Painting: Lanka Dahan

The city is burning and he stands above it, unhurried. The figure of Hanuman dominates the upper field of the composition, his form immense against a sky that has turned the same colour as the flames below. Red, orange and yellow move through the painting in great surging waves, the palette of fire and of the divine wrath that feeds it. Below, Lanka is consumed. The destruction is total and the destroyer is calm, a combination that is the painting's central and most unsettling truth: that this is not rage but justice, not chaos but the precise consequence of an act of violation against the sacred.

Bharat Tripathi works in a figurative language that distils mythological episodes into their essential emotional charge. Lanka Dahan is one of the Ramayana's most theatrically charged moments, the moment when Hanuman, captured and sentenced to have his tail set alight, uses that very punishment to reduce an entire kingdom to ash. Tripathi does not illustrate the episode so much as embody its atmosphere, the overwhelming warmth of the palette creates a canvas that feels genuinely heated, as though the fire has not yet finished. The figure stands in it without being consumed by it, a detail the tradition has always understood as the deepest demonstration of Hanuman's invincibility. This work belongs to Tripathi's Anjaneya Series, exhibited at Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai in September 2025, a sustained body of contemporary paintings that approaches Hanuman not as religious subject matter but as living, felt presence. Painted in acrylic on canvas, it is a work that does not ask to be contemplated quietly.

Why This Artwork Stands Out

• The monumental scale of the figure against the burning city establishes a visual hierarchy that is both iconographically correct and compositionally powerful, making the deity's dominance felt rather than simply depicted.
• The near-total immersion of the palette in warm reds, oranges and yellows makes the painting function as a chromatic experience of fire before it is read as a narrative one.
• The calm of the figure within the destruction introduces the painting's deepest emotional register: power that does not require agitation, justice that does not require anger.
• As part of the Anjaneya Series shown at Jehangir Art Gallery, this work carries exhibition provenance that places it within a considered and cohesive body of contemporary devotional painting.

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.