Description
It’s not clear if she knew her own strength - that the world would not have survived the force of her arrival. An unimaginable flood falling from the heavens, as she who runs wild across the skies, would now devastate the only home we knew.
Before she came to us, she was a celestial river – The Milkyway – Akashganga - running her course from one end of the sky to the other. And then? Her voyage downwards to us. Here, where she is powerful, life giving, loved and worshipped. We long to visit her, step in her and feel her force go through us as she tells us her story. A story of her descent into our world. Just before she could touch dry land, her fall was broken. It was Shiva - and thus, the meeting of an irresistible force and an immovable object. Suddenly she was trapped, in a forest of his hair, that he tied up quickly, and pinned tight over his head with the crescent moon. In his maze of hair, she broke into smaller and smaller tributaries, realising very quickly that she might lose herself completely to him. She would have to persevere and push on relentlessly.
And so she did, until finally and suddenly she could smell the fragrance of wet soil, a taste like the first rain. A few drops at first and then a gushing glorious river of turquoise and emerald green. Ganga was home.
About the Series:
This artwork is part of the “Sister Misfortune” series, through which the artist, Smruthi Gargi Eswar, narrates lesser-known stories from Indian mythology, while reflecting on the narrative surrounding women in our culture. Various Indian goddesses (devis) are depicted with a refreshing artistic lens.
In India, there is a constant burden on women to be “Devi-like”. Through this series, the artist attempts a reverse deification of the goddesses, making them appear like real women, in a real world. The series is an exploration not just of duality, but of multiplicity. It compels us to question our attitudes - women towards themselves, men towards women. How does the idea of a goddess coexist within every woman? How do we, as a society, so casually dismiss, disrespect, disregard, and defile in our everyday existence, those who we have bedecked with gold and enshrined in a temple?