Sangita Jogi started drawing when she was a child. She learnt by watching her parents, who were self-taught artists. Originally from a nomadic performing community in Rajasthan, Sangita’s extended family settled near Ahmedabad in Gujarat, earning their livelihood mainly through manual labour. Most members of her family also draw, exploring themes based on their lives, as well as those from  folk tales and songs.

Sangita is now also the author of ‘The Women I Could Be’ published by Tara Books. Gita Wolf interviewed Sangita and provided the text for the book, which is illustrated with Sangita’s drawings. The text links Sangita’s drawings which she had done in black and white and to which, with her permission, the publishers have added colour.

Sangita says that a modern woman is someone who thinks differently, who is not going to do only housework. She’s a responsible person who does what needs to be done in her household, who listens to her family but doesn’t necessarily accept or agree with everything that they say.

Sangita’s parents were originally musicians who earned their living by performing in public places. Ultimately, they earned their living by drawing. Her father is now dead. Her mother, Tejubehan, loves drawing and is an established artist. She already has two books with Tara (Drawing from the City  and Mother Steals a Bicycle and other Stories ). Sangita finds that her mother’s house is where she gets all the time to devote to her art.

In her book, Sangita tells us that a woman can’t be modern all by herself. She needs her family’s support. Her mother and her father always supported her. Sangita can read in Gujarati but could go to school only till Class 2. Her school building collapsed during the Gujarat earthquake of 2001. The school was rebuilt but she doesn’t know why they didn’t take her back.

Like the custom in her community, Sangita was married off very young and went to live with her husband’s family in their village. Sangita is the youngest daughter-in-law in a large household that includes her, her husband and children, her mother-in-law, her husband’s brothers and their families. While her sisters-in-law work as farm labourers, Sangita does a large part of the housework including looking after the children. She tries to draw whenever she can – mostly at night and sometimes in the afternoon.

Sangita’s drawings, like those of many others in her family, are a mix of many influences and can perhaps best be labelled ‘urban folk’. She thinks of different kinds of women – many whose lives are very different from hers – and draws all the things they are free to do and be. She likes to draw ‘Miss India type girls’ by which she means women who win the world both with their beauty and brains.

Sangita hasn’t travelled much. She had been to a few places with her parents when she was very young. She’s fascinated by the thought of travel and hopes to go to America some day. She’s never travelled with friends and thinks that if she begins to go to different places, she’ll never be able to stop.

Sangita is all for women having a good time and likes to draw pictures of women enjoying themselves in different ways. She loves to dance and would have loved to perform on TV. In her community, young married women are not supposed to perform in public. She feels lucky when she gets to dance at family weddings. And she can always draw pictures of women dancing!

She feels blessed by Saraswati, the goddess of art and music. Her mother has always advised her to desist from copying other people’s work and draw from her own mind. She relies on her imagination and memory to make art. Sangita is pondering over the question whether a woman is modern if she doesn’t dress fashionably? She thinks of her mother who looks traditional, does work she enjoys, supports her family and has modern views.

I bought a copy of The Women I Could Be after reading Urvashi Butalia’s brilliant review https://scroll.in/article/1011935/sangita-jogi-is-part-of-a-family-of-manual-labourers-this-is-what-the-book-of-her-art-says Do read the book and ask others to do so as well.