Priyamvada and Ansuya Adorning Shakuntala

After a ritual bath, Shakuntala’s friends adorn her as a newlywed bride, readying her for her departure for King’s Dushyant’s palace at Hastinapur. As they sit in a small clearing in front of Shakuntala’s little hut, her companions huddle as they adorn her in bridal assemblage.

Attired in the auspicious colour of red, her hands are reddened with the customary lac dye. A nose ring traditionally worn by brides and married women adorns her. A tray full of cosmetics and rouges are arrayed in little colourful bottles. A woman attired in a green saree smears a rouge on Shakuntala’s cheeks with her finger, as Shakuntala patiently looks on, while other companions hold up a little container with the rouge and a little glass bottle of perfume.

The artist’s rendering and portrayal of the scene imparts it with a distinctly rustic flavour as it imbues various little details and characteristics of the life of the village - the depiction of the women, the manner in which they wear their sarees, the way the veil falls on their head or the manner in which they sit hunched with their knees close to their torso - marks a close observation of rural living.

Other details touch upon the rustic lifestyle - pots and vessels, Shakuntala’s neat but tiny hut plastered with mud and shaded with a thicket of trees, the open porch ringed by stones that mark its periphery, the straw mat on the courtyard or the overturned pot hanging from the stump of a branch, conspicuously painted by the artist that probably alludes some ritual superstition around wedding ceremonies.

The artist. by interpreting the scene as rustic, completely changes the context and the contrast that Kalidasa through his narrative plays out - the opposition between the life of the hermitage which is described as the one in the forest, unsettled, amidst the exuberance of nature, pure, celestial and magical, with the settled life outside the hermitage based on agriculture. Through his interpretation the artist presents a contrast not between the unsettled and ‘wild’ and the settled, disciplined and cultured elements of the forest and court, but the dichotomy between the simple, rural and the courtly, rich urbane culture of the palace.