Nalini Malani on “Hanuman Bearing the Mountaintop with Medicinal Herbs”
About this video
Narrative artist Nalini Malani responds to an ink-on-cloth drawing of Hanuman carrying a mountaintop of medicinal herbs. She points out the finely drawn crowds on his tail, the lettering that shapes his body and speech, and shows how the work combines three senses of time: the event itself, Ram on his shoulder as a symbol of devotion, and a victory parade that predicts the future. She ends by questioning whether victory is really victory.
You'll be able to
- retell the story of Hanuman bringing the mountaintop.
- identify the three senses of time in the drawing.
- explain how lettering and line create movement and form in the work.
Key words
- Hanuman
- A monkey-human figure from Hindu myth who became an icon of devotion.
- Ram
- The hero-god whom Hanuman serves; he is wounded in battle in this story.
- Narrative device
- A technique used to tell a story, such as showing several moments in time.
- Reed pen
- A pen cut from a reed or bamboo, used for fine ink drawing.
- Iconography
- The symbols and images that identify a figure or story.
Transcript
My name is Nalini Malani. I’m a narrative artist; I tell stories. I’m not a Hindu, but I’m attracted to the myths because, for me, it’s a language to link with people. There are so many characters that give you complex psychological stories which have come down to us through the ages, where there are universal truths.
There is this character, Hanuman (monkey/human), who then becomes the icon of devotion. I found this to be a very unusual work. It’s on cloth. It’s worked on with ink. It looks as if it's something that you see from afar, but then I saw this entire universe on the tail.
I mean, if you start to count all those people, it’s so fine and it’s perfect drawing. So, obviously, it must have been a reed pen, maybe a bamboo one, sliced. Hanuman was a very muscular creature. The curvature of the lettering gives you the idea of how thick and muscular his thigh is.
The other thing that interests me is that comic book aspect of what’s coming out of his mouth: you see the tongue is out and he’s saying a few things. Those letters are going completely all around him, creating kind of a tremulous agitation as if he’s moving. Another quirky thing is that the artist made a little cover for his tail.
Can you imagine how Hanuman must have squeezed himself in these shorts? He must have put his tail in first! For me this work has three senses of time, which as a narrative device is extremely crucial. There’s the event, which is that Hanuman has been asked to go to the Himalayas and pick medicinal herbs because Ram has been wounded in battle.
He goes right across all of India but then he forgets what are the herbs. So he picks the top of the mountain in hopes that those are the right ones. And the second sense of time is that we see the little Ram on his shoulder, like a little puppet. Ram is still in the battlefield; he’s not sitting there really. It’s a fantasy.
So he carries the idea of God with him, saying that, “I’m devoted to this little creature, and I will do everything possible to get this right.” Finally there’s one other sense of time, because what you see around his tail is not the army that’s fighting. This is more like a welcoming: it’s a parade.
So he’s already predicting that this is going to lead to victory. We are going to win this battle. So these are the three senses of time. I find this totally fascinating. If I were to use the iconography and the narrative, I would put a lot of doubts and questions in the work.
This kind of victory isn’t really victory in the end. In our world today we have too many conflicts happening. We’re in this very ambiguous situation, and I don’t know victory would be.
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