A Friendship That Blossomed By The Well

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A few times a week, these young ladies see each other at this mud well by happenstance. It is a relatively isolated one from their village, as could be made out from the hints of overgrowth in the background. On days when these hardworking rural women have a few extra minutes at their disposal, each of them takes the slightly longer route to this well in hopes of meeting the other. This soft, lifelike watercolour depicts one of those days when they do. It does not depict a joy of a zealous nature, but in fact one that is calm and gathered. Sincere pleasure at chancing upon the company of the other is in each of their faces, of a gentle middling degree bred by familiarity; further proof of which lies in the relaxed stance of their bodies.

One of them balances both their pots about her on the mud platform surrounding the well, whilst the other leisurely gathers the ropes. Dressed in the colourful bootidar ghagra-cholies of North Indian married women, they have let the diaphanous wisps by way of their dupattas fall away from their torsos. They are probably chatting about the torment their children subject them to or expressing their gratitude at having seen the other in the course of their respective days. A woman's days are all the same - she is the essential backdrop against which her loved ones function, tending to an unending cycle of things that need to be done such that a contrary state of affairs occurs to no one - and it is this that forms the subject of the women's conversation at the well.