September

This is from a series on Kabir ‘Body is just a Garment’ exhibited in 1993. This weaver-poet of Medieval India in known for his bold statements denouncing traditional beliefs, rituals and priestly interventions between the devout ‘bhakta’ and object of his worship, the Divine. Kabir refused to be bogged down by the dogmas of any religion while remaining passionately in love with God.

He spoke the language of the common man as he wove his verses and his cloth on his loom, comparing life and death and even happiness and sorrow to garments that we wear and change. He wove, as he said, in silent eternity, in simplicity, beyond arguments of caste or sect. In this painting, he weaves water on his loom.

Water the life force. Water the tranquility that will extinguish the forces of dividing castes or beliefs.