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ARTIST BIOGRAPHY: Phuliya Karna

Phuliya Karna

How old am I? Just a minute, I have to ask my friend. She says in two years I'll be sixty.

I was married at 2 1/2. My father sold me for 50 rupees.

Like other men of our caste, my father was a scribe. He would record loans for illiterate people. He told a man who worked with him that he had a daughter who was fifteen and ready to be married. This man paid him 50 rupees and after that my father went home and told my mother he'd sold me.

Because I was so young, he thought he might delay the marriage. But people were laughing at the man who had bought a baby, saying he really got cheated. So the man decided that the marriage must take place to prove he wasn't a fool.

The man was fifty years old. At that time, I wasn't even used to wearing clothes. During the marriage when I was told to cover my face with a sari, I didn't understand and I cried.

The same year I was married my mother died of sadness. She was thinking of my marriage when she died.

I moved to my husband's house when I was ten. When I was fifteen or sixteen I had a boy, but he only lived three days. I was 18 when my daughter was born and after another one and a half years my husband died.

So at 18 1 became a widow with a baby. I worked in other people's houses to support us -- putting mud on house walls or pounding rice.

Around the same age I began to paint walls in the tradition of our caste. I looked around at the walls in our neighborhood during marriages and learned a lot about painting.

Neighbors often asked me to paint and they'd give me an old sari or a little food as payment.

In my lifetime I've painted the wedding chambers (kobars) of 20-30 brides in my village. The designs I make at the center are often those I make in the kobar.

Sun and moon painting: we paint the gods of the sun and moon high on the walls of the wedding chamber. These gods preside over all of our lives and must bless the newly wedded couple. We worship these gods in other rituals and draw their images on both sides of our doors during Deepawali, the festival during which we worship the goddess of wealth.  

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