About a Forgotten Passion

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Rainy weather is a suitable time for painting. I thought. I only thought because it is odd enough to get back to a long-forgotten passion which I had forsaken for a bigger one – writing. Still, the string was not entirely broken. The art exam I enrolled in at my art teacher’s insistence was due for today.

The morning had once again beckoned with anxiety for the same reason. But my friend asked for my word on doing something wonderful today. He wanted me to make him proud. So I was now doing things only to make someone proud of me. Maybe that’s how things work for anxious people.

I opened the wretched box in which all the art material was carefully dumped long ago. It flooded me with emotions. One such was sheer nervousness to hit the old ground I left after so much of a calculated conclusion. When time is not enough to let you do everything you want to do, you have to make choices even though it means giving away the things you love to do anyway.

Confrontation with a forgotten past is not easy. My hands shivered to take out the stuff which comprised of colors of all kinds – water, oil, charcoal, acrylic(my favorite), pastels, color pencils, canvas sheets of different textures and sizes, paintbrushes (one of which was completely new) and my half-finished work at papercraft.

I recalled how I bought them with desperation to polish them off quickly. During those days, every weekend would be a power breaker for me when I would stuff my bag with my art-portfolio. I would love to have weekly targets at painting. Sitting at the easel with a cup of tea and contemplating at the unfinished painting, choosing the right pattern, the right colors and the right effects makes you feel not less than a dedicated professional artist. It takes you out of a mundane routine and gives you something beautiful to think about. The colorful world is fascinating and intriguing of which you become the creator, the moment your brush dips into a color.

I would feel dignified and complacent when visitors would flip my canvas pad with keen admiration. Sometimes, they would even insist to take away one of the paintings so as to hang in their halls. Hunkered down by my own humility, I would suspect this gesture as their own way of making fun of a novel art student.

But an earnest assurance by art teacher made me dream of creating masterpieces for some exhibition. Nothing is impossible that stays inside the realm of dreams. I figured out my love for landscapes because of the freedom they provide to experiment. My collection was improving every week. But it had a cost, which I was paying by letting my writing suffer.

I tried many times to choose between the two since my focus was divided. But discarding one over another didn’t seem fair given that both are different gateways of expression of thoughts. I loved to toggle between painting and writing as per my state of mind. But beyond a point, one of the two had to come to a standstill, bury in darkness.

So, I made a choice to let the colors dry without ever touching the white sheet.

Spreading my canvas pad and the painting colors on the floor, I sat in a cross-legged position. There I was, struggling with a mind that was as blank as the Canvas. The very disappointment of not being able to come with a unique idea was looming over me. So I made an obscure landscape sketch and quickly leaped on to the painting task.

For what I am going to say next, I would not mind wearing a badge on my head that reads, ‘insane’.

As I dipped the brush in orange, I felt a sudden temptation which took me to lick the color! That was maniac given that I didn’t know about the chemical components of an acrylic color which would be anyway toxic. But the urge to feel the smooth rich volume of color was too much of allure for me. It tasted bitter but had a raw sweetness that appealed to my senses.

While filling the color paste broadly in unrestrained strokes, I realized the loss of love for the detailing work – to fill every corner and boundary, give an impression of shadows, play on brightness and dullness at certain places and finally outline every shape in three layers. I never found myself hustling at the painting before. My mind wasn’t calm and patient.

It was an unwanted, a dreadful indication that I had feared to accept. Until you are not doing anything, you have good enough reasons to avoid doing it. But once you embark on that road, you actually get to know how good or how bad you are at it.

I started crying profusely.

I could not make my friend proud. What I had to offer was just an apology of a failed friend, a failed painter. But he was kind enough to appreciate my efforts and wished me luck.

As scheduled, I went for the exam in the afternoon. The aura of pride and complacency that I would carry to the class had disappeared. But the familiar faces greeted me well before and after the exam. The coordinator asked me to sit and offered me the upcoming art courses. I declined all of it. What all I wanted was to rush home and get to sleep. But he was a hopeful and optimistic person. He advised me to enroll in the next year’s exam which could fetch me a three – year course degree.

Some of his positive energy perhaps traveled to me which kept me pondering me over his advice during my way back home. Have things still not ended for me? Would I see myself painting at the easel again?

But once a flower is dried, can any amount of water bring it to life again? I felt exactly like that – a dried decayed flower dipped in water.

The colors were spread all over in my room, the painting was half complete and the brushes got dried with colors soaked in them. They were stowed back in the place from where they were retrieved – still drying.

Perhaps that’s the story of every one of us. We keep making sacrifices for something more important in our lives. The parameters can be different for everyone, but the sacrifices, the forgetfulness of our interests are common. On a daily basis, we let go of the smallest of our desires, the small ways in which we can pamper ourselves, for something greater like family. For women, the sacrifices have much bigger, immeasurable magnitudes that go ignored by who she made the sacrifices for.

I wondered if they also feel the way I did today when they pass by the shop they were thinking to buy a saree from. What about the middle-aged man who lives with an unfulfilled dream of going for an adventure trip with his friends, or a housewife who could never be a part of what lies outside the window of her kitchen.