Before adorning one's house became about choosing "mera wala blue" from the shade card, there were the myriad art and craft traditions in India where members of the household — women in particular — would use everyday materials to decorate compound walls to mark a special occasion like marriage, and festivals. Sanja paintings in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh are made after Ganesh Visarjan for a folk festival, for instance, while the neighbouring Chhattisgarh has its own tradition of Bheenti Chitra.

These aesthetic practices, however, are getting relegated to memory, and before they are spoken about in the past tense, Mumbaikars have a chance to learn the basics of Bheenti Chitra at a workshop this weekend. The two-day session will be conducted by artist Champabai Chitrakar, who has to her credit the stunning latticework with 3-D figurines on the walls of the Madhya Pradesh Tribal Museum in Bhopal.