This Article First Appeared In Scroll On May 02, 2023.
you’re at a party.
It’s getting a bit boring.
Someone suggests a game of cards or – if you move in astrologically-inclined circles – offers to read fortunes.
The host produces a deck.
As they slide the cards out of the box, you expect to see the familiar visages of king, queen and jack – primary-coloured, angular icons denoting mediaeval European nobility.
Instead, you find yourself looking at a completely different court – men in pyjamas, women in cholis, adorned with jewellery and accessorised with parakeets and pakhawajs. Yet the colour tones are rather un-subcontinental, and the features are rendered in the simplified lines of early graphic design.