Through the Palm Trees

It’s in the interplay of light and shadow, the remarkable detailing, and the documentation of the idyllic life of rural India, particularly Bengal, that Haren Das’s works gain immense importance. He was, through his prints, giving us a perspective of what moments of quietness and stillness meant, when the rest of the land was facing upheaval with communal riots, famine, hunger. This documentation is equally important and relevant. Das’s prints, then, provide us with a visual vocabulary that gains merit on the chosen subject and its treatment.