Corona virus is no where nice. The amount of deaths and pain and beravement that its giving is manyfolds higher than the ones that man made or nature made are. the second one is once done over types and the remaining are left behind to pick up the pieces. With corona, you dont know when it will end and who will be left to gather the pieces and in the first place, can you even pick up the pieces.
Saturday morning post is supposed to be uplifting but here I am like repeat telecast, starting the same tape again. I need to think of something better, and thats what I did.
Lets start with the history first.
Last year Pilla and I along with another kid and his mom (who is real pal for me but more on that later) went to Pilla's school for halloween bash. It was the usual affair with Pilla dressed as Sheriff and the other kid as construction worker. There were some games and some craft stalls as well. at one of these stalls we found these small black cutouts of pumpkin, cat faces, bats etc with a black stylus. The first one, we scratched completely and it revealed a rainbow cardpaper cut out (nope, no lucky number and no prize). The next cut out , I used my imagination (or so I thought) and made some toothy smiled eyes open bat, a cat with whiskers , a jack o lantern. I thought I me and my imagination...wow. But incidentally that was exactly what we were supposed to do. It was scratch art...drat me creative...:):)
Now, as usual I searched if we get such paper, at less cost, on ebay, put it in cart, went to india and came back and ordered it. It went in my safe custody of procrastination before COVID struck and all of my paraphernalia came out. That included three framed canvases and 5 smaller canvases from Ross of NC days which was five years old, mandala coloring and fashion sketch book (five year old) with staedler pencils (fashion designing days...almost sola saal...sixteen years old...cracked a little but functioning well) paint by sticker and scratch art book (few days old...they are lucky they are started on before they wondered at their purpose in life...is it in dark box of art supplies...).
The canvases are rapidly getting used for madhubani paintings (or so I think they are) and just now I am looking at an outlined kalamkari elephant that will be filled this afternoon. The fashion sketch book gets filled the same way atleast with two fashions (sometimes real raunchy but who is looked except the sketch it self, who wonders where the clothes exactly are) with mandalas wonderong their luck.
Yesterday Pilla's school bell rang early (online ...shala sutli pati phutli happened...wow, I love to type that in english) so I was left with some time as the dinner preparation was already done. so while we listened to intoxicating Neha kakkar, I opened the scratchpad...the first will always be Bappa, the master of 14 sciences or knowleges and 64 arts. The god of knowlege and giver of same. I start most art, with starting his form in some way or the other. So he came first on the scratch art. (I drew first by pencil and then scratched with stylus).
Mumbai skyline was always in my radar but its actually too difficult to include all intricacies called mumbai in single skyline. But scratch art especially if you from far, erazes all errors...and so I started to draw. What I thought will take ten minutes took good half an hour, making my tea my types (a bit dense and all essence from tea powder in tea), the unsalted butter which I had kept on simmer became clarified butter to be refilled in near empty canister of "ghee". And so MY city came from my eyes and mind (with the help of google images) on the scratch paper. Done. Tea drunk. Done a little soft excited "eeeeeee". Time to call up my best friend after a week (thanks to online school I cant call her as often as I want to).
Neil Gaiman rightly said " The world always seems brighter when you 've just made something that wasn't there before".
Time to take care of the elephant...ofcourse after the chatter call...
Outside trees are getting tickled by wind and they are giggling like drunks.
