Sacred Bestowal

The Story

Sacred Bestowal takes Dhanvantari, the physician of the gods, at the moment he surfaces from the churned ocean with the vessel of amrita in his hand. He stands crowned on a lotus, marked with the Vaishnava tilak, four arms holding the pot, the disc, the flowering stem and the instrument of healing. Below him two attendants bend over a mortar, grinding the herbs that turn divine medicine into something a mortal body can take. The whole composition is organised as a descent, from immortality at the top to the working of hands at the base.

Behind them the field burns: vermilion, saffron and rose dissolved into one continuous heat, edged in silver zari coils and rows of black-rimmed mirrors that catch and scatter light as you move past. His ornament is built the way jewellery is built rather than the way cloth is embroidered: coiled gold dabka, seed pearls, a citrine drop at the throat, cuffs raised into relief with crystal and metal thread. Against that density the quiet gestures hold: a lotus bud in flat gold bugle beads, an emerald floret at an attendant's ear, a stitched silver medallion resting in an open palm. Worked entirely by hand on cotton canvas, the piece asks to be read twice: once as an image of healing, once as a surface.

Sacred Bestowal is part of KURU's Sacred Threads collection, created under the artistic direction of Shantnu Sihag, trained at Istituto Marangoni and Rubelli Venice. Each artwork is entirely hand-embroidered, and the intricacy of materials and technique means no two pieces can ever be truly identical. Every artwork carries its own character, impossible to replicate exactly by hand, and is accompanied by a signed Certificate of Authenticity.