Odisha’s Pattachitra Art Adorned Alia Bhatt’s Ramayan-Themed Saree At Ayodhya

New Delhi: Bollywood showed up in all its might at the consecration ceremony of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. As usual, the stars didn’t fail to make a statement with their attires. Alia Bhatt, who was present with husband, actor Ranbir Kapoor, stood out with her beautiful silk saree for the ceremony. The pallu of the silk saree was hand-printed and depicted key moments mentioned in the Ramayana in Odisha’s Pattachitra art.

The breaking of the Shiv Dhanush, King Dashratha’s promise, in the boat with Guha, the golden deer, the kidnapping, Ram Setu, Lord Hanuman presenting the ring to Ma Sita and Rama Pattabishek – these miniature paintings were done in the Pattachitra style and took 100 hours to complete.

“Alia was wearing a Mysore silk saree from Karnataka for the inauguration. The pallu work is hand printed, where you can see the depiction of key moments that are mentioned in the Ramayana,” Bharathy Harish, Head of the designer label Madhurya told IndiaToday.in

These events have been depicted intricately on the pallu. Imagine, within the 4-inch pallu bandh that we had, the artists accommodated the theme,” she added.

Bharathy Harish said, “Two artists worked for 10 days straight to get this done. This was custom-made.” She also stated that the saree’s cost is around Rs 45,000.

Odisha’s Pattachitra

Pattachitra is predominantly icon painting. Pattachitra evolved from two Sanskrit words – Patta or cloth, and Chitra or picture. Hence, Pattachitra is a picture painted on a piece of cloth. This form of art is closely related to the cult of Shri Jagannath and the temple traditions in Puri. Believed to have originated as early as the 12th century, it is one of the most popular living art forms, and people in Odisha practice it to this day.

Almost all of the Chitrakar community hails from a small village in Puri district called Raghurajpur. This is also the only village in India where each family is engaged in crafts, such as patta painting, wooden toys, stone carvings, etc.

For Pattachitra painting, the Chitrakars follow a traditional process of preparing the canvas. A gauze-like fine cotton cloth is coated with white stone powder and gum made out of tamarind seeds. This makes the canvas ready to accept the paint, made of natural colors. These colors are a unique feature of Pattachitra. The gum of the kaitha tree is the chief ingredient, used as a base for making different pigments by adding available raw materials. For instance, to get the shade of white, powdered conch shells are used.

Some of the popular themes include The Badhia (a depiction of the temple of Jagannath); Krishna Lila (an enactment of Jagannath as Lord Krishna displaying his powers as a child); Dasabatara Patti (the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu); and Panchamukhi (a depiction of Lord Ganesh as a five-headed deity). Some of the finest Chitrakars create three Pattachita paintings of Lord Jagannath, Goddess Subhadra, and Lord Balabhadra for the public to pay obeisance during the ‘Anasara’ period when deities supposedly fall sick for a period of 15 days before the annual Rath Yatra.