My Vivid Expressions

After work yesterday, on my way home, I stopped by Ram Sai’s to buy some stationery. There, I saw a kid – not more than 8 years old – buying poster colors, a paint brush and a couple of broad sheets of white paper for his school assignment. I was staring at his colors. He observed that from the corner of his eye and tucked his colors in the loose pocket in his pajamas. I still don’t understand why he did that. Anyway, he said something in his mellow voice and I failed to hear that. I bent a little and asked him to repeat what he had said. He came closer, and asked me, “Do you paint?” I told him that I don’t paint anymore, but I used to as a kid. He smiled, shook my hand, gripped the counter, pulled himself up on his toes, took his change from the shopkeeper and left. And I stood there, watching him cross the busy street and run toward the lane that took him to his house. He could hardly hold the things he bought together, but considering the size of his hands, I think he managed well. He vanished, but I didn’t move an inch.

I was trying to remember the time I last painted. I recalled that I loved drawing abstract, vivid figures that looked like stories told by bold, fearless strokes of different colors that reflected my state of mind. But I stopped after a few years, put my paintings in the closet and moved to the hostel to get on with life, which meant education back then. And there I was, yesterday, still trying to think of an appropriate answer to the kid’s question. There isn’t any. I didn’t paint since years, because I was busy doing things I don’t like. I forgot that colors were as close to me as my thoughts, because they helped me express them. I realized that I have been dispassionate about everything, including work.

The shopkeeper obviously did not understand my revelation and waved his hands in front of my face, broke my thought and grabbed my disjointed attention. He asked me what I wanted. I said, “Give me poster colors, a paint brush and a couple of broad sheets of white paper.” I didn’t buy what I actually went there to buy – a note pad and a pen; thought that could wait another day. Like the enthusiastic kid, I went home with lot of energy and hope to create something fantastic.

I locked my room from the inside and sat on the floor with a new paint brush, new colors and new passion, and did not waste time thinking about what to paint. I dipped the bristles of my brush in one color after the other and choreographed its free moves on the no-longer-plain sheet of paper. I stopped after a while and saw that the painting looked eccentric. But the feeling in my heart was familiar; the feeling of exhilaration. I sat all night and thought of an appropriate title for my painting. The night passed by and at sunrise, with the first ray of sun, came the title idea for the first painting that marks my renaissance. I call it, “My vivid expressions”.