According to the ancient tradition, Maharishi Valmiki was walking through a forest when he saw a pair of Krauncha birds together, absorbed in their affection. Suddenly, a hunter struck down the male bird. The grief of the surviving bird deeply moved Valmiki. From that intense moment of compassion and sorrow, words emerged from him in a poetic rhythm—the first śloka.
That moment is traditionally remembered as the inspiration for Valmiki to compose the Ramayana.
For me, the Krauncha birds therefore represent much more than a beautiful pair of birds. They represent love, loss, compassion, and the birth of poetry from human emotion.
I painted this work at a time when I was preparing for a series of paintings based on the Ramayana. Before approaching the great characters and dramatic events of the epic, I felt drawn to this quieter story—the story of the birds whose tragedy is said to have awakened Valmiki's poetic voice.
The two birds facing each other in the open landscape became, for me, a symbol of companionship and innocence. Their graceful forms against the vast sky create a moment of peace, while the story behind them carries the shadow of an impending tragedy.
There is something profoundly beautiful about the idea that an epic of such enormous scale could have its poetic beginning in a small, heartbreaking encounter in nature.
The Ramayana is filled with questions about love, duty, separation, suffering, courage and righteousness. But before all of those stories, there is this cry of a bird—and the compassion of a human being who could not remain untouched by another creature's suffering.
That is what I wanted to preserve in this painting.
The Krauncha birds became the first subjects in my planned Ramayana painting series—a reminder that sometimes a great story begins with a single moment of empathy.
