Telugu Original: Gannavarapu Narasimha Murthy
Translated into English by Rajeshwar Mittapalli

I went to the Ramagiri forest near our village after many days. There is a beautiful valley in that forest. Tourists come there now and then to look at it. Not many people know that such a lovely valley lies here, so few tourists ever find their way to it. When my wife Sandhya was alive we used to come to this valley every week. We were both painters. We would come into this forest and sit by the valley and the waterfall, and we would paint this green world on our canvases.

I first met Sandhya when she was doing her degree. Once, our college held a painting competition. Both of us won prizes for our paintings. Our friendship began there and slowly turned into love. After our degrees, with our elders consent, we married. From that day our minds stayed fixed on painting. We ran a small school in our village and painted alongside that work. Sandhya was a better artist than I was. Her paintings reached international standards. Twice she won awards from the American Art Association. Our life was moving along joyfully when a heavy, unexpected blow struck our home in the form of Sandhya’s death.

Once we went to Araku Valley and were coming back by bus. The bus fell into a gorge. Sandhya died then and there. I was badly injured as well, but after fifteen days I recovered. From that time a lifelessness took hold of me. On the day I reached the valley’s edge again, I felt a strong weariness towards life. Only recently did I turn back into an ordinary human being and begin to come to this valley again.

From childhood I loved drawing and painting. The reason was this beautiful valley. During school holidays I would walk to the valley and spend time there. The valley in this forest was the starting point for many of my paintings. I loved the charm of that place. Tall green hills. A waterfall sliding down them into the gorge. The roar of the water, which sounded like a river of music. The cries of birds rising from the depths of the valley. All of that together formed the beauty that drew me to it. I sat looking at that valley and painted.

Many of my fellow painters used to look at my pictures and tell me they were like Picassos paintings. Their praise always stirred a faint pride in me. Like Picasso, I too worked in cubism. After I married Sandhya we both came to this valley together. Her death then broke me and pushed me away from art for a long time. Only in recent days have I turned into my old self and started coming back to this valley again.

That day when I reached the valley’s edge it lay silent and empty. The rush of the waterfall leaping into the gorge echoed round the rocks. My eyes fell then on a girl who stood under a distant tree. There was a stand in front of her. Curious, I walked towards her. She wore a leaf green Punjabi dress and had a clear, fair, very striking face. Yet she seemed to have nothing to do with her surroundings. She stood there intent on the canvas fixed to the stand, looking towards the valley and painting it.

I stopped under a nearby banyan tree and looked at her. Her fingers moved on the canvas as though they were plucking the strings of a veena. Under those fingers a marvellous picture slowly gathered life. She was like a yogini. She paid no heed to anything around her. All her attention rested on the act of painting. I stood there for a long time watching that girl.

After a while she stopped and flexed her fingers. Then she saw me and stared with surprise.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” she asked, brisk and a little angry.

I smiled and looked at her. “I could ask you the same question,” I said.

“I’m here in the lap of this nature, trying to breathe life into a painting. But you’re watching me secretly. Isn’t that wrong?” she asked.

“You’re a beautiful girl. No doubt about that. Any young man will look at a beautiful girl. I’m not an exception. But I’m not looking at you now. I’m looking at the way you paint. The way your fingers move on the canvas. The play of the brush in your hand. I say that only because I’m a painter myself,” I said.

“Oh, you’re a painter too, are you? Since when have you been painting? Is painting a habit with you, or do you do it now and then?” she asked. I moved closer to her. I could see her more plainly now. She seemed like a definition of beauty.

“My name is Vamshi. From the time I finished my degree, my mind has been set on painting. Picasso is my favourite painter. Looking at you here like this, you bring Ravi Varma and Picasso together in my mind. The way you stand makes me feel as though you’re about to breathe life into this painting. What is this picture, after all? Why are you painting it with such resolve, joining yourself to nature with such intensity? May I know the reason?” I asked her.

“My name is Niharika . I did a degree in Modern Art. I love the paintings of M.F. Husain and Da Vinci. Six months ago an article I wrote, called Indian Art, was published in a magazine named Art Forum,” she said.

“It was published in Art Forum?” I asked. “Great. That is the finest art magazine in the world. If your article found a place there, it means you’re a very accomplished artist. Congratulations. I know that magazine because an article written by my wife appeared there as well. She too was a fine painter, like you,” I said.

“Your wife was an artist as well? Husband and wife both being artists is something special. What was her name? Were any of her paintings printed in magazines? Did you ever put up an exhibition with both your works together?” Niharika asked.

“My wife’s name was Sandhya. Sadly, she is no longer alive. When we went to Araku Valley, the bus met with an accident near Galikonda Valley, and she left me there. Her paintings appeared in many magazines. Mine did not. I’m not as accomplished a painter as she was. Only recently have I turned my mind back to art. In these days I’m trying to paint better work. One day I want to paint strong pictures like Picasso. That is my wish. But leave that. Will you now tell me about this painting you’re working on? I mean the feeling behind it, the source of it, the impulse that led you to it,” I asked.

“I don’t know how to complete the painting I’m working on now,” she said.

“I don’t understand what you mean. Every painter, before he or she starts on a canvas, carries the whole plan in the mind. The artist knows how to begin and how to end. Otherwise the result is an unfinished picture. I’m sure you have that clarity,” I said to her.

“What you say is true. Before a painter starts on a picture, there is a struggle in the mind. But once there is clarity about what must be painted, the brush does not stop. The struggle and the confusion last only until that first stroke of the brush. After that the work flows. But with this painting I’ve no such clarity. For many days I’ve wrestled with it in my mind. The reason is simple. I didn’t start this portrait. A great artist started it. She left it unfinished. She laid the duty of completing it on me. I promised her I’d finish it. Six months have gone by and I still haven’t done that. My brush, which moves easily across many other canvases, refuses to move forward on this one. My mind is numb for some reason. It feels to me that there is a knot of some sort inside this portrait,” Niharika said. Her words surprised me.

