This is indeed an invigorating albeit taxing period for contemporary Indian art, with opinions varying on whether it is the best of times... or the worst of times, fraught as it is with fraudulent prices and fake art. Art galleries are mushrooming ad nauseam, but the one that Mumbai's art connoisseurs were awaiting with bated breath made its presence felt with Atul Dodiya's The Wet Sleeves of My Paper Robe. Bodhi Art Gallery could not have chosen a better horse to back, for Dodiya's rise in the national and international arena has been swift yet stable. Not surprisingly, his work (As though he listened, 1987, oil on canvas, 60" by 64") scaled the Rs. 1 crore peak at Saffronart's spring auction.

Working with the medium of print and paper pulp at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, the refreshingly unassuming artist goes boldly where he has not gone before. Based on childhood memories of stories about the legendary forest-dweller, Sabari from the epic Ramayana, and the added inspiration of celebrated artist, Nandalal Bose's 1941 tempera sequence Sabari in her Youth, Sabari in her Middle Age and Sabari in her Old Age, he reflects on the free, self-assertive yet devoted spirit of her nurturing womanhood in pre-mythic times while contemporising it for our era