Discovering the Self through Life and Art: The Little-Grand Narrative of Sonabai

Rajawar

Punya Pillai

Often our work defines our 'self', and our 'self' can extend on to the work we do. What if the

self merges in art created later in our lifetime, and is indecipherable from the genius we

produce? This is the story of Sonabai Rajawar- a story of simplicity and artistic brilliance that

lends itself to a gripping study of personhood as enmeshed in cultural fabric; a small narrative

constituting the unmistakable grand narrative of self, culture and society.

Using the tools of biographical narrative, delving into the domain of a psychobiography, this

chapter presents lessons on personhood and self within the cultural backdrop of the life of

artist Sonabai Rajawar, from the Indian state of Chattisgarh. It is the story of child marriage,

social isolation, patriarchy, enterprise, autonomy, creative genius, fame and unprecedented

recognition extending the frontiers of art and selfhood.

Keywords:

Self, identity, culture, biographical narrative, psychobiography, art, women

Be certain that you do not die without having done something wonderful for humanity.

-Maya Angelou, p.x, 2008, Letter to My Daughter

Is self-discovery the ultimate means and end of all human life? What is it that we all

strive for? A sense of meaning of one’s life brings about satisfaction, a will to go on, certain

validation of our existence. While we find meaning in different ways, ever cultivating our

humanistic needs, the trajectory of human life is mobilized in ways cultural and universal.

I was first introduced to Sonabai through a library book my father brought home a Commented [MT1]: Please follow APA 7 for formatting. 1.15
spacing; Times New Roman, 12 pt font; first line indented for each
para; no extra space between paras;
decade and a half ago. It was a coffee table book. Sonabai’s picture on the book with all its Check APA7 for heading levels

brilliance, dark skin suntanned by years of toil maybe, I thought, the striking tribal jewellery,

a person from poverty clearly, the colourful traditional attire, the stunning art work. I was

drawn to it strongly. Reading through the pages, her story captivated me. An artist from the

realms of tradition, an ordinary woman, an accomplished person. Was she self-actualized, the

young professional in me thought. Over the years I found myself giving examples from her

life story to my students, whenever I spoke about humanism, poverty, women’s lives,

motivation, family, resilience and so on. Her inspiring story never left me, and would find its

way back to me from time to time.

As I was involved in writing this chapter, I bought a copy of her book for myself and

placed it on the coffee table, picking it frequently to re-read. One day I found my household

helper looking at it intently while doing her work. A woman who looks poor has made it to

the cover of a book, that too a glossy, attractive book, she must be thinking. I subjectively

attempted to mind-read her. Was Sonabai’s presence on the book cover kindling an

inspirational spark in her? I opted for her to initiate a discussion. That didn’t happen but her

curiosity piqued my interest. It kindled a spark of hope in me, yet again.

When I approached Sonabai’s life narrative as an observer, and academic and

cultural-insider-of-sorts, it emerged as a lesson in postmodern humanism, art and the artist.

While art provides a platform for seeing and sensing the world, it is through a study and

acknowledgement of the artist’s struggles symbolized therein, and the transformative process

of the self through art, that we are able to see the reality of the world.

Using the narrative inquiry method (Butina, 2015; Clandinin, 2006; Savin-Baden &

Niekerk, 2007), Sonabai’s life story makes for a demonstration of the resilience of a tribal

Indian woman and her achievements as an artist, a mother, a community leader, a teacher of

her art and a human being. Additionally, it is a sociological commentary on gender-based

experiences, social exclusion and self-empowerment of a woman. It is the unspoiled story of

the emergence of creative opportunity and self-actualizing potential that facilitates a

metamorphosis of the individual with the purging of socially oppressive conditions.

Narrative and Life

In the words of McAdams:

Life stories mirror the culture wherein the story is made and told. Stories live

in culture. They are born, they grow, they proliferate, and they eventually die

according to the norms, the rules, and traditions that prevail in a given society,

according to a society’s implicit understandings of what counts as a tellable

story, a tellable life. (p. 2003).

Life stories have competed for space in the narrative context where gender, economic

and socio-political hegemony are often the deciding factors in cultural representation.

Marginalized voices are being recognized through interdisciplinary writings of life stories,

the narrative study of lives, realistic fiction, and so on, to fill up the spaces that were

historically left out (Bama, 2012; Das, 2013; McAdams, 2003). “Our selves are among the

most impressive works of literary art we human beings create” (Bruner, 2003, p. 213).

