Panihari painting

The next day before meeting Raja Gharu, we went to the Jodhpur bus stand and booked our tickets to Delhi in the evening bus.

When we reached the workshop, Raja and his assistant had just started their work on a new truck. Raja Gharu specializes in painting sceneries on the back of trucks. He doesn’t do the writing work.

Ish clicking a picture with his phone while Raja Gharu‘s assistant works on a Panihari painting

We spent the next few hours documenting the entire process from the beginning to the end. It took less than 4 hours for Raja Gharu and his assistant to finish their painting. It was a traditional Rajasthani Panihari painting consisting of two women with water pots, some people praying in a temple and farmers working in their fields. He also described the significance of those elements in the painting while we were interviewing him.

Raja Gharu and his assistant with their finished Panihari painting

In the garage next door where Raja Gharu was working, there was another truck being worked upon. They were writers who were responsible to take care of all the written matter that goes onto the truck.

Writers working on a truck

Finally we thought of getting our picture clicked with a painted truck

Right after I had clicked the final picture of the painted truck, I realized that I had never thought of getting a picture of myself clicked with the painted trucks. For the first time during the trip, I handed my camera to someone else and asked him to click a picture of Ish and myself with a painted truck in the background. After finishing the documentation we headed back to our hotel, picked our bags and went to the bus station. Off to Delhi.