The pictures made by Indian artists for the British in India are called Company paintings. This one shows the climax of the charak pûjâ. This is a Bengali festival of penance, in which groups of men and women spend a month fasting from sunrise to sunset and living only on fruit. On the day of the charak itself, people construct bamboo stages on top of poles, at a height ranging from three to five metres. The devotees step up on to the high bamboo stage and, with ropes attached to them, hurl themselves forward.
