With powder-caked hands, Shri Rajesh Vaishnav gingerly lays a centuries-old paper stencil, passed down through generations, onto the canvas. In another motion, he rubs his finger back and forth into a spoonful of coloured dust held in a fine gauze pouch, pushing the light-blue pigment out. The pigment gently drifts onto the stencil, settling in a diaphanous layer.
Satisfied, Vaishnav lifts the stencil in a swift, decisive motion, revealing an image of the major deity Krishna as a flute-playing cowherd, poised against an Elysian scene of cattle grazing on lush, berry-laden bushes with peacocks and monkeys weaving in between. A breeze enters the room and the painting ripples ever so slightly, betraying the nature of the canvas underneath: not cotton fabric stretched over a wooden frame, but rather a square tub of holy water extracted from the River Ganges.
