Start of a journey

I sat in a studio in Kishangarh yesterday, watching something I've only read about.

Forty years. That's how long he's been painting miniatures. His name is Dushyant Pawar, and he's one of fewer than some 80-100 practitioners left of the Kishangarh school, a 300-year tradition that's quietly disappearing.

What struck me wasn't just the skill. It was the reverence. Every brushstroke deliberate. Every color mixed with intention. A single painting takes him 4–6 months. The finest details, the veins in a lotus petal, the curve of an eye, are invisible unless you hold it inches from your face.

His hands shake slightly now (age, he says, laughing). But the lines are still perfect.

He told me: "The painting knows what it wants to be. My job is to listen."

This is what we're losing if Kishangarh art isn't revived. Not just paintings. A way of seeing. A philosophy of patience, devotion, and mastery that our world desperately needs.

I'm working on a project to change that. More soon.