Srirangam resident S R Srinivasan’s pictures are worth a thousand words, with just one exception: here words — not dots, lines or colours — play a leading role.
“I have always been interested in drawing from an early age. But for the past 10 years, I have developed this new technique to explore Hinduism’s religious texts, where I use words to create a picture,” says Srinivasan, who has 500 such detailed drawings in his portfolio.
In the living room of his apartment, visitors can see a picture that showcases the entire Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit. While it ostensibly looks like a scene of Lord Krishna blessing Arjuna, a closer look with a magnifying glass will reveal the 15,000 characters that make up 700 verses of the sacred text. “What is special about this picture is that each section of the drawing deals with the specific meaning of that figure’s placement. I have tried to encapsulate the verses attributed to the four main characters — Lord Krishna, Arjuna, Dhritrashtra and Sanjay — in the drawing,” says Srinivasan.
Devoted to the art
On another wall, hangs a larger painting that shows the 4,000 verses of the Divya Prabhandham, composed by the 12 Alvars, that sing the praise of Narayana (or Lord Vishnu) and his many forms.
“It took me 70 days to make it, seven years ago. I am now trying to explain the meanings of these poems through drawings; 2000 are over, 2000 left to go,” says Srinivasan.
As the poems are written in Manipravalam, a literary style used in medieval liturgical texts in South India that mixed Sanskrit and Tamil, Srinivasan spends a few hours reading and simplifying the language before drawing.
“Since it involves the scriptures, I have to be very careful with the factual accuracy,” he says.
The self-taught artist, who also holds down a regular office job in Srirangam, spends at least a month to research the topic and decide on the placement of the word elements in the picture before sketching a basic outline on paper.
“The poems determine the font size, and I take care to never fill in spaces with dots or lines. The Divya Prabhandham drawing for example, has 8 lakh Sanskrit letters. I usually start with the head, but then move across the paper as required by the poem. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle … the final drawing emerges only in the end,” says Srinivasan, who works with Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit lettering. Using ordinary printing paper and ballpoint pens, Srinivasan adds some highlights with felt markers.
Holy expressions
Among the topics he has worked on (word-drawings and pictorial guides) are: Annamaya Keerthanas; history of Nammalwar with his Pasurams (nearly 85 pictures) in Tamil letters; all of Desikar's Strotrams in pictures; Paduka Sahasram (1008 pasurams in one picture); entire Tirukkural in one picture (1330 poems); biography of Sri Ramanuja, Kooratazhwan, and other acharyas in pictures and a picture of Lord Muruga with the letters of the Shashti Kavasam.
“I’m trying to simplify the scriptures for lay readers and also give them an idea about how art can be used in different ways. Usually, discourses on religious topics can go on for hours, but my drawings can be viewed in a much shorter time,” says Srinivasan.