Painting: Bal Hanuman

He is airborne and entirely convinced. The child Hanuman streaks across a sky of blue and gold, his red body tilted forward with the absolute confidence of someone who has identified a target and has no reason to doubt he will reach it. The target is the sun. He has mistaken it for a ripe fruit, and the mistake is so pure, so free of hesitation, that it reads less as error and more as the first demonstration of a nature that will spend a lifetime reaching for what others consider unreachable. A yellow scarf streams behind him, catching the motion of flight and giving the composition its sense of speed, the line of colour that tells you the figure has just passed through this part of the sky and is already somewhere further ahead.

The palette is warm and unambiguous: the red of the child's body, the yellow of the scarf and the sun-touched horizon, the blue of open sky. Bharat Tripathi renders the scene in the direct, energised language of contemporary figurative painting, where the mythological episode is stripped of ceremonial distance and returned to the quality it has always contained at its core: the irresistible momentum of a child utterly at home in his own extraordinary nature. There is joy in this painting, the specific joy of a being who does not yet know the word impossible. This work belongs to Tripathi's Anjaneya Series, exhibited at Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai in September 2025, a body of paintings that approaches Hanuman across all stages of his life and legend with the same quality of felt, immediate presence. Painted in acrylic on canvas, it is the youngest and perhaps the most luminous work in the series.

Why This Artwork Stands Out

• The airborne posture of the child figure captures the precise quality of innocent, unstoppable momentum that makes this episode among the most beloved in the Hanuman legend.
• The flowing yellow scarf introduces a trail of movement that animates the composition and gives the sense of flight a visual velocity beyond what the figure alone could carry.
• The warm red, yellow and blue palette achieves a celebratory brightness that sets this work apart from the more weighted devotional register of other paintings in the series.
• As part of the Anjaneya Series shown at Jehangir Art Gallery, this painting completes the arc from the divine child to the cosmic warrior, giving the series its note of pure, unguarded beginning.

Handle with care. Do not handle the painted area with bare hands. Handle with gloves. Do not let the picture come into contact with moisture or high humidity. Do not expose to direct sunlight. Use a soft-bristle brush to gently clean the painting.