Aurora's Paintings

Aurora’s paintings serve various purposes in Rushdie’s work “The Moors Last Sigh”. Aurora’s painting’s depict her struggle with the grief of her mother’s death, a grief that never saw any emotional manifestation when it comes to Aurora’s conduct and being herself (she always remains composed publicly), but see’s a physical manifestation in her paintings, as Rushdie identifies that “her art was the simple tragedy of her loss,the unassauged pain of becoming a motherless child”. Her paintings linger on the border between fact and fiction, history and fantasy, and perhaps also function as a visual materialization of family history, an interpretive family history if you may, as the portraits of Epifania and Aires depict what Aurora believed they were or deserved. The paintings also become a materialization of all she has learnt or witnessed via her family members, and as a result, it reflects who she has become; Camoen calls it “the great swarm of being itself”.  It is important that the historical manifestations are relevant to India, both in its traditional and modern history “she had put history on the walls”, as the images are replete with references such as the Taj Mahal, Emperor Asoka, Gandhi, Nehru and even a slightly Christian references such as the invitation of the Apostle St. Thomas to India and a parody of the Last Supper. But it is also important to note that Camoen notes that “only God was absent” (60), and this lack of divinity becomes an almost omen regarding the fate of Aurora. In fact, God is replaced by “her version of erotic temple carvings” and such, revealing that perhaps the absence of God owes to how God had or hadn’t been incorporated in her life by both Camoen and Belle. Rather, her paintings are resonant of Tipu Sultan and such immortal memoirs of history, and of course, “in an honored place was Vasco da Gama himself” (59).

Perhaps what is most capturing is Rushdie’s description of Aurora’s paintings in their intermingling of the familiar/familiar with the unfamiliar/beyond familial “images of her own family had to fight their way through this hyper-abundance of imagery, she was suggesting that the privacy of Cabral Island was an illusion…and this metamorphic line of humanity was the truth” (60). The paintings also become symbolic of Camoen’s failure as a father although they initially witness “a proud fathers bursting heart”, as he wonders how “at her tender age she could have heard so much of the worlds anger and pain and disappointment and tasted so little of its delight” (60).  Aurora herself seems to yearn to go beyond the privacy of Cabral Island, to become a part of the “crowd without boundaries” and the “metamorphic line of humanity”.  The emphasis on Mother India is perhaps the most dense, and purposeful.  Mother India cannot survive or be beautiful with the absence of the “Mother-Goddess”, personally for her Isabelle, but in the larger political picture, without a true leader. Thus, the art becomes more than her “act of mourning”, rather, it acquaints one with the dynamic force that would become the central figure in the novel.