Accepting the colours of life

Since 2014, Bodhisattva in Action Institute, a Kathmandu-based NGO, has relied on its thangka painting classes to help people with disabilities become thangka artists.

It’s a slow and sultry afternoon, but the students at Bodhisattva in Action Institute’s (BIA) Thangka Painting Institute in Jorpati are unperturbed by the heat and immersed in painting meticulous colourful lines on their cotton canvases strapped to a wooden frame. What makes this class different from other thangka classes in the city is that all of the students here are wheelchair users. The majority of the students in the class have spent the last few months getting trained to become thangka—a Tibetan Buddhists artform—artists.