Description
Charika | a journey, a wandering
“I have seen a celestial paradise on a clear night. I saw it from the roof of the world. And in the morning, among sublime peaks that rose from mist-filled valleys I watched monks play cricket, and pray for enlightenment.”
Natasha Kumar, 2007 Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh
Natasha Kumar’s latest collection was born of that moment in the Indian Himalaya. Tawang or Galden Namgey Lhatse, the world’s second largest Buddhist monastery, translates as celestial paradise on a clear night. Close to the contentious, high border of Arunachal Pradesh where China and India collide, it is where the Dalai Lama found refuge, fleeing the Communist occupation of Tibet in 1959.
But it was not the drama of the setting, nor the cricket itself, that provided Natasha with her inspiration. For all their maroon robes and yak-wool shawls the novice monks risking their ball to the abyss with every boundary could have been village boys. What made them different, what caught Natasha’s imagination to become the works’ point of departure was their journey; the path to enlightenment.
Would they find it? How would they know? What would enlightenment feel like? Natasha’s work explores those questions, each image an imagined snapshot on the journey, inflected through elements integral to Buddhist art, everyday life in the monastery, and its monks.
