Rains have always sparked artistic imagination. Vincent Van Gogh’s rain lashed over empty farmland in intense, slanted lines; miniature artists in the Mughal and Rajput traditions drew dark clouds over lush green fields in which Krishna and his gopis danced; and in a meta commentary on individuality, René Magritte poured his own bowler-hatted self from the sky in Golconda . The arrival of the monsoon can turn us all into pluviophiles, but perhaps it affects artists more than the rest of us.
We asked five artists from across India what the season means to them. Garima Gupta Artist and researcher, Mumbai I moved to Bombay late September of 2012 and everyone warned me of the awful October heat. I braced myself for the worst.
But October decided to spare me that year; it rained every evening! Tucked in the lane flanked by a Portuguese church on one end and Siddhivinayak on the other, I watched people walk in either direction to their place of worship in pouring rain. Older couples hand in hand, wet crows that hung upside down from electric cables, lush green rain trees. Had it not been for that monsoon, I may have never learnt to love Bombay.
Garima Gupta Good and bad: I am an August born and the memory of the monsoon starting with a roar around my birthday is deeply embedded. Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that untimely rains are wrecking standing crops and causing damage. But then we as a people have also abolished all possibilities of joy because guilt and sham.
