Hidden away on one floor of the Jaganmohan Art Museum in Mysore, in a side alcove surrounded by drab walls and a dusty glass, is an absolute masterpiece by Sawlaram Laxman Haldankar. There was no advertisement, no fanfare. I had seen it digitally before, but it had never registered. Standing there, seeing it for real with my own eyes, it mesmerised me. It has not let go since.
On a recent trip to Mysore, I took time away from family commitments. I went there to see the Raja Ravi Varma paintings, and they did not disappoint. However this painting by Haldankar painted in 1945-46, Glow of Hope (or less inspiringly, Lady with the Lamp) is probably one of India's most iconic paintings.
Now, I am no art critic, and neither can I do justice to the art quality or painting style. But a casual reading about it tell me enough to be amazed. It is unique because it is a watercolour. Oil painting for such art is more common. Watercolour is hard. Haldankar was a well-trained and accomplished painter who studied at the famous JJ School of Art.
But even beside that, the story of how the painting came to be is also evocative. The subject is a young girl, who happens to be the artist's daughter, Geeta Haldankar, all of about 13 or 14 years of age at the time of the painting. Haldankar had purchased a lavender saree for his wife on the occasion of Deepavali, the festival of lights. His daughter wore it and came running to show him how pretty she looked. In that moment, looking at her in her mother's saree, holding a diya lit for the festival, the artist was struck with inspiration. Over the next days, Geeta posed for him continuously, for hours together, while he got this inspiration on paper right.
Art commentators talk about the beauty of the light portrayed so amazingly behind the fingers. Shielding it from being extinguished, and the glow it bestows on her face. They talk about the enigma of the face. Is she smiling? Is she serious? Is she defiant, or is that innocence? Is she young and curious, or old and wise?
There are descriptions, and even a video of Geeta, who lived to the ripe old age of 101, speaking about her experience and her father's art.
But I want to focus on something else. Something that has been bugging me, swirling in my head, that I had not been able to connect.
The Slow Burn
I say "recent trip," but it was over six months ago. Life has been busy. But ever since I saw this painting, I have wanted to write about it. I have looked at it many times, trying to find the words to describe why I liked it so much. Various thoughts have come and gone, mostly variations on the brief descriptions above, each with stories in themselves. But something was always missing, and I could not place it.
Then today, commuting back from work on a regular Tuesday, it struck me.
And it is this:
The reason this painting feels so evocative is because the artist captured the fragile glow of hope for a country on the cusp of freedom from oppression.
This painting was started in 1932 but completed in 1945-46. The artist mulled over it, inhabited it maybe, through tumultuous times for the world and for India. By 1945, World War 2 had come and gone, leaving behind a fractured world. The British were heroes in the European theatre but were still the evil oppressors in India, depleted in Europe, still holding on to the Jewel in the Crown. The independence movement in India was at its peak - but had also splintered into many factions with different motivations. The Quit India movement had come and gone. The INA was being put on sham trials. There was general unrest, and the zeitgeist was pulled sharply and tattered, between hope and despair.
It is in this context that Haldankar sees his young, innocent daughter adorned in new clothes, shielding a gentle flame with her tender hands, lest it be extinguished by a stray wind, on the festival celebrating the victory of good over evil. She is enthused at being able to don new clothes, to break free. But she also somehow has the wisdom to know that the gentle flame of hope has to be shielded from the evil vapours swirling around. And in doing so protectively, providing the ashray (refuge) to the chirag (the light) of independence, the hope of freedom from oppression, she ends up illuminating her face with the glow of hope.
It is this version of India, one on the eve of becoming a free woman, that Haldankar's painting chooses to portray. That is why, while he is painting a young girl, she seems to carry the maturity of wisdom on her face. The enigma is no enigma at all, only to those who dwell on it briefly. To me, she became Bharat Mata, Mother India. The young maiden on the cusp of freedom, eagerly donning her new clothes, and also the wise mother who knows that freedom is precious and has to be shielded.
This is why the painting mattered so much to me, and why I had struggled to tie it together.
Haldankar himself probably never attributed any political meaning to this piece. This might just be my search for meaning in something I have seen. But I cannot help imagining that in the moment Haldankar saw that vision of his daughter, the spark of inspiration was born from all the milieu in the Indian consciousness of that time.
I am probably not the first person to arrive at this hypothesis, though a cursory check with my AI assistant suggests otherwise. Who knows; the AIs are sycophantic and might just be telling me what I want to hear. That is OK. My search was cursory anyway, because this is my insight, arrived at unprompted, and I am convinced of the meaning I have derived from it.
This painting was started in 1932 but completed in 1945-46. The artist mulled over it, inhabited it maybe, through tumultuous times for the world and for India. By 1945, World War 2 had come and gone, leaving behind a fractured world. The British were heroes in the European theatre but were still the evil oppressors in India, depleted in Europe, still holding on to the Jewel in the Crown. The independence movement in India was at its peak - but had also splintered into many factions with different motivations. The Quit India movement had come and gone. The INA was being put on sham trials. There was general unrest, and the zeitgeist was pulled sharply and tattered, between hope and despair.
It is in this context that Haldankar sees his young, innocent daughter adorned in new clothes, shielding a gentle flame with her tender hands, lest it be extinguished by a stray wind, on the festival celebrating the victory of good over evil. She is enthused at being able to don new clothes, to break free. But she also somehow has the wisdom to know that the gentle flame of hope has to be shielded from the evil vapours swirling around. And in doing so protectively, providing the ashray (refuge) to the chirag (the light) of independence, the hope of freedom from oppression, she ends up illuminating her face with the glow of hope.
