JWDC
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ARTIST BIOGRAPHY: Phuliya Karna |
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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 |