“Niharika garu, you say there is a knot in the painting. May I look at it? Seeing it might give me some thoughts as well. Who knows what lies inside which anthill, and which picture hides inside which brush,” I said. My words made her look at me in a puzzled way.

“I decided I wouldn’t show this painting to anyone until it was complete. But the work isn’t moving forward. Someone else began this canvas. I promised them that I’d complete it and bring it to wholeness. It seems now that I haven’t kept that promise. This feels like a test for me. Perhaps I can’t complete it because I didn’t begin it. What is not ours won’t obey us.

“I read somewhere, ‘Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.’ That line comes true for this painting. I have no right to refuse to show you a picture that I didn’t start. And in any case, there’s nothing in this world that must never be seen,” she said, and turned the canvas for me to look at.

I stared and stepped closer to the canvas she was working on. Now I could see the painting plainly. The moment my eyes took in the picture, my sight darkened for a second. My mind went blank with shock. The painting was Sandhya’s work, the one she had been doing before she died in the bus accident. I had watched her many times as she painted it. Yet here that portrait stood on Niharika’s easel. Surprise mixed with doubt in me.

“Niharika garu, this portrait looks exactly like the one my wife Sandhya painted six months ago, before she died in the bus accident. How did it come to you?” I asked. While I asked the question, I noticed that my lips were trembling.

“Vamshi garu, this portrait is indeed the one your wife Sandhya painted, just as you think. I too was in that bus that day, with you and your wife. I’d gone to Araku Valley to see the Borra caves. After I’d seen them, I caught that bus at the Borra crossroad. Sadly, the bus met with an accident near Galikonda Valley. When I fell into the gorge, your wife held out her hand, caught mine, and pulled me to safety. In that rush she herself fell against a rock. She took a heavy blow to the head. When I ran to her she’d already begun to slip into unconsciousness. She asked about you then, but you were nowhere to be seen. After that she gave me this portrait and told me to complete the unfinished work on it. Then she closed her eyes for good,” Niharika said. She fell silent for a while. Her words filled me with wonder.

“When I went home, I looked at the painting she’d given me. I couldn’t make sense of what she’d attempted. I felt a knot inside it. In this portrait she seems to have tried to paint a single woman in two ways, by placing two faces within a single face. I felt that she wanted to show two selves in one body. For six months I’ve been trying to grasp how to show that puzzle in this unfinished portrait. I haven’t been able to do it. By luck you are a painter as well, so please tell me how to finish it,” she said, and placed the canvas in my hands.

I looked at it for a while with close attention. Nothing came to me. I took the painting and walked to the large peepal tree nearby. I studied it again with care. Still I did not know what to do. I went back to Niharika. She was waiting there for me.

“Niharika garu, whether she knew it or not, my wife Sandhya tried to bring out a knot in this portrait. She left before she could finish it. What lay in her mind is known to no one but her. No one still knows why Da Vinci didn’t paint the eyelashes in the Mona Lisa. The same sort of incompleteness and knot lies in Sandhya’s painting as well. Her life too ended like this portrait that she painted—abrupt, incomplete, and tangled. It’s better if the painting remains as it is. Its strength lies in its brokenness. In modern painting, complexity is a crucial element, and a work wins over its viewers only when that knot is there. It gives rise to all sorts of discussions and guesses. This painting is no longer incomplete. It’s a portrait giving the illusion of being unfinished, when in fact it is complete. I shall place it in an art exhibition just as it is. What do you say?”

Niharika fell silent for a while after hearing my words. Then she said, “You’ve spoken very well. When there is a knot in a painting, it turns into a powerful work. The knot is amply present here. For six months I haven’t been able to see that. Whatever your wife held in her mind is known to you alone. That is why it has reached only those it needed to reach. In the future this will stand as a powerful painting.” After that she handed the portrait to me. I took it and left.

Six months later the painting won an award at the International Art Exhibition.

“The Unfinished Portrait” (titled “Asampurna Chitram” in Telugu) by Gannavarapu Narasimha Murthy was first published in Usha weekly webzine, January 20-26, 2026. It is also the winner of Usha—Polepalli Siddaiah Memorial Short Story Competition.

Translated into English by Rajeshwar Mittapalli.

Gannavarapu Narasimha Murthy was born in the agrahgram of Kusumuru near Bobbili in the present-day Vizianagaram district. He holds an M.Tech in Civil Engineering and retired as Additional General Manager from a Railway Public Sector Undertaking—this background gives his fiction a firm grounding in contemporary life. He has written 42 novels, about 780 short stories, a technical book in English for railway engineers, and many essays. His novels include Matti Manushulu, Ankuram, Thoorpu Sandhyaragam, Sindhuram, Swarnamayuram, and Aranyam. His essays appeared in Dhwaja Sthambhalu and Manchi Cinemalu—his readers value his steady attention to social awareness and human relationships. His short story collections include Gandham Chettu, Thoorpu Padamara, Udutha Bhakti, Galivana, Veena Vedanam, Gamyam, Aksharabhayasam, Matti Vasana, and Pichuka Meeda Brahmastram. His tenth and most recent collection, Gannavarapu Narasimha Murthy Kathalu, gathers twenty-five stories that previously appeared in periodicals, grew from real incidents, and probe social conscience and human bonds. It also includes award-winning pieces such as “Erra Pavuram” and “Saraswati Namasthubhyam,” which underscore religious tolerance and education, respectively.