Shakuntala

Three young women walk away through a forest clearing. The one in front has stopped, one foot raised, as if to pull out a thorn. She is really turning to look back at a man the picture does not show. Her friends see through it.

She is Shakuntala, from the Mahabharata, and the man is Dushyanta. Ravi Varma painted episodes from her story more than once; it was among his best-known subjects, together with Nala and Damayanti.

The historian Tapati Guha-Thakurta compared the scene to a still from a moving film, a single frame lifted out of a running story. The absent lover is the point of reference for everything in it. This canvas is in the Sree Chitra Art Gallery.