All around are auspices, a calf sucking its mother, a woman carrying ‘mangala-ghata’ – auspicious pot, the other, a pot with water, another, caressing a bird, yet another, worshipping a tree.