From Bhubaneswar’s marketplaces to Niyamgiri hills and the New Parliament, her art lives beyond the gallery – in community, ecology and everyday life

Bhubaneswar, Sept 11, 2026:* In a time when contemporary art is often limited to gallery spaces, Bhubaneswar-based artist *Satyabhama Majhi has spent over two decades taking art to the people – to market lanes, village walls, hill slopes, public spaces and school classrooms.

A contemporary visual artist, curator, social activist, community art practitioner and Secretary of Sasatwa Foundation, Majhi works across painting, sculpture, installation, photography, mixed media and public art. Her true medium is connection – between people and place, memory and modernity, tradition and today.

Early Life: The Market as First Studio

Majhi grew up in Bhubaneswar, observing everyday life around her father’s small shop in a local market. Vendors bargaining, festivals, neighbourhood ties, animals, the constant transformation of the city – this everyday theatre became her first art school.

As Bhubaneswar urbanised rapidly, old neighbourhoods and collective memories began to disappear. Majhi began archiving them. Her paintings are not portraits of one person, but crowded social landscapes of many people, animals, plants, buildings and rituals – a visual memory of a changing city.

She holds a *Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in Traditional Art*, but her practice soon evolved into a multidisciplinary language.

The Niyamgiri Dialogue: 12 Years with Dongaria Kondh

The most defining chapter of her practice is her *more than a decade-long engagement with the Dongaria Kondh community of the Niyamgiri hills.*

It was not a project of documentation, but of listening and learning. She studied their livelihood, spirituality, their reverence for *Niyam Raja*, and their intimate relationship with forest and land.

This changed her art materially. Inspired by indigenous wall painting, she began making colours from the land itself – *chalk stone, charcoal, turmeric, geru soil and brown stone from Niyamgiri*, processed with natural binders. The hill itself became pigment.

From this engagement emerged two key concepts in her work:

1. The Triangle Motif: Taken from Dongaria visual culture and the silhouette of the Niyamgiri hills, symbolising stability, sacred geography and divinity.

2. “Up and Down”: Inspired by the daily journey of Dongria people climbing up and down the hills for water, market and rituals – a metaphor for human struggle, movement and resilience.

Two Core Concepts: Un-Urbanisation and Nature as Kin

Majhi’s recent philosophy is built on two ideas.

Un-Urbanisation: She reverses urban development on canvas – bringing trees, animals, village life back into the concrete city, asking what the city has forgotten.

Dongria Lifestyle with Nature: She shows that for Dongaria, nature is not a resource to be used, but a family to belong to – god, home and identity at once.

From Cuttack Walls to the Parliament of India

Public art is central to her belief that art should meet people on the street.

Her large-scale murals and interventions are visible across Odisha, including *Ring Road and Dagabara Sahi in Cuttack*, and works created for the *Men’s FIH Hockey World Cup and Asian Athletics Championships in Bhubaneswar.* Her community projects *Pago_ and _Thought Loom* transformed walls into dialogues.

In 2023, she served as Co-Sutradhar and creative contributor to _People’s Wall – Jan, Janani and Janmabhumi_, a landmark participatory art project commissioned by *Lalit Kala Akademi for the New Parliament House in New Delhi*, bringing together women artists and artisans from across India.

The Educator: 15 Years with Children

For about 15 years, Majhi has worked with children, tribal residential schools and children with disabilities through initiatives like *Kalpanadham* and in collaboration with *Gram Vikas and Tata Trusts.*

Her pedagogy is simple: “Don’t copy, remember.” Children are encouraged to draw from their own memories – their house, tree, animal, festival, village journey.

Recognition and Ongoing Show

Majhi’s works have been presented at *Bharat Bhavan Bhopal, Nature Morte Gurgaon, Lalit Kala Akademi New Delhi, Odisha Lalit Kala Akademi, Bhubaneswar Art Trail, Gram Art Project and Vancouver Biennale-linked projects.*

She is a recipient of the *Odisha Lalit Kala Akademi State Award (2012)* and the *National Lalit Kala Akademi Scholarship (2009-2010).*

Currently, her solo show *’Land as Memory, Matter as Landscape’ at artCENTRIX Space Gallery* brings together her journey – where soil is memory and landscape is story.

At its heart, Satyabhama Majhi’s practice asks one vital question in an age of rapid change: How do we keep our places, and our memories of them, alive?

