With a sense of Abandon

 A Painting and a Story # 19

Meenu (short for Meenakshi) gets off the auto-rickshaw. She swings the college backpack on to her shoulder and walks into her Grandpa's house with a light step. She loves visiting them. Her Ajji's cooking, her Thatha's conversations revive and rejuvenate. This is her haven. She can do no wrong here! 

Appetising aroma of steaming idlis wafts in from the kitchen window. Meenu realises that her tummy is rumbling and hurries in through the open door. She waits at the table with her Thatha. He tells her stories from Ramayana or Mahabharata or sometimes he tells her things from the newspaper. Thatha has hardly begun his story.... and his words are drowned in loud screeches.  The bulbuls, the mynah, the parakeets .... what a noise they make! They chatter, they call, they sing. They have made their home in the trees and bushes around Grandpa's house. 'Thatha I can't hear you! What a noise they are making' Meenu complains. 

Thatha shakes his head, 'It's noise to you. They sing because they feel like it. You must learn their sense of abandon. They sing like nobody is listening.' he says....  ('That's not true' she thinks... 'they sing to call their loved one'!)

Come let me show you something he says taking her in. Scattered on his bed, is an open steel trunk, and a medley of assorted wooden artefacts. An intricately carved photo frame, an unstable toy chair, an uneven fretwork snowflake... and more unfinished work! 'You made them?' Meenu is amused.

They sing like nobody is listening.

Meenu looks at her Grandpa. His words ring in her ears. On her way home in the evening she stops at the local craft store. She loads her bag with drawing books and paints and brushes.

She is going to paint like nobody is looking. Yes that's where she will begin! 

When you paint like nobody is looking! watercolour - Flowers