Dozens of artists in the eastern Indian state of Bihar are painting roadside trees and their leaves with colorful stories from Hindu epics, hoping to save the region’s already critically sparse greenery.
The unusual campaign, using coats of paint and brushes, has been launched in Madhubani, a northern Bihar district known for its religious and cultural awareness, resulting in hundreds of otherwise untended roadside trees covered in elaborate artwork.
Artists are depicting the moods of deities, scenes from Hindu classics such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata, or an imaginary scene showing an elderly woman restraining a man coming with an axe to cut trees.
They believe the artwork will prompt the deeply religious locals to drop any idea of cutting down the trees out of fear of incurring the wrath of the deities.
“We are using the deities as a cover,” said Shashthi Nath Jha, who also runs a non-governmental organization dedicated to empowering women and child laborers, speaking by telephone from Madhubani, about 1,200km east of New Delhi.
“We thought people will not do any harm to trees once they come across the images of gods and goddesses on them,” Jha said
According to Bihar state records, the forest coverage of the state, which suffers from recurring floods, is currently just under 7 percent.
The tree painting campaign began in September this year after Jha managed to overcome numerous local objections, including doubt that the campaign would last long, worries about how much the paint cost and fears the colors would soon fade.
“I had to convince them a lot before they agreed to join me,” Jha said. “I made several experiments to check the durability of the paint in the open. Finally we decided to apply a mix of natural and artificial paints to ensure the painting survives the fast-changing weather conditions.”
They work in the style of Madhubani painting, a form of Indian painting done with fingers, twigs, the points of fountain pens and even matchsticks, using natural colors and characterized by brilliant geometrical patterns.
“I have painted themes of ‘Sita-swayamvara’ [the marriage of the deities Rama and Sita] on the tree trunks so that those willing to cut them would drop the idea,” 19-year-old Kushaboo told local media.
According to Jha, the initiative has drawn the attention of the international community as well, with a team from Switzerland recently visiting to study how art could be used to convey a strong social message.
The government is taking additional steps to increase greenery in the region, with plans to plant 250 million saplings in the next five years and appointing “Tree Friends” to care for young trees planted along roads and other public places.
However, Jha said locals also had a debt of sorts to repay.
“Plants and trees have brought color to our life. Now it’s our duty to put color on them,” Jha said.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the