The narrative construction of a life, entrenched in the cultural master narrative

(Thorne and McLean, 2003) is not simply a sequence of events or routines, even though
people may be conditioned to treat it so. Leichtman et al. (2003) suggest that in recounting

their earliest memories and constructing an autobiographical narrative, individuals in

interdependent cultures often skip including detailed personal event memories and personally

significant one-point-in-time events and focus more on routines and scripted activities.

Is the self so impersonal, and is it an unwritten code in interdependent cultures to Commented [MT2]: Interdependent cultures? You’ve used this
in other places

continuously undermine the self? It then seems to become the job of the author, researcher,

psychologist to highlight these unconscious obligatory omissions, and bring to the fore

strengths of character in lived lives, as in the case of biographical writings on gender. This in

turn has also been a Western narrative interest to begin with; a greater interest in analysis and

expression of not only one’s own life but the lives and intimate histories of others.

A sign of a great self is to not self-present to others. A myriad other reasons could

exist, including the ubiquitously present evil eye! Issues of privacy and availability to others

also pervade the domain of self- expression. While the self is a co-constructed entity, there

are carefully guarded boundaries extending privacy, even secrecy, to individuals within inter-

dependent cultures. Writing elaborately on the self may be seen as egotistical, unnecessarily

self-aggrandizing and corrupting in other-oriented cultures. If we are so very self-absorbed, Commented [MT3]: And especially so for women! It was
probably unimaginable for a woman to focus, let alone share with
others about herself.
how will we then erase the self, and move on the path of selflessness that leads to the ultimate
Commented [NC4]: Also, it is an assumption (false one
according to Sinha and Tripathi, that collectivistic labels imply the
nirvana? Nirvana, is a coveted state of being explicated in Indian religious texts of Hindusim absence of individualism, these orexist. Just because research can’t
find it doesn’t mean it isn’t there, as you argue. All human beings
have a sense of who they are!
and Jainism, among others, as well as in Buddhism. It encompasses liberation from worldly
Commented [MT5]: Maybe add a line here explaining how this
goal of selflessness is the ideal in Indian philosophy?
duites and pleasures, and a release from cycles of rebirth and suffering. Ironically, while

prescribing an effacement of the self and the engagement with the material world, it

encourages the individual to still yearn for something ultimate- nirvana itself. The giving up

of passions and desires of a worldly nature, are replaced by passion and desire for the divine,

and deliverance from earthly concerns.

 Sex differences are highlighted in narrative recollections of men and women in the

Maori society (Hayne and MacDonald, 2003), the latter using a more extensive cultural fabric

and drawing parallels between tribal, family and personal history. One is tempted to draw out

that women bring out richer descriptions, as they live lives that are way more enmeshed in

the cultural-moral fabric of their times. Everyday life presents situations that may be more or

less likely to highlight male and female identity (Fivush and Buckner, 2003). Our continued

sense of identity, including gender identity unfolds in the seemingly mundane but culturally

scripted situated context. Commented [NC6]: Nice!

The Cultural Milieu

The village of Puhuputra, with a population of 4200, is largely inhabited by farming Commented [MT7]: Does this village still exist?
Yes it is there

communities. The villagers are all Hindus, worshippers of God Vishnu. Most inhabitants

including Sonabai’s marital family are shudras, a disadvantaged and discriminated upon caste

category in the Hindu hierarchical caste system. It is a patriarchal and patrilineal society.

Women are active in community based rituals and events. They decorate their homes with

naturally derived vibrant materials. Homes in Puhuputra present fine bas-relief architectural Commented [MT8]: Such as...

ornamentation. Sonabai’s art is however not in sync with what the village presents, and is

entirely her own in style and sophistication. Sonabai and her art were discovered by the world

in 1983. She lived up until 2007. The villagers hold her in high esteem and are forever

indebted to her for getting their village a place on the global art map, and harnessing

opportunities and gifting her legacy to them.

Born to the Rajawar community in the late 1920s, Sonabai grew up in a large

traditional tribal family in Kenapala, in the Surguja district of the Indian state of

Chhattisgarh. They were seven brothers and sisters (Mittal, 2014, as cited in Singh and

Sarkar, 2022). Her childhood was spent in play, looking after domestic animals, and roaming

carefree in her village. She never attended school.

