Sketching my life

“Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end.
If not always in the way we expect.”

I would add: rather a li’l too wildly at that. One of the Luna Lovegood’s quotes from the coveted HP movie series, she couldn’t have said it any better. I have stood witness to this phenomenon a few times already. Only I say it differently.

“No matter how long it takes, I get what I want”

Pardon me for any hint of arrogance there!

I have come a long way from writing cards for my girlfriend’s boyfriends during my academic years. I now write words from my mind, inspired by my Love.  Working on a tentative plan of compiling those words in a form of a book, I am doing the illustration for the same; riding up and down the memory lane. Not going into too much detail about “him” in this post; his meeting up with me has brought upon the time I was forced to miss out upon- quite blatantly.

Like writing, I have a penchant for fine arts too. This is where the story begins… in my early childhood. I was awarded gold medals in art (painting) in a national level competition when I was not even 5 years of age. Feeling threatened, mom had placed all my paint brushes and colors under lock and key. She harbored a thought that maybe I would not study well in pursuance of art. That’s the best thing she could think of then. My dad had abandoned us when I was 12. It only made sense that I concentrate on educating myself instead of “wasting” time drawing lines. About dad, he could never come to terms with the fact that I did it better than he did! The colors faded even before they could splatter across.

Years later, Time took a turn for me.

Despite getting shortlisted for a degree course in medical sciences, I couldn’t get anywhere near the college. As my fate would have it, I had ended up enrolling myself for a degree course in Textile Designing. Mom was taken aback. All she said was that maybe I knew how to call to things lost or perhaps knew what was to happen anyway… I didn’t need her anymore…, before she passed away couple of weeks thereafter. The next two years I spent sketching and painting and drawing while dancing as a puppet to blotch’s tyranny!

That face had framed itself.

16th September, 1996. In the 2^nd year of that course, we were given an assignment to work on lampshades as theme. We were to draw all crazy and weird lampshades that we could pick our reference from, stylize and turn those into a motif and then a pattern for a dress! Shelling out money to buy some expensive “interior” ideas magazine would have made me miss my meals for a few weeks together. What I had drawn was not only a work of my imagination; but also appreciated. It seemed one of the lampshades talked to me asking me to give her a definite shape. Coloring her up with water colors, I had left her at that.

For then…

This was in the year- 1999, as if a voice spoke in my mind. I worked in a computer teaching institute then. Using MS paint, I had created an image that the students of multimedia went gasping about. The 3-D effect made them feel as though she might even speak up. Silly, I tell you. The girl was given a pedestal and made to float, while leaves covered the water from the sides. The image had to be zipped and what’s remained of that is what I have posted here.

Year 2012, I have started to sketch again. 17 years later, I have been given pencils and stuff to work upon some illustrations. My Love bought to me what ideally my parents should and would have; those which I had to buy on my own then. In true sense, I am back in time, I’m the student and certainly dependent as it is usually in teens. Or maybe the time has come around.

Just yet again!

I had all my plans to get a book published by last October. The date set for the same was same as my mom’s death anniversary. Some or the other thing kept nudging the plans and it had to be called off. Only to be started from the beginning. My would be publisher suggested that I do the illustrations on my own. Here, I make a pause to wonder, is there some connection with my passion and my inability to pursue it and with mom? She had held herself guilty no end for many things those had happened to me or the lack of their occurrence. Is this why this got delayed that she could create enough momentum in the Universe that I get the message and do the illustrations on my own?

That girl spoke to me again…

14th March, 2012. While drawing a face, the idea of etching the details had created an impression that only rested after I sketched that face again. Not knowing what to do with her face, the sketch lay there for yet another week’s time. This morning, when I sat to start sketching, the face called me in my mind. Lost in thoughts, I had picked up that sheet. I drew a few lines before the similarity hit me. Unknowingly, I was giving it a shape of what I had drawn in that Computer Institute. No sooner had I stumbled upon the un-canniness; the pencil’s tip broke. It seemed, as if it detached itself from the present time. Almost as much of a whimsical a thought, I pasted the broken tip back to the pencil with glue and completed the sketch.

Just who could ever think decades would melt in the process of joining the dots? 

I have posted all the images here for you to see and appreciate the similarity! Today, I lived almost my complete life again, bringing in a few phases and some afflicted memories together again. The two years of my college was also the scariest of all times to come. I wish to erase all of that from my life- canvas while the girl in the sketch becomes me, floating in ether, beautified, maybe immortalized too! The bitterness is too much for me to handle! The thoughts have done enough damage to my mental stability for today. Every day of my sketching a sheet is making me re-live some part of my life one more time; perhaps, this once for the final time. For now, I just want to lay in my mom’s lap and rest for a while.  Will someone fill in for her? For sometime?

And then forever…?

Wait a moment, could this girl also call upon her destiny? Did she make me sketch that for her; or she knew it already and was waiting?