Sage Kanva Hugs Shakuntala and Bids Her Farewell

The artist’s penchant for twisting the narrative of Kalidasa’s story around a contemporary everyday setting is evidenced in the depiction of this event of the story. In Kalidasa’s narrative, after sage Kanva returns from his daily ablutions and encounters Shakuntala richly adorned in her bridal finery, he is overwhelmed by feelings of his eventual separation from her:
“My heart is touched with sadness
Since Shakuntala must go today,
My throat is choked with sobs,
My eyes are dulled by worry—
If a disciplined ascetic suffers so deeply from love,
How do fathers bear the pain of each daughter’s parting?”

Within the very contemporary rustic setting of an ordinary village, in the backdrop of a humble hut of the sage, the artist depicts a moment of the filial warmth of a father and a daughter.

The artist depicts the elderly sage visibly moved as varied expressions flit on his face. Anguished at the prospect that Shakuntala adorned in bridal finery would soon leave her home in the hermitage, he is nonetheless delighted at Shakuntala’s happy and fortunate marriage to a worthy king. As sage Kanva embraces Shakuntala, overwhelmed by feelings of profound grief, Shakuntala herself seems overcome with differing emotions and looks down unable to meet her foster father’s gaze.

The artist depicts the anguished emotions emerging in the ascetic who through his penances and practices has relinquished his family yet, still suffers the abject torment of separation from his foster daughter. Kanva’s ascetic lifestyle is alluded to by the artist through the deer skin that he meditates on, the traditional vessel of kamandala used by sages to carry water and the book of holy scriptures bound with a string that lies in front of the deer skin.

Her friend Priyamvada, meanwhile looks on with a gesture that suggests her wonderment at the scene, and echoes the contradiction espoused in sage Kanva’s verses quoted above from Kalidasa’s narrative - the wise ascetic who through his penances has seemingly overcome his attachment and desire for objects and people and thus attained a spiritually enlightened perspective still suffers the grief of separation from Shakuntala.