Love, Longing and Left ‘On Read’ – Kangra Paintings on Love Meet Modern Dating – A Series Announcement

Under moonlit terraces and in WhatsApp chats, the heart still plays the same games. In Kangra paintings, the nayika waits for her lover, she quarrels under the blossoming trees, or steals into the forest for a secret meeting. In our modern world, she checks if he’s read her message, she blocks and unblocks, she sends a photo, deletes it before he sees. The costumes have changed, from silks and anklets to jeans and floral kurtis, but the ‘rasas’ of love, longing, pride, and betrayal remain the same.

This series brings the Ashta Nayikas into the age of ghosting, breadcrumbing, and love bombing; proof that whether it is a palace courtyard or a dating app, the human heart has never stopped rehearsing its dramas.

Kangra is one of the schools of Pahari painting. “Pahar” means “mountain” in Hindi and Pahari painting literally means “a painting from the mountanous regions”. It is actually an umbrella term used for Indian miniature paintings that originated in the lower Himalayan hill kingdoms of North India in the early seventeenth century and thrived until the mid nineteenth century. Notable schools of Pahari painting are Kangra, Guler, Mandi, Garhwal, Basohli, Nurpur, Chamba and Mankot. The central theme of Pahari painting is the love between Krishna and Radha, their love adventures and frivolities.

The ‘Ashtanayika’, a term from classical Sanskrit aesthetics (Nāṭyaśāstra and Gita Govinda), describes eight archetypal heroines, each expressing a different mood of love in relation to her beloved. They are not just ‘types of women’ but emotional states, each filled with rasa; the essence of love, longing, joy, jealousy, or despair. Kangra art, especially from the reign of Raja Sansar Chand, is renowned for its lyrical depictions of love, nature, and bhakti. The artists often illustrated themes from Jayadeva’s ‘Gita Govinda’ and the ‘Bhagavata Purana’, which revolve around Krishna and Radha; the eternal lovers. What makes Kangra paintings special is how they use landscape as emotion: flowering trees, moonlit nights, dark monsoon clouds, rivers, gardens. These become metaphors for the states of the heart.

Kangra painters used the Ashtanayika framework as a visual language to express the moods of Radha and the gopīs in relation to Krishna. In other words, Kangra art takes the psychology of the ashtanayika and transforms it into poetry in color and form. The heroine’s moods are inseparable from the moods of nature. To put it all simply; ahe Ashtanayika are the emotional grammar of love; Kangra paintings are their visual poetry. Together, they show how love is not just between two people but a cosmic force that turns landscapes, seasons, and the very air into witnesses of longing. In this series I will connect the classical nayika paintings with a modern twist. So, stay tuned!