Thanks to inconvenient timing, you would find me not at school with the other kids, but sitting on my own porch , with my old art guru.
Unlike other kids, we didn't need to face the hardships of getting different chalk to work on mud. We had a proper slate with brand new chalk, a drawing book for sketching, a box of bright paint and horse hair brushes. The abnormal attraction between new things and the human nature got better of me, and while Guruji spoke to my mother, I idly twirled the pencils in my hand and made spirals on my exposed calf with the soft brushes.
Then he turned his attention to me. He surveyed me from top to toe, and exclaimed "Hello!"
A bit taken aback, I smiled nervously and in a barely audible tone I said "Hello, sir."
My mother shot me a disapproving look. What? He wasn't a big fan of Namaste!
He cocked his head to one side and surveyed my sister and I, with wide eyes and just the curve of a smile. It amused him, perhaps, to see how much we had grown. My assumptions were confirmed when he shook his head with a slightly wider smile than before and said, "However much we think we're prepared, somehow Age finds ways of surprising us."
Yes, it did, indeed. We grew lean and tall, with more defined features and a distinct voice, the only fragments of our childhood forms remained in our minds, in faded old photographs. But he managed to remain exactly the same. How some things change, and some things don't.
We sat down and begun the class. He showed me the techniques he had once taught me, years ago, all over again. The way you use boring arithmetic signs to make a flower, and the simplest way to turn marks of sorrow, tears, were into blooming lotuses.
He gave my sister the same withering look he used to shoot her when she used to complete a drawing a two year old could have interpreted better. The only difference was, this time he looked at me and said, " She hasn't changed, has she? She still plays about like it's a joke." He shook his head sadly. "She...did not grow up"
When we started to draw the leaves, he had taught me that the veins look like a lot of aligned "V"s intersected by a line. He used to keep saying "bhee" instead of "vee", sleepily, as if drugged by the monotonous, repetitive sound, until you couldn't possible accommodate anymore "bhee"s.
At the end of every drawing, (satisfactory by his levels, or it's counted as a scribble), he used to gleefully fold up both his sleeves and pick up the pen to survey the one thing which was worth a thousand words. Then, with a flourish, he used to write "Very good!" and add his full signature, complete with the date, in the most sophisticated handwriting, in the fraction of a second.
Did I mention my sister didn't even get one of those?
It was as if just a few minutes had flown by when he was ready to leave. At last, he looked at my mother, shook her hand and said. "This place is very far from where I live. If they weren't old students, I would never have come. I felt obligated to come to your house, because once you start to pursue an art with a student, it's just not a class-it's a relation."
He left, and my eyes followed his silhouette in the slowly darkening evening sky.
On the day of our next class, our eagerness was cut short by my mother's anxious tone. The old man, while coming here, had become a victim of a heart stroke, and somehow his entire right side, was paralyzed.
My mother quickly took out our clothes. "Change. We're going to see him."
Astounded by my mother's determination, I asked her why.
Without looking at me, she said,"He said it himself. It just wasn't a class anymore, it was a relation. If he can come after all these years for his long lost relatives, we must do that as well."
My sister's half-baked, filmy magazine knowledge kicked in as a bonus. "A one sided relationship does not work." She added, smugly.
I shot my mother a look and snorted. She was giving her the all-too-familiar withering look.
After a torturous one hour journey we reached his humble dwelling. The door was barely tall enough to let my mother in, and we crept in silently. He was lying there, his eyes were the only thing that acknowledged us as we entered the room.
I looked around and saw all his best paintings, cheaply framed, yet adorning the walls in a way the most expensive decorations could not. My eyes fell on his right hand, useless and contorted, which would never be able to draw again.
He sighed. He knew he was old, and something like this was coming, but he hadn't known acceptance would be so hard. We accumulate wisdom over the years sometimes to share, sometimes to prepare ourselves for the coming worst. Yet, the work it does to cushion the shock is negligible.
As if confirming my assumptions again, he repeated with a pained smile. "However much we think we're prepared, somehow Age finds ways of surprising us."