Why Amazon Reviews Matter for Modern Brands

On Amazon and other digital marketplaces, customer perception can influence purchasing decisions within seconds. **Star ratings, recent feedback and seller responsiveness** can shape how shoppers evaluate a product before they even reach the checkout page. For modern D2C businesses, managing this perception requires more than advertising or conventional social media activity. Vibesocial, founded by Ronit Kushwaha, focuses on helping marketplace sellers develop a more systematic approach to reviews, customer feedback and long term brand reputation.

Why Marketplace Reviews Need Specialized Management

Marketplace reputation management is different from general social media management. Platforms such as Amazon operate under specific seller policies and compliance requirements governing how customer feedback can be requested and managed. Businesses therefore need processes that are both effective and responsible. Vibesocial addresses this challenge by focusing on marketplace specific workflows designed to help sellers understand customer sentiment, identify recurring issues and improve the overall post purchase experience.

Turning Reviews into Actionable Business Insights

Customer reviews can provide valuable information beyond a simple star rating. Repeated comments about product sizing, packaging, product information or listing clarity can reveal patterns that may affect customer satisfaction. Instead of treating every negative review as an isolated incident, a structured approach can help brands identify recurring concerns and connect them with improvements in products, listings and customer communication. This turns marketplace feedback into a potential source of practical business intelligence.

Rapidreviews and a Structured Feedback Approach

One of the specialized frameworks associated with Vibesocial is Rapidreviews. Its role is to streamline customer feedback processes and support marketplace reputation management. The focus is not merely on increasing review volume, but on creating organised post purchase touchpoints and authentic feedback collection practices. For sellers, this approach can help create a more consistent customer journey while remaining conscious of marketplace terms of service and compliance expectations.

Improving the Post Purchase Customer Journey

The customer experience continues after an order reaches the buyer. Delivery, product understanding, support and communication can all influence how customers perceive a brand. Vibesocial’s approach places attention on these post purchase touchpoints, helping businesses examine where customer interactions can be improved. When product quality and listing accuracy are combined with a stronger post purchase process, brands can create better conditions for genuine customer satisfaction and organic feedback.

Lescanaux as a Real World Testing Environment

A distinctive part of the ecosystem is Lescanaux, which Ronit Kushwaha uses as a living sandbox within the e commerce environment. The idea is to test marketplace strategies in a real operating context rather than relying only on theoretical recommendations. According to the provided framework, workflows ranging from listing optimisation to Rapidreviews deployment can be implemented and refined through Lescanaux. This creates an ongoing feedback loop focused on practical performance and measurable return on investment.

Connecting Vibesocial, Rapidreviews and Lescanaux

The three components serve different but connected functions. Vibesocial provides digital brand positioning, marketplace and reputation expertise. Rapidreviews supports structured customer feedback management. Lescanaux provides a commercial environment where marketplace strategies can be applied and refined. Together, they create a model in which real world observations can inform client strategies, while recurring marketplace challenges can influence the development of new workflows and solutions.

A More Responsible Approach to Marketplace Growth

Sustainable marketplace growth is not simply about generating more traffic. Brands also need strong product presentation, reliable customer experiences, authentic feedback and awareness of platform requirements. By bringing these areas together, Vibesocial’s approach places customer perception within a broader growth strategy. The emphasis on authentic feedback, compliance conscious processes and continuous improvement provides a more structured alternative to reactive reputation management.

Building Long Term Marketplace Authority

As competition increases across Amazon and other marketplaces, brand authority can become an important differentiator. Businesses that consistently listen to customers, address recurring concerns and improve their post purchase experience are better positioned to build trust over time. Through the combined ecosystem of Vibesocial, Rapidreviews and Lescanaux, Ronit Kushwaha is developing a marketplace focused framework that connects strategy with real world execution. The larger objective is to help e commerce businesses build resilient brands that can grow beyond short term advertising performance.

Explore Lescanaux

For more information about Lescanaux and its ongoing e commerce journey, visit the Lescanaux Instagram profile.

A road-tripper’s account of JollyGo Food Court, the Yamuna Expressway landmark turning a Delhi-Agra drive into part of the destination.

I’ll be honest – I wasn’t expecting to write 1,200 words about a food court. Highway stops are supposed to be functional: pull in, use the washroom, grab a chai, get back on the road before the kids start asking “are we there yet” again. That’s the deal you make with a long drive.

Then I pulled into JollyGo, somewhere along the Yamuna Expressway near Jewar, and the deal changed.

