Sabari Plucking Fruits

In this delightful work from the Fifties, Mukul Dey reimagines Sabari, one of the characters from Ramayana who gave Ram, out of her naivety and genuine devotion to him, half-eaten fruit. Sabari, in the epic, didn’t want her ‘god’ to eat bitter-sour berries and proceeded to bite into them herself before passing on the juiciest and sweetest ones to him. Though most narrations project Sabari as an old lady, Dey reimagines her as a young Santhal tribal woman, svelte yet fit, who climbs trees to pluck fruit.