Unlike other kids, we didn't need to face the hardships of getting different chalk to work on mud. We had a proper slate with brand new chalk, a drawing book for sketching, a box of bright paint and horse hair brushes. The abnormal attraction between new things and the human nature got better of me, and while Guruji spoke to my mother, I idly twirled the pencils in my hand and made spirals on my exposed calf with the soft brushes.
Then he turned his attention to me. He surveyed me from top to toe, and exclaimed "Hello!"
A bit taken aback, I smiled nervously and in a barely audible tone I said "Hello, sir."
My mother shot me a disapproving look. What? He wasn't a big fan of Namaste!
He cocked his head to one side and surveyed my sister and I, with wide eyes and just the curve of a smile. It amused him, perhaps, to see how much we had grown. My assumptions were confirmed when he shook his head with a slightly wider smile than before and said, "However much we think we're prepared, somehow Age finds ways of surprising us."
Yes, it did, indeed. We grew lean and tall, with more defined features and a distinct voice, the only fragments of our childhood forms remained in our minds, in faded old photographs. But he managed to remain exactly the same. How some things change, and some things don't.
We sat down and begun the class. He showed me the techniques he had once taught me, years ago, all over again. The way you use boring arithmetic signs to make a flower, and the simplest way to turn marks of sorrow, tears, were into blooming lotuses.
He gave my sister the same withering look he used to shoot her when she used to complete a drawing a two year old could have interpreted better. The only difference was, this time he looked at me and said, " She hasn't changed, has she? She still plays about like it's a joke." He shook his head sadly. "She...did not grow up"
When we started to draw the leaves, he had taught me that the veins look like a lot of aligned "V"s intersected by a line. He used to keep saying "bhee" instead of "vee", sleepily, as if drugged by the monotonous, repetitive sound, until you couldn't possible accommodate anymore "bhee"s.
At the end of every drawing, (satisfactory by his levels, or it's counted as a scribble), he used to gleefully fold up both his sleeves and pick up the pen to survey the one thing which was worth a thousand words. Then, with a flourish, he used to write "Very good!" and add his full signature, complete with the date, in the most sophisticated handwriting, in the fraction of a second.
Did I mention my sister didn't even get one of those?
It was as if just a few minutes had flown by when he was ready to leave. At last, he looked at my mother, shook her hand and said. "This place is very far from where I live. If they weren't old students, I would never have come. I felt obligated to come to your house, because once you start to pursue an art with a student, it's just not a class-it's a relation."
He left, and my eyes followed his silhouette in the slowly darkening evening sky.
On the day of our next class, our eagerness was cut short by my mother's anxious tone. The old man, while coming here, had become a victim of a heart stroke, and somehow his entire right side, was paralyzed.
My mother quickly took out our clothes. "Change. We're going to see him."
Astounded by my mother's determination, I asked her why.
Without looking at me, she said,"He said it himself. It just wasn't a class anymore, it was a relation. If he can come after all these years for his long lost relatives, we must do that as well."
My sister's half-baked, filmy magazine knowledge kicked in as a bonus. "A one sided relationship does not work." She added, smugly.
I shot my mother a look and snorted. She was giving her the all-too-familiar withering look.
After a torturous one hour journey we reached his humble dwelling. The door was barely tall enough to let my mother in, and we crept in silently. He was lying there, his eyes were the only thing that acknowledged us as we entered the room.
I looked around and saw all his best paintings, cheaply framed, yet adorning the walls in a way the most expensive decorations could not. My eyes fell on his right hand, useless and contorted, which would never be able to draw again.
He sighed. He knew he was old, and something like this was coming, but he hadn't known acceptance would be so hard. We accumulate wisdom over the years sometimes to share, sometimes to prepare ourselves for the coming worst. Yet, the work it does to cushion the shock is negligible.
As if confirming my assumptions again, he repeated with a pained smile. "However much we think we're prepared, somehow Age finds ways of surprising us."