 At the age of 14, Sonabai was married to a man who was almost twice as old as her,

and who had lost his first wife. A common experience for adolescent girls in rural India, child Commented [MT9]: Was the marital home in Puhuputra? Yes

marriage, often with a much older man is easily accepted and quite often the unstated norm,

the outcome of socially coercive practices and financial constraint. After her marriage, Holi

Ram, her husband, never allowed her to visit her parents and relatives. She experienced

extreme possessiveness of her husband, and was forced by him into confinement within the

home.

For ten years she remained in the precincts of her husband’s home, with not very kind

relatives- a ubiquitous experience of the Indian married woman more often than not. Her life

was mundane, dispiriting and distressing, and completely invested in household chores. After

years of humiliation for not giving birth to a child, she gave birth to her son, Darogaram, in

1953.

That same year, her husband decided to move to his own new home, which saw the

creative and artistic unfolding of her new life. Sonabai decided to find new meaning in her

life and began dabbling in art with natural ingredients. Since Sonabai had no access to Commented [MT10]: Some description of these materials is
needed

commercial art supplies, she meticulously developed coloured pigments by tinkering with

spices, flowers, minerals and vegetables to create blazing artwork. Sonabai, a naturalist by

chance, guided by raw maternal emotion, no artistic training, and stoked by desire to create a

child’s beautiful world in her bland surroundings, began to sculpt toys for her infant son. She

initially used sticks wrapped with rice straw, covered with clay dug from her courtyard to

create toy figurines. Encouraged by the satisfaction this brought to her, she began to add

similar figures to the interior walls of her home as bas-reliefs. Human figures, gods, birds and

animals, and scenes depicting dancing women, Krishna playing the flute, birds perched on

branches, and monkeys hanging from trees, adorned that walls. The summer heat in the

courtyard of her home lead her to innovate air-cooling by creating lattice structures with
bamboo lying around her house, covering it with clay and adorning the empty spaces with

sculptures, filling up voids with beauty. In due course she transformed her home to an artistic

paragon, inviting the rest of the village to visit, appreciate, learn and apprentice with her

(Swaminathan, 1992, as cited in Singh and Sarkar, 2022). To study Sonabai must have meant

to study a naturalist in her creative habitat. Commented [NC11]: Fascinating!

Sonabai's artistic process by virtue of it’s breaking of oppressive shackles, by a Commented [MT12]: Its interesting how she broke away from
the normative family system because of the shift to an independent
home and also did not follow the typical art traditions of her
diminutive woman, is also a dialogue against the existing patriarchial structure (Khan, 2019, community

as cited in Singh and Sarkar, 2022). Sonabai was a self-taught, unselfconscious, unintended

artist, who went on to make tangible the subtle essence of her lived experience and

immersion in her surroundings. And art, the outgrowth of her years of isolation, and sudden

shift to autonomy, was not just any expression of social reality. It was an individual life and

its creative expression, the interpretation of which makes it a lesson of hope, casting a

positive light on human resilience and creativity in the face of adversity. Umberger (2010,

p.10) points out how the individual artistic pursuit of Sonabai became a form of

‘individualized ritual practice’, and utilized her scarce environment in discovering a unique

personal path, very signifying of the idea of art-for-the-sake-of-life (Rajarao & Srinivas,

2015).

Home altars signify spaces of focussed energy where a woman may find power,

autonomy and freedom (Umberger, 2010). For Sonabai what began from her home altar,

extended to the larger untarnished landscape that she built up with her vivid uninhibited

imagination, and colourful vibrant art. This was an extension unlike any other, one that took Commented [MT13]: Can you expand this a little please? In fact
a brief description of her art, the materials, where and what she
painted would be really helpful.
into its fold members from the community seeking a lease of life, seeking empowerment
Added more on this in the preceding paragraphs.

through her art, for the self and society. The international recognition she received was

nothing short of an identity for not only herself, but her larger community. An inspiration that

heights can be reached, prestige earned and resources garnered.

 The Humanistic Artist

“The self is many things, identity is a life-story” (McAdams, 2003, p. 187). People in

emergent adulthood begin to organize their lives in self-defining stories, initiating a process

of biographical coherence (Habermas and Bluck, 2000). A person strives to become the

imago, an idealized personification of the self, a scripting of culture and perceived limits of

human competence (McAdams, 1984). Navigating the maze that culture presents, the

individual is continuously negotiating the “one-in-many-selves paradox” (Knowles &

Sibicky, 1990, p.676).

