A PAINTER FROM MADHUBANI

He is from the land of artists, and himself is sort of an artist though he doesn’t feel he fits that description.

“I’m just a painter,” says the humble Ram Vilas, sitting beside a busy Gurugram road. His bicycle is parked next to him, the paint brush—his work tool— is clipped under the backseat’s metal carrier.

A “putai-karigar (paint-labourer)”, Mr Vilas is a native of Madhubani, the district in a Bihar region famous for its artistic traditions where locals are known to paint their house walls with beautiful illustrations. Indeed, it’s rare to come across any self-respecting artsy Delhi drawing room without at least one framed Madhubani.

Mr Vilas himself has seen such works “not in my own village but in the houses in other villages.” His home in Madhubani is bare of any such drawing, he reveals. “We had other things to take care of. Father died when I was a child. We had no land. Mother raised us with great difficulty.”

In his early 40s, Mr Niwas arrived in Delhi about 16 years ago. He could not find any regular job but did pick up “putai” from acquaintances and eventually took up this profession. “Each day I go in search of kaam (work),” he says. Today, he heard of a possible assignment in Sikandarpur but

“the factory people told me that there was nothing for the moment.”

It’s afternoon and he hasn’t earned anything so far.

“In Madhubani,” says Mr Niwas, “sometimes people draw ped-paudhe (trees and plants) on walls.” He has never attempted it. “My job is to paint and get money,” he mutters, explaining that his wife and kids in the village depend on him for survival. Now he gets up and pedals away his bicycle towards Sector 14 market “to look for work.”