A family’s brush with a leopard now adorns its wall

Jadhav (63) remembers the day vividly. “It was mid-October last year. A Russian researcher had come to live with us for a while, to observe how we lived with leopards in our midst. One day, a leopard came very close to our home. Everybody was scared, but our pet dog kept barking at the leopard until it went away. After that, I asked if she could paint the scene for us,” he said.

Later, over six hours on the last day of her stay, Tatiana Petrova painted almost without pause, stopping only for lunch. “I would have painted a bit more, but darkness fell and mosquitoes started to irritate me. I was very tired,” she said.

Last year, Petrova, who holds degrees in zoology and fine arts from the St. Petersburg State University and the State Fine Arts Academy respectively, was in Mumbai, documenting the man-animal conflict at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. “Science and art always went together for me since childhood. I tried to study in two universities at the same time, but of course I could finish only one. Now I am studying to finish my art education,” she said. She is now on an academic stipend from the Indian council for cultural relations (ICCR).

Her description of that October evening is more detailed. “The big cat hid behind tall grass to come very close to the last houses in the village. Women near the house spotted it and started to shout,” she recalled.

Pandemonium broke out as men closed in on the leopard with torches and sticks while women and children hid indoors. “I went closer along with Chandu’s daughters. We held torches and saw the chaos in the village,” she said.

While the villagers wondered what to do next, their dogs began to bark at the leopard until it vanished into the forest. Once the dogs went quiet, the villagers were sure that the danger had passed.

Petrova having admitted her interest in Warli art at the beginning of her stay, Chandu asked if she would paint what she had seen that evening. “Why not, I said. I know it is a simple and narrative art, and one can include traditional motifs as well as something new. I think Chandu suggested the wall. I thought it would be nice to decorate it and he would be happy about it. His family was very nice to me and I wanted to make something nice for them too,” she said.

Armed with only a watercolour squirrel brush and old white enamel from a small can, Petrova set to work. “The wall was porous and cracked, and the white paint was too liquid and got absorbed into the surface easily, so I needed to repeat every line 4-5 times each,” she said. But for the paint, she would have finished sooner.

Petrova, 36, said she drew completely from memory to paint the events of that evening. “I worked without a sketch and imagined part by part on the go. I depicted Chandu’s house and Chandu himself sitting near fire, as he usually did in the evenings. His daughter Kavita brought tea for him while his other daughter Vaishali was cooking in the kitchen,” she said.

Fascinated with Warli painting, she said having no prior training in it was not a handicap. “I liked this style because it is very figurative and narrative and at the same time, extremely simplified and stylised. It is easily understandable to a westerner, because it depicts everyday life and does not require religious knowledge unlike traditional paintings of other tribes,” she said.

Petrova’s canvas is today is the only exhibit of Warli painting in the settlement. “I just helped one Warli painting to appear in the village. I don’t think I will become a full-time Warli painter,” she said.

But the Jadhav family’s reaction, after she pointed each of them out of the wall, pleased her the most. “He said he liked it that he will now have a true Warli painting,” she said.