Nitambini नितम्बिनी

She Who Is the Earth Remembering Herself

There are mornings when the forest holds its breath. On the juncture of the first ray of the sun touching down into the valley when everything is still. Only the birds have just awakened and started their routine chirping. When the pond does not ripple so much as breathe  a slow, silver exhaling that has no beginning and no end.

When the breeze does not move the trees but moves through them, the way a raga moves through a musician’s lips into the flute who has forgotten he is playing. It was on such a morning that I raised my camera to click her and then, slowly, forgot to press the button. Because some things must first be received before they can be recorded. She stood at the edge of the water in a  saree.

What I have got are some of the moments that I haven’t missed rest are recorded in my mind and heart. The colour of moss and ripples on the water transported me into another realm. Where she was not posing nor performing.She was simply being  which is the rarest and most radical thing a woman can do in a world that has spent centuries teaching her to be otherwise.

And in my world of fashion where a pose is essential to say something. What I have managed to capture are the authentic gestures ; unhurried and primordial. The women from the sculptures, paintings came alive through her in her own unique way. The saree clung to her the way water clings to stone it has loved for a thousand years.

Her hips, those generous, unhurried, earth-weighted hips that the Sanskrit poets called nitamba and compared to the broad flanks of sacred mountains  swayed with the slow authority of a river choosing its own course. Not for the camera. Not for me. For no one. For the morning itself.

या नितम्बभारनता प्रसन्ना सा श्रीस्वरूपा मम चित्तमस्तु।

She who bows gently under the weight of her own hips, serene  may that form of Śrī dwell forever in my heart.

Every gesture she made was a mudra the Natya Shastra never quite had the patience to name. When she turned, the water turned with her  not as metaphor, but as fact. When she looked away into the trees, the light followed her gaze like a devoted student following his guru, not knowing why, knowing only that the direction of attention matters. When she was still, the forest was still. When she exhaled, the leaves moved. She touched my heart without uttering a single word.

I have photographed many beautiful women. But beauty as performance is a finite thing it exhausts itself, and behind it you find the person waiting, tired, for the session to end. What I witnessed that morning was something else entirely. Raginee was not performing her body. She was inhabiting it fully, without apology, without the invisible flinching that contemporary life teaches us to carry like a second skeleton.

Her body is a sacred geography. A life force of the mother earth, manifested in the form of a woman who has the shakti to create a new life form. The one who resides in every graceful lady who is absorbed in her own natural rhythm. The one whose form is heavier and rounded  just like the earth. She is carrying the burden of her nitamba on her slender waist. She is not ashamed of her form, nor proud. She is simply relaxed in her state of being.

People who could truly see her immortalised her as Goddesses, as apsaras, as the first mother goddess carved into stone. Right from the cave painting era to the Venus of Willendorf, her heavier and rounded form has been celebrated all over the world. Have you ever thought about why? Because this is the nature of the cosmos where laya  rhythm  rules. Everything has it inbuilt, and she is the visible manifestation of that rhythm.

नितम्बभारेण नता विनम्रा धरेव सा स्वं भुवनं बिभर्ति।यां दृष्टमात्रेण मनो विमुग्धं तस्यै नितम्बिन्यै नमः सदैव॥

Bowed low by the weight of her hips, humble as the earth  she carries her own world within herself. At the mere sight of her, the mind dissolves. To her, the Nitambinī  my salutation, always.

She is the moon who arouses rasas ( emotions ) even in the strong and deep ocean. We worship not a human or mere mortal  but through her we worship an infinite form that is always in motion, creating and dissolving.

Ancient sculptors found her in the nayikas living everywhere right from the forest, village, and palace. The dancers copied her moves and codified them into form. Her opulent curves were worshipped by lovers. Some became poets or painters. Her mere presence became the reason for art, and for love.

In her calmness, the tired mind found its resting place and its meaning. The Nitambini is not the one who seduces you. She is the one who grounds you. She is not inviting you anywhere  you are simply finding your true place in the scheme of nature when you are near her.

कटिर्यस्याः सिंहमध्या गम्भीरा जघनस्थलं पूर्णचन्द्रोपमानम्।गतिश्चाऽस्या मन्थरा हंसतुल्या सा देवी वा यक्षिणी वा मनुष्या॥

She whose waist is the waist of a lioness  deep and proud, whose haunches are full as the autumn moon. Her gait is slow, deliberate, like the swan on still water  is she goddess, or yakṣiṇī, or mortal woman?

