Manjit Bawa was a great traveller of the plains of north India especially the Punjab. He would watch local theatre, see the art and talk to people about their oral tradition. The stories of mythology that they related changed slightly from area to area, occasionally moving away from the traditional in some way or the other.
Manjit too, had a similar sensibility linked with storytelling. He used to often say that even though the basic story line of any given myth followed the established norm, an artist had the freedom to play around with the imagery whenever he was inspired to do so. In other words, the urge to bring forth a change in an image or in a story was justified even while the myth remained the same.
- Rupika Chawla
