Drenched in vermilion, Durgabai’s Barasingha pulses with chromatic brilliance. Its antlers fork out into an exuberantly flowering tree canopy populated by a twittering assembly of birds and little girls hiding in its branches. In this expression of pastoral lyricism, various species live in harmony, fed by each other’s love. As a child, Durgabai had not seen a Barasingha with metre-wide antlers, only the baby chital or spotted deer. But she recalls that her grandmother displayed antlers in their house. While Durgabai’s Barasingha is in dialogue with Jangarh’s spirit animal, she is more baroque in her approach and, crucially, she feminises the stag. When I first noticed the depiction of prominent udders in the painting, I smiled at her insistence on changing the natural order of things. There is something irrepressible about Durgabai that makes her paintings viscerally real but also utterly adbhut or wondrous. While painting this Barasingha, a song kept swirling in Durgabai’s ears– “Khelat kudat aayein re hirna/ Aj naati ke mando”. This is a song sung by the village women asking their ancestors and gods to bless the bride: “Frolicking and gambolling a deer came/ To the granddaughter’s wedding.” The bride is like the tender, fleet-footed deer prancing down the village lanes and through the forest groves. —N.Adajania