There are hardly any barriers between personal cultural experience, and life and work.

It is evidenced in the theories we construct, the buildings we build and the futures we

envisage. Sonabai’s journey to art started with the desire to make toys for her child; a child

who was born after years of struggle, exclusion and humiliation for not being able to bear an

offspring. When there is love in our lives, we are propelled to do more and more for the

object of our love. Sonabai started by creating papier mâché toys for her child. The toys

looked too plain. She started using natural ingredients around her, crushing vegetables and

flowers to add a dash of colour to the child’s world. Gradually there was a spill over of her art

onto the bare walls, the floor, the outer façade, the village, and beyond the barriers of State

and Country. Was this the process of self-actualization? When she created her art, she was in

flow. Her life was testimony to how the creative process shapes the self, and is in turn,

shaped by it.

The Postmodern Artist

Postmodernism, a late twentieth-century ideology, looks at art, architecture, and

literature, with the eye of a skeptic, taking in its fold essential subjectivism, relativism and

multiple identities. “That postmodernism is indefinable is a truism” (Postmodernism, 2015,

para. 1). However, it encompasses critical, strategic and rhetorical practices inclusive of
irony, difference, repetition, multiplicity of meaning, and hyperreality. Postmodern art

transcends formal aesthetics, appreciates chance aesthetics (Malone, 2009), and lends itself

to deconstruction by the artist and the viewer. The ambiguity of meaning is given place in the

interpretive frameworks that are often laden with paradoxes assembled through the use of

unusual forms, textures, materials, and artistic styles, particularly in the visual arts (Alter-

Muri and Klein, 2007).

We all have a first-person standpoint. Autobiographies lend themselves beautifully to

personal perspectives. The self in modernism has been totalizing, coherent, continuous. The

postmodern self is a patchwork of identities and practices. If the post-modernist perspective Commented [MT14]: Begin this section with a brief para on
post modernism
Done..
on self entails a fragmented self-representation, and if images of the post-modern self are the

reality of the post-modern self (Tseelon 1992), then Sonabai’s universe has striking images to

offer. The self as social construction presents itself for scrutiny to critical psychology,

phenomenology, psychological anthropology, humanistic psychology, and also

psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalytic perspective and the art of psychobiography attempt to go a layer

deeper into individual social experience and history and explore its relation to the inner

psychological self and in the outer world the self as genius/the accomplished self. While a

clinician attempts the same on the client, a writer would attempt it on a famous personality

whose life is a lesson for humanity. In both the attempts, the significance of the social context

is not lost. Subjectivity is unique and irreplaceable, and so is the individual human

experience. In academic pursuit we need not only psychological sciences but also

psychological humanities. Subjectivity is delved into as first-person perspective as well as

first-person experience; we are often aware yet unaware (Spivak, 2004; Teo, 2022).

Describing the layering of the relationship between person and culture (Valsiner’s

Laminal Model (2007) discusses how person and culture interact, recognizing it as a blind
spot of traditional psychology which fails to display the importance of personal, interpersonal

and social dynamics of the psyche, each in turn influencing the other. This dynamic system

reconciles the importance of cultural contributions to the individual, as well as an individual’s

contribution to culture. This model helps frame Sonabai’s life-story. What Sonabai created as

art was an embodiment of her very personal life journey, a reflexive exercise for herself as an

artist, and for the viewer. The entire artistic process, the triumph as a mother, convergence of

her community in appreciation of her art, acted as catalysts to her unmatched success,

showing the shining path ensconced in apparent misery and abject impoverishment. It drew to

her biographers, art aficionados, students of her art, village residents, her own family and the

international art community, significantly expanding the vista of art and human

understanding.
 The Artist Mother

Angelou (2008, p. 17) writes how the birth of her son caused her to “develop enough

courage to invent her life”. Sonabai’s life situated in her socio-cultural milieu, with her

newfound empowering autonomy, perhaps a happier family life, and motherhood and

personal fulfilment through it, all converged to provide impetus to her work as an artist. What

does Oedipus complex feel like for the mother? Is it a self-defining feature for a mother, even

if partially? Does it lend her affection, importance to strengthen her belief in an identity

solely hers?