A Building That Makes You Pull Over Twice

The first thing that gets you is the architecture – which is not a sentence I expected to type about a highway dhaba. One of JollyGo’s two properties here borrows from Dutch design: clean gables, old-world detailing, the kind of silhouette you’d photograph in a European town square. The other leans more intricate detailing and colour – soaring lines, a quiet, contemplative calm that feels completely out of place next to a toll plaza, in the best way. I actually did a U-turn in the parking lot to get a second look before I’d eaten a single bite. I wasn’t the only one – every few minutes, someone else was doing the same thing, phone out, walking backward to fit the whole building in frame. 

Everything, All at Once

At Jolly Da Dhaba, it’s North Indian comfort food done properly -thalis, parathas, chole bhature, the works. A few counters over, Murthy’s is turning out South Indian dosas and idlis with filter coffee that actually tastes like filter coffee, not the highway-stall version. I ordered a kulhad chai just to see if it lived up to the reviews, then ended up back in line twenty minutes later for a full deluxe thali because I’d changed my mind about “just a quick stop.” That seems to be the pattern here -whatever you’re craving, JollyGo tends to have it, and it tends to be good enough that you order more than you planned.

The Comfort of the Familiar, Right Next to the Adventurous

What struck me next was the brand mix. Starbucks, KFC, Burger King, Domino’s,Baskin-Robbins -all the names you’d recognise from any city mall – sitting shoulder to shoulder with the Indian counters. For the family in the car ahead of me, clearly on their way to Agra with an exhausted toddler, that Starbucks cup was a small mercy. For me, it meant I could talk a slightly nervous friend into trying kulhad chai for the first time, because I knew if it wasn’t her thing, a Baskin-Robbins scoop was thirty seconds away. It’s a strange kind of anxiety-free stop: nothing here is a gamble.

The Details You Don’t Expect to Notice – Until You Do

Here’s the part that actually earned my trust: I could watch several of the counters cook. Not through a service window, but right there, live -fresh ingredients going in, plates coming out, nothing hidden. After a few too many questionable roadside stalls over the years, that visibility matters more than I’d like to admit. The washrooms backed it up -genuinely clean, with separate facilities for families and women. 

The Staff Remember You’re a Person, Not a Transaction

If the building gets you to stop the car, it’s the people who make you want to come back. I watched a floor manager crouch down to talk a lost toddler through finding her parents while three separate orders waited on his counter -patient, unhurried, like it was the only thing happening. That kind of attentiveness shows up in review after review, guests naming individual staff members the way you’d thank a friend. For a place that sees a relentless, ever-changing flow of travellers every single day, that’s not an easy thing to keep up. JollyGo has, somehow.

A Small World, Off a Big Highway

Sitting on the road to Agra -and now minutes from the newly opened Noida International Airport at Jewar -JollyGo has become an unlikely meeting point for the world. I watched a group of overseas visitors, clearly just off a long-haul flight and clearly not local, working their way through paratha thalis and masala kulhad chai with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of people trying something completely new. For a lot of them, this was probably their first taste of home-style Indian food -and the staff seemed to know it, taking a little extra time to explain what was on the plate. It’s a strange and lovely thing to witness: someone’s first real meal in India happening at a highway stop.

The Story Doesn’t End at Jewar

Here’s the part that made me sit up: JollyGo isn’t staying put. The brand has opened a new outpost nearly a thousand kilometres away, in Sendhwa, right on the Mumbai-Agra highway where Madhya Pradesh meets Maharashtra -a route travelled daily by an entirely different crowd of interstate drivers, families, and long-haul truckers. Same idea, new highway: architecture worth stopping for, the same mix of Indian and international food, the same visible hygiene standards, the same kind of staff who actually look up when you walk in.

JollyGo, At a Glance

• Where: Yamuna Expressway near Jewar, UP -both the Delhi-Agra and Agra-Delhi sides -plus a new stop in Sendhwa on the Mumbai-Agra highway
• Rating: around 4.8 out of 5 across hundreds of Tripadvisor reviews
• Food: North Indian, South Indian, Chinese, and Italian, alongside classic highway favourites
• Brands on site: Starbucks, KFC, Burger King, Domino’s,  Baskin-Robbins, Murthy’s & Jolly da Dhaba
• Accessible by design: wheelchair ramps, separate and well-maintained washrooms for families and women

More Than a Pit Stop

I’ve driven the Delhi-Agra route more times than I can count, mostly treating every stop along the way as a necessary interruption rather than part of the trip. JollyGo is the first one that’s changed that math for me. The architecture gets you out of the car. The food, the visible hygiene, and honestly the people are what make you linger longer than you meant to. And with a second outpost now open on the Mumbai-Agra highway, it seems I’m not the only one who thinks a highway break deserves better than a vending machine and a dirty washroom. Some journeys are about the destination. On this one, I’d argue the food court is part of it.