The artist borrowed a traditional image of an eighteenth-century ruler from the Kingdom of Travancore in Kerala for this work. He began this series focusing on hawks and sparrows in 1983, which put in stark contrast images of the powerful and the weak. Madhu’s work often draws inspiration from stories of common people suffering in India. The artist taught drawing at the prestigious National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, which offered such printing facilities as an etching press and an offset lithography press.