The artist Sonabai lived and worked in sync with the collectivistic culture of her

village, never isolated again and never isolating of others. What she experienced was a

collectivistic culture double-bind where she experienced loneliness, and rejection in early life

as a childless woman, and extensive social contact in her later public life, facing the greatest

apprehensions (Markus and Kitayama, 1991) of an individual in a collectivistic culture -from

that of being isolated to being heavily noticed. She took in her fold all those who came to

learn and be an artist like her. Her approach reflected an evolved sense of community

consciousness. Even as she did not garner her husband’s support till the money and fame

descended in their lives, she found fulfilment in motherhood, in her community culture and

the artistic fallout of her struggles.

Life events and her unique personal experience shaped an identity for herself and her

village. Creative flow was what she perhaps experienced when spending long hours alone

carving out the figurines, the bas-relief and a path for others to follow where individual lives

and art, self and other, space and sensibility merge seamlessly. Sonabai’s life is creative

resilience in action; resilience acquiring the features of a self-actualizing process when it

plays out for long in a lifetime.

 Sonabai’s Life- A Study in Genius

Sonabai’s life was documented by artistic biographers, cultural anthropologists, and

women’s studies researchers. Just as art is speculative, so is the analysis of the artist’s inner

workings of the mind. Both complement each other to complete a version of the portrayal of

the self at a given time. In his analysis of the genius of Rabindranath Tagore, Kakar (2014)

points out how great art has a mysterious core at its centre, something admitted by Tagore

himself when he says he does not know how he produced the art. Is it a centering of the

unconscious with the artistic medium that brings about artistic brilliance? For Sonabai tracing

the inspiration for her art was not probable; inspiration came naturally to her, the bearings of

which she was not consciously aware of. Unlike many rural artists who create gods and

goddesses through their art, Sonabai rested her art on the life force itself; everyday life,

nature, animals, birds, musical instruments, dancers and so on. She was more like a moment-

oriented Zen artist, the hands-on philosopher who spoke little and expressed much.

The study of finished lives enables the psychologist to trace human development in

ways beyond longitudinal research (Carlson, 2006). The psychological study of

extraordinariness provides the researcher with a scientific approach to understanding why and

how particular children develop into unusually competent or creative men and women

(Howe, 2011). There is a need for creating opportunity for more research between

psychology and biography. Psychologists stand to gain from studying the life history of

individuals. At the same time biography can benefit from the scientific approach offered by

psychological theories of human development. The method of psychobiography is

underutilized in research. Psychobiographies utilise psychological theory as a framework to

uncover the story of an individual’s life (McAdams & Ochberg, 1988).

According to Fouché and van Niekerk (2010), psychobiographies are “the study of

historically significant and extraordinary individuals over their entire lifespans with the aim
to uncover and reconstruct their lives psychologically” (p. 496). According to Runyan (1988)

psychobiography is an approach that allows for a detailed understanding of individual life

that engages with bringing together evidence, theory and interpretation. This approach to

research provides a unique and holistic description of the individual being investigated,

which is one of the strengths of life history research (Carlson, 1988; Elms 1994). A

psychobiography is a way of doing psychological research in which biographical data is used

to explore the growth of original thinking, creativity and productivity in extraordinary

individuals (Howe, 1997).

The psychological biographer is ever in search of emotional truths, embedded

meaning, the psychological truth of people’s lives, a psychological portrait of the person, an

inner biography (Kakar, 2013). In presenting the lives of creative personalities, a

psychological biographer centres the narrative on emotional conflict characterized by

“transitional (Winnicott) space” where the artist dabbles with creativity, play, flow; “self-

effectance”, an appreciation of the rising competence of the self, the art as “self-object”;

“Kohut”, an outgrowth of the inner core of the artist, and its “mirroring” in the public

recognition (Kakar, 2013, p. 200).

The long forgotten somewhat vetoed field of psychoanalysis, by many, who may

consider lessons from life trajectories and life stories more pointedly, contributes

significantly to understanding of how early experiences have shaped later outcomes in life.

The network of people, kinship relationships, dynamics of everyday interactions and space

and time to pursue individual goals, all contribute to meanings derived out of a lifetime. As

Kakar (2013) points out, the speculative element in a psychobiography is what makes it

valuable, and should be given adequate regard in theory and practical understanding.
 Life, Art, Identity and Meaning-Making

Psychological reality is guided through meaning-making or semiotic mediation. This

is a critical feature of Human Psychology (Valsiner, 2007). True artistic expression blends

with a spontaneous outpouring of the self. The solitude Sonabai experienced, was it a pre-

condition for being in a state of flow? A necessary evil for genius artistic expression? Making

toys for her infant son, Sonabai took on the challenge to make beautiful toys that would not

crumble easily at the hands of the young child. Signs of resilience, carving the best path out

of adversity, were reflected automatically in the creative process.

