Gourishankar Soni

This painting shifts into a meditative, spiritual register that contrasts with the earthy labour and struggle of the earlier works. At the centre, a faceless figure sits cross-legged in a yogic or meditative posture, hands poised in mudra, yet notably the head is missing — as if identity and individuality dissolve into ritual or transcendence. Suspended above is a temple bell, frozen in stillness, suggesting both the ritual of summoning the divine and the silence that follows sound — a paradox of presence and absence.
The background is a luminous yellow field, flecked with delicate patterns and faint outlines of mythological or courtly figures — drawn in the style of traditional miniature painting. These ghostlike presences seem to belong to another world: the past, mythology, or cultural memory. Meanwhile, the four red circular forms at the corners act almost like anchors or portals, balancing the composition and echoing cosmic or ritual symbols (suns, seeds, or wounds, depending on the context).The mood conveyed here is one of distance, quiet stillness, and a sense of being held in suspension. The absence of the head makes the figure simultaneously universal and anonymous: not an individual seeker but a stand-in for collective aspiration toward transcendence. The bell, waiting to be rung, hovers like an unanswered call — the thin line between ritual and emptiness.