There is a certain stillness about Shampa Sircar Das’s work, that one may feel, but not quite be able to put in words. The imageries, amorphous and fluid, carry in them so many stories and metaphors of the past, present, and future; yet they sustain just as much silence. The spontaneity with which the human and animal forms appear in her paintings and interact with the sundry elements of nature, it is as if her motifs never begin nor end. Her canvas only offers to be the aether, on which these varied creations wilfully occur, resonate, and dispel. On this note is born “Pravah,” her newest series of artworks.

The Sanskrit term Dashavatar means ten avatars, incarnations of Vishnu. The chronology of these incarnations clearly illustrates the evolutionary process of mankind.

The idea of evolution of mankind, which is inherent in the theory of avatars, was visualised by the sages in India, thousands of years before it was formally proposed, in the middle of the nineteenth century, by the British naturalist Charles Darwin.

In Hindu theology an idea is generally presented, not as a dry piece of philosophy; but as a series of symbolic, mythological and moralistic stories. A thought becomes easy to understand and teaching becomes more palatable if the same is explained through simple stories and interesting anecdotes. Following that tradition, the theory of evolution was presented in the form of dashavatar - a set of tales which had religious, mythological, moralistic and spiritual flavour.