The artist Shalini Karn has used the Covid lock-down time to present us with a wall-sized (7×7 foot) new interpretation of the Kohbar.
A magnificent Kohbar hovers large over the land its top reaching up into a dark blue sky with barely visible distant mountains.
The Kohbar is elaborately decorated. Six symmetrical medallions, three on each side, circle the center while in their four interstices a naina jogin, in red or yellow sari with one eye uncovered, protects the wedding from evil misfortune. The light blue water teems with gaily colored and auspicious life, turtles, small fish, crabs, snakes and lotus flowers.
The Kohbar’s center is a second kohbar,a shining purain of yellow lotus leaves in an architecture of finely drawn red lines set in concentric circles of dark blue water, green parrots, yellow ornamentation, and the red pistils of the lotus plant. This second kohbar is a microcosm of the ‘maha’ (greater) Kohbar that surrounds it and together they are a paean to the power of the feminine.
This Kohbar is a force of love and joy and union.
There is no longer the submissive bride alone in the palanquin being taken to an uncertain future but rather husband and wife together, facing each other, hand in hand, being carried to their new life. A pair of entwined love birds in a Kadamba tree sacred to Krishna is next to the palanquin. “And what is Krishna if not love?” asks Shalini Karn.
On the other side are musicians, drummers and horn players, making joyous
music under a mango and mahua tree where, before the actual wedding ceremony, the bride and groom held a ritual marriage with the trees for a happy and long marriage. Note the bride’s rice paste hand prints on the tree trunk and the yellow string tying the trees together.
You don’t see Shiva and Parvati here. Instead you have Ardhanarishvara,
the Lord who is also a female”, Shiva and Parvati , the union of male and female in one body. This union is now also that of the bride and groom. They have become one.
Shalini Karn is not the first to use Ardhanarishvara as an attempt to give a religious basis for the equality of male and female in the strongly patriarchal society of Bihar. The artist Shalinee Kumari has long struggled with the same question and has also painted a kohbar with Ardhanarishvara. But Shalini Karn by taking the kohbar outside the confines of the marriage room and into the open air has lightened the weight of tradition. She uses the figure of Ardhanarishvara to support the equality of male and female and thus her emphasis is on the love and joy of marriage and the open future of possibilities promised by her Kohbar, glorious over the land and the infinite blue sky.
Shalini Karn, The Kohbar Resplendent, acrylic on canvas, 7x7feet, 2020. The work is signed and is available.
