The Flute and the Lotus: Romantic Moments in Indian Poetry and Painting

This is a book about romantic moments, heart throbbing moments, soul stirring moments, enchanted moments that have inspired our poets and have been celebrated by our artists, patronised by the raja and indulged in by the praja, moments that have enlivened courts and enriched havelis, moments alive with passion and radiant with emotion, sensual moments that were born with the first glance and grew with the first touch, nurtured by the first embrace, moments of amorous pleasure and equally of heart rending pathos. Such romantic moments are a very special part of love between a man and woman. The author traces the development of romantic poetry in the Indian tradition starting with ancient poetry in Prakrit from the court of Hala of the 4 century, through the Tamil Aham poetry, to Kalidasa’s creations in classical Sanskrit, the tenth canto of the Bhagavata Purana, Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda, the poetry of Bihari, Keshavdas and Bhanudatta of the ritikal period in the bhashas, Sufi romantic poetry, and finally the poetry of the seasons and ragas. A chronological journey of romantic paintings will take us from early western Indian painting of the 15 century, onto the paintings of the Sultanate period, followed by the Mughal and the Deccan kalam and then on to the Rajasthani and Pahari paintings and finally a glimpse of the 19 century Madhubani and Kalighat movements. The book will present romantic paintings, thematically arranged and by-passing chronology. While the strength of romantic paintings are the line and colour that create a luxurious vocabulary of artistic idioms and metaphors its source is the rich store house of poetry. Indian painters and patrons in their creations have shown that they are never far from the abundant images and detailed taxonomies that poetry has provided. It would not be wrong to say that these paintings are indeed visual poetry. The paintings presented here are not only from the author’s personal collection but also from the Prince of Wales Museum of Mumbai, the Bharat Kala Bhavan of Benaras, the National Museum of Delhi, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum of London the Rylands Library of Manchester, the Staatsmuseum of Berlin, the Chester Beatty Library of Dublin, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of art and the collections of noted collectors. The paintings will cover a period of about five hundred years of the romantic Indian tradition.