Truck art in the blue city

Next morning, before heading out of the hotel, we asked the hotel manager Mr. Jagdish about locations in Jodhpur where we could find truck painting workshops. Based on his suggestions, we took an auto rickshaw to Pratap Nagar. After inquiring around for a while we found painter Sattu’s workshop, but he wasn’t there. Although we did get to meet some of his assistants and also saw a freshly painted truck stationed at the workshop. Looking at the illustration style of the painted truck, one could easily tell the difference between the trucks painted in Punjab and those painted in Rajasthan. Rajasthan is known for its miniature painting style; hence most of the illustrations were very finely detailed out and done using fine brushes. Whereas in Punjab, the illustrations on the trucks showed thicker strokes of brush and lesser detailing.

Sattu painter’s assistants told us that we ought to see some of the trucks owned by Sher Khan. Sher Khan was known to own some of the finely decorated trucks in that part of the city. But to our disappointment the trucks were out on business trips and we could only see some of his old trucks.

After roaming around in the area for some more time we came across this workshop where a couple of people were adding finishing touches to a Panihari painting done on the back of a truck. Without disturbing them, we documented whatever work they did that was left for them to finish. Once they were done, we introduced ourselves. During our conversations, we got to know that the person whose work we had just witnessed was of Raja Gharu’s — a very well known truck painter in Jodhpur. Raja was working on the truck painting along with his elder brother, Ashok Kumar. Raja was headed towards his home, and so he invited us over to continue with the conversation.

Raja lives in a joint family with over 10 members in his house. We spent a couple of hours talking to him about his work, his interests and about the art form itself. When we were about to leave, Raja invited us to visit another workshop with him the next day. He wanted us to capture the entire process of a truck’s back being painted. We gladly accepted his offer.

We spent the rest of the day roaming around in the Jodhpur market.