Madan Lal

Monsoon season in India is very significant in life. It affects the psychology of man, and emotions start changing their colors. The reason behind it is that creative people always dive deep to search for the truth. It is the time when rain brings euphony and reveals the concept of beauty. When rain pours into the heart of Mother Earth and becomes one with it, the fairies start paying their respects by singing and dancing. This is the time when the sky and the earth meet.

Madan, a well-known artist, painted the intense relationship between the sky and earth. The two figures, the damsel and the hero, are in a joyful mood under one umbrella to keep away the pearls. The colors express that the Vritra [draught] has gone. It symbolizes the triumph of life-giving forces over desiccation. Madan discovered that rare moment of oneness. Madan's painting is not restoring romance but breathing it in. The parrots around also perpetuate the musical waves. The hero, with all the features of Indian ideals, stands by the side of the damsel and holds the umbrella in one hand. His entire body is embedded with herons and flowers. 

The umbrella on their heads is decorated with birds in excitement and anxiety. A pair of birds, perhaps doves, sits on their heads in loving postures. Madan beautifully depicts their oneness through their beaks. The damsel by the side of the hero is a metaphor for fragrance. She wears a pink costume with numerous parrots in various poses. Each parrot is a metaphor for desire. They are in deep intimacy with each other, perhaps dissecting the psychology of the hero and the damsel. Both are not still but in movement. 

Is this painting a piece of libration?
It is a text of romance. It is a journey between humans and divines. In the Baul fakir tradition and in the poetry of Sufi saints across India, the rain-swollen river becomes a metaphor for the soul’s longing for the beloved. The emotional weather is remarkably familiar; waiting, yearning, and the hope that something long absent will finally return. Madan’s painting is the rain itself, referred to as rasa—nectar. He repeats lines from Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote that the monsoon, the dark clouds, and the rain themselves are a Titlebaul playing Ektara. Even Rigveda provides the concept of rain.