A fairy tale told through Gond paintings. A grammar book in Warli style. Books illustrated by tribal artists show us a new way of looking at a familiar world
When Bhajju Shyam read a Hindi translation of Hans Christen Andersen’s story, The Little Mermaid, the 39-year-old Gond artist knew he had found a kindred soul. “I could understand the mermaid’s sense of alienation on land. She was stuck in a situation she couldn’t escape from,” he says. Shyam too had made a difficult journey from a small village in Amarkantak district in Madhya Pradesh to Bhopal after his father’s death. He knew what it was not to belong.

Shyam’s paintings for a children’s book The Flight of the Mermaid (Tara Books, Rs 560) are shot through with the colours of Gond art and the animated folk tales he heard as a child. His mermaid is not the fair, red-headed wonder of the Disney movie. She is the colour of rich earth, with huge dreamy black eyes and dark, curly tresses. Call it colour politics or post-colonial expressionism, Shyam’s depiction of the mermaid, he says, comes straight from the heart.

“Shyam told us that he could strongly relate to the tale, especially the manner in which the mermaid exchanged speech for love.To him, that was the way most adivasi people feel, when they arrive to make a living in the city, and realise that their words and ways of talking are robbed from them,” says V Geetha of Tara Books, a Chennai-based publishing house which produces exquisite hand-made books.

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