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Phad Lakshmi puja

A Rajasthani Phad scroll unrolls on screen, as the Bhopa singers unroll it at night: Lakshmi and Ganesh on a panel of their own, the Bhopi lifting her lamp, and women carrying lamps to Lakshmi’s footprints.

Free with a Snehpatrika ending · ₹99 without

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About this style

Phad is the scroll painting of Rajasthan, made for centuries by the Joshi family of painters in Shahpura and Bhilwara. A phad is a long cloth, often several metres long, stiffened with starch and polished smooth with a stone, then painted with colours ground from minerals and plants. The colours go on one at a time, yellow first and the bold black outlines last. The scrolls tell the epics of the folk deities Pabuji and Devnarayan, and each one is a travelling temple: a Bhopa, a priest-singer, carries it rolled up from village to village and sings the story through the night to his ravanhatta fiddle, while the Bhopi holds up a lamp to the part of the painting he is singing.

This film unrolls such a scroll on screen, as the Bhopa unrolls it for each episode: Lakshmi and Ganesh on a panel of their own, your family photo inside a painted border, the Bhopi lifting her lamp beside the Bhopa and his ravanhatta, and a register of women carrying lamps to Lakshmi's footprints for the puja. The paintings are drawn in the Phad style for this film; they are not painted by the Joshi painters of Bhilwara.

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