The manda - gamini she who walks slowly  is not sluggish. She is sovereign. She moves at the pace of seasons, not schedules. And I understood then what Vātsyāyana and Kokkoka and Jayadeva were all circling around in their different vocabularies: that the most profoundly erotic thing in the world is not the body on display, it is the soul at home inside a body. It is the woman who has made peace with her own gravity.

Think about it, you can always go back to the time when the world was full of trees, lakes, streams, ponds, grasslands, deserts, snowclad peaks etc... Where birds and animals roam freely and nature rules. That is your paradise. And there you met her  with whom you are meant to spend life. All the lofty pursuits, the philosophies, the great projects  they are all searching for but can’t grasp fully. Everything leads back here. In the company of Prakriti.

She is the reminder  in the past, present, and future  that nature lives in curves, in rhythm, in softness, in an unhurried attitude. The earth breathes in high tide and low tide. Trees sway with the wind. That same wind moves through our chest and plays through our whole existence. The waves of the ocean are all over her body, moving so slowly that you forget to notice them. Her body is the poetry created in a physical form that inspires a million minds.

Someone finds her in a surasundari or discovers rati in her. Someone quivers with the pain of a lost beloved. And this is far more real than the imaginary scripts that promise something in the afterlife. The Goddess is not somewhere in the clouds. She lives around us. Her poise, her gaze, her gestures  all divine. The question is simply: can you understand her language?

If you can sit quietly by a seashore and watch each successive wave, if you can be awed by sand dunes and flying sand, if you can watch a snowclad peak for hours and feel something shift inside your chest  then there is a possibility you can find the same divinity in her curves.

Because she is not different from them. Each mountain rises from the earth like a wave and returns after many years. Each sand dune is shaped by the wind into unique curves. The divinity flows through all of them.

She was in the forest. She was the water. She was the unhurried breeze and the particular quality of light that arrives between darkness and full morning  that threshold light that belongs to no hour but illuminates everything. She was the Shakti who was inviting without inviting, which is the only way the truly sacred ever calls to us  not by beckoning, but by simply being so fully present that our own absence becomes unbearable.

Raginee is this. Her body is not a provocation. It is a philosophy. A living, breathing, wet-saree-wearing proof that beauty  is the acceptance of the self. The full and unconditional embrace of one's own being, one's own weight, one's own rhythm  without the guilt and the shame that modern civilization has so efficiently industrialised. I pressed the shutter.

What you see in this image is not a body. It is a world that carries itself. And I know what this image can do: not just celebrate Raginee, but quietly give permission to every young woman who has been taught to apologize for her body. To every young man who has never been shown what it looks like to witness a woman with reverence rather than hunger.

In a world of curated perfection and body shame cycling endlessly through feeds, a photograph of a woman at home inside herself  grounded, unhurried, sovereign  can land like rain on dry earth.

या कुन्दमन्दारसुमोपमाङ्गी या नीलमेघाभनिभा च केशैः।या नितम्बभारनता प्रसन्ना सा श्रीस्वरूपा मम चित्तमस्तु॥

She whose limbs are like the kunda blossom and the mandāra flower, whose hair carries the deep blue of the monsoon cloud  she who bows gently under the weight of her own hips, serene  may that form of Śrī dwell forever in my heart.

To be Nitambini is to know, in the body itself, that you are enough. That you are, in fact, everything. And somewhere in the archive of this universe  the earth smiled, recognising herself.

To access the full photo essay subscribe to www.patreon.com/raginee

Muse : K Raginee Yogesh

Words & Images : Yogesh Kardile

By accessing this content, you agree to not download, screenshot, redistribute, repost, alter, illustrate, paint, trace, use as reference, manipulate, or share it in any form publicly or privately without my prior, written permission.

This includes:

• No AI training or replication

• No use in mood boards, NFTs, edits, or fan art

• No sharing via messaging apps or forums

• No re-uploads on social media or other platforms

• No sketches, derivative illustrations, or studies based on this work

This space is sacred. Violations will lead to an immediate ban and legal action if needed. Thank you for respecting the spirit and sanctity of this intimate creative space. 🙏🏽