It is this version of India, one on the eve of becoming a free woman, that Haldankar's painting chooses to portray. That is why, while he is painting a young girl, she seems to carry the maturity of wisdom on her face. The enigma is no enigma at all, only to those who dwell on it briefly. To me, she became Bharat Mata, Mother India. The young maiden on the cusp of freedom, eagerly donning her new clothes, and also the wise mother who knows that freedom is precious and has to be shielded.
This is why the painting mattered so much to me, and why I had struggled to tie it together.
Haldankar himself probably never attributed any political meaning to this piece. This might just be my search for meaning in something I have seen. But I cannot help imagining that in the moment Haldankar saw that vision of his daughter, the spark of inspiration was born from all the milieu in the Indian consciousness of that time.
I am probably not the first person to arrive at this hypothesis, though a cursory check with my AI assistant suggests otherwise. Who knows; the AIs are sycophantic and might just be telling me what I want to hear. That is OK. My search was cursory anyway, because this is my insight, arrived at unprompted, and I am convinced of the meaning I have derived from it.
Inhabiting the thought
This brings me to something I feel strongly about: how insight emerges.
As a professional market researcher and strategy professional, insight is what I should be paid for. But insight is hard to come by and is being commoditized by the fast and the shallow need for speed. I have wondered about it for years on where and how does Insight emerge from?
Back in 2021, I wrote about it. My takeaway then was that insight emerges from writing, that writing helps us connect the dots. But I was only halfway there.
In 2025, I wrote about the Fog and the Mountain behind it, how insight reveals itself. I wrote about how, for insight to emerge, we need to move from absorbing to seeing, from gathering to generating, and inhabit a thought long enough to force the insight to coalesce around the silence and the noise. About how it is necessary to make it weird and go off the edges.
That is what happened here. I had been stewing on this painting for six months. Thinking about what intrigued me about it. Scrolling past the image and description plaques on my phone's gallery during commutes, as a way to avoid doom-scrolling. I was also reading, writing and consuming many other things. Books about India's independence struggle; Amit Varma's podcast about his trips to Spain and the paintings of Francisco Goya that he saw there; episodes of Mad Men where Don Draper describes nostalgia as a powerful force in the famous Carousel pitch; Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, where in a post-abundance future the real battle is all about culture, fought over a young girl's book. And I have been drowning in the mediocrity of AI-generated slop, the Godzilla stomping on the creative and marketing professions, the darling of CFOs, and the subject of mind-numbing corporate training workshops promising to make me both superhuman and at the same time preparing me for the job I am about to be replaced from.
All of this was stewing somehow. The inputs were seemingly random. But they were all, in different ways, about culture under siege and what it means to protect something fragile. The idea about the painting's meaning had been inhabiting my mind to the point where I was asking myself weekly: what is it a metaphor for? What is the idea in disguise?
Then today, on my commute back from work, it just struck me. Out of the blue. Enough to force me to my desk to write this.
Insight comes from inhabiting a thought. No substitutes.
A couple of years ago I read a presentation by Joe Burns on LinkedIn that said:
As a professional market researcher and strategy professional, insight is what I should be paid for. But insight is hard to come by and is being commoditized by the fast and the shallow need for speed. I have wondered about it for years on where and how does Insight emerge from?
Back in 2021, I wrote about it. My takeaway then was that insight emerges from writing, that writing helps us connect the dots. But I was only halfway there.
In 2025, I wrote about the Fog and the Mountain behind it, how insight reveals itself. I wrote about how, for insight to emerge, we need to move from absorbing to seeing, from gathering to generating, and inhabit a thought long enough to force the insight to coalesce around the silence and the noise. About how it is necessary to make it weird and go off the edges.
That is what happened here. I had been stewing on this painting for six months. Thinking about what intrigued me about it. Scrolling past the image and description plaques on my phone's gallery during commutes, as a way to avoid doom-scrolling. I was also reading, writing and consuming many other things. Books about India's independence struggle; Amit Varma's podcast about his trips to Spain and the paintings of Francisco Goya that he saw there; episodes of Mad Men where Don Draper describes nostalgia as a powerful force in the famous Carousel pitch; Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, where in a post-abundance future the real battle is all about culture, fought over a young girl's book. And I have been drowning in the mediocrity of AI-generated slop, the Godzilla stomping on the creative and marketing professions, the darling of CFOs, and the subject of mind-numbing corporate training workshops promising to make me both superhuman and at the same time preparing me for the job I am about to be replaced from.
All of this was stewing somehow. The inputs were seemingly random. But they were all, in different ways, about culture under siege and what it means to protect something fragile. The idea about the painting's meaning had been inhabiting my mind to the point where I was asking myself weekly: what is it a metaphor for? What is the idea in disguise?
Then today, on my commute back from work, it just struck me. Out of the blue. Enough to force me to my desk to write this.
Insight comes from inhabiting a thought. No substitutes.
A couple of years ago I read a presentation by Joe Burns on LinkedIn that said:
Insight is a nocturnal predator. Its potency wanes in the sunlight.
He goes on to say that real insight (he says advantage) is found in its natural habitat - which is off the map, at the edges.
I could not agree more.
I could not agree more.
The Maharaja's Insight
I will close with how the painting came to be in the Mysore gallery. It is said that the Maharaja Jayachamaraja Wodeyar of Mysore saw it at an exhibition and purchased it on the spot, without hesitation, for a then-princely sum of Rs. 300.
I suspect the Maharaja was struck by some kind of insight as well.
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