An artist from Govardhan, painting in Faridabad.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sandhya was born within walking distance of the parikrama path — the seven-kilometre circumambulation of Govardhan hill that pilgrims have done at first light for as long as the village has remembered. The hill is small. The walk is large. The paintings, when they begin, begin from there.

Lorem ipsum — the village of Krishna was, for the artist as a child, simply the village. The colour vocabulary — vermilion, lapis, indigo, mustard, mango-leaf green — came home from temple courtyards before it came from any teacher. It still does. The vermilion is ground in Sangli; the linen comes from Belgium; everything else, including the eye, comes from Braj.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet — she trained in oil after college. The first commission was for a wall in a Faridabad home where the family had a small Pichwai. The painting was a Govardhan in slow morning. It is still on the wall, twelve years later. The studio has not changed since.