Caste affiliation, in the case of Sonabai the “shudra” identifier, lead to further

alienation and became an undivided part of her life, times and ethnic identity. Traditionally

specified gender roles add to this identity. Despite limiting conditions, the lives of individuals

within the same community are socially adequately vibrant (Huyler, 2010). The women of

Sonabai’s community are self-assured, and happy and do not look upon themselves as being

in any way inferior to the men. Their involvement in community activities gives them a sense

of empowerment. The bonding among women gives them the necessary strength to tide over

the limitations posed by patriarchy. Decorating their homes is a creative tradition that rests

with the women.

Sonabai’s art goes beyond self-expression to being a realm for a meaningful

existence. In her early life with her parents she experienced a great deal of freedom and her

parents never restricted her. She was blessed by a saint in her younger days, who prophesied

for her tremendous happiness, a turnaround of her life. Engendering the environment with her

affection for her granddaughter in a male child preference social setting, and the bond of

friendship she developed with her daughter-in-law over the years, made up for her long years

of loneliness in some ways and gave her strength of character.

 The Indian woman artist is seldom recognized for her skill, and remained quite

insentient of the import her art could have on the world and herself; how it could transform

her world, create a better future (Huyler, 2008). Such an unselfconscious disposition could

work wonders for an inherent powerful identity, not mediated by the world’s analysis of

oneself or one’s skills; the skills sphere being a sacred space wherein women empower

themselves. Sonabai was uncomfortable with the attention on herself that her later artistic

recognition brought with itself. Even though Sonabai was depressed and isolated, or maybe

because of that, she painted a vibrant world in her desolate home reflecting her grit and

positive strength.

As a result of her travels, Sonabai’s persona widened to include new colours

(including a shift from vegetable based dyes to poster paint) and forms, the outer

transformation in her art reflective of a more self-assured and expansive inner transformation.

Her experience of a stark contrast between the home and the outside including not only the

urbane foreign lands, between inner and outer worlds (depressed reality to a charming

colourful creative landscape), did not perplex her. No one needed to demystify the context for

her. Even though she did not exactly take to the newfound limelight, she carried on

determinedly for the better future of her family, and her rootedness and concern for her

community. The self goes beyond the immediate, bounded reality to a limitless, capacious

sentiment. Perhaps this is the face of self-actualization, a feat Sonabai had accomplished

completely.

Sen (2007, p.132) in discussing the life of Sita as the idealized icon of womanhood, a

princess by birth, highlights the ever-true status of the Indian woman across contexts of social

class, caste and location; “For a girl child grows up as a being without an identity, an ever

alienated self in exile”. Das (2007) goes on to explain how Sita is the cultural archetype, an

offshoot of imagination or a significant figment of history and is at once the “glorious victim”
and the “triumphant woman”, traditional yet modern (p. 187). Sonabai also triumphs, despite

her arduous life and poverty, a post- modern Sita, quietly thwarting tradition and bringing it

out to the world in aesthetic representation through her art; a pathfinder of empowerment for

her proximate rural community and beyond.

Looking at the history of women artists, Hodge (2020) traces the journey of art by women

across time periods, and art movements, from the peripheries to a relative centrestage. Every

woman paints herself, her world, and the world of her fellow sisters. While every woman

artist is not a feminist, there are many who are, and both have collectively carved the path for

the recognition and appreciation of art by women, and its meaningful deconstruction. Sonabai

is one such artist, not a feminist by expression, but certainly an inspiration representing the

artist-woman’s voice, reaching even the unversed, through her life story. It gives the gift of

hope, to mothers, to women bound by poverty, patriarchy and oppression, to women in dark

drab worlds, and those striving to create their place in the world and construct an identity.

Her life story embodies simplicity, fortitude, transience, social voice and the natural world.

While doing so it unmasks the essential questions, the answers to which masquerade as

givens in our society. The purpose of art and the artist is to reveal the questions that have

been obscured by the answers (Baldwin, 1962). Sonabai’s life story as an artist piques us to

do just that.
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