Drop that fear…

#MyThursdayThing

Have you ever paid attention when a child is drawing something that they see or imagine? Their version of a face, a chair, a house, a car or any scene from their imagination? Have you ever noticed the bold uninhibited lines? Their detailing, the visual stories? When was the last time you saw a child draw? Those who have kids at home or in extended family/circle would have seen a lot of art from kids, I am sure.

 I experience kids’ art very closely. For one, I have my nieces and a nephew in my family (all less than 10 years of age) but more than that I have more than a dozen kids I teach art to, twice a week.  I see their responses to an idea and how they take it to another level. Their stories and then their colours add magic to their drawing sheet.  It is sheer pleasure, a visual treat to work with them. There is a famous quote from Picasso, “Every child is a born artist” and I so believe in it. However, as kids progress in the education system, most of them shy away from the drawing that they so uninhibitedly did a few years ago. Somehow, I feel, the right and wrong, good and bad, this way and that way come in between. But the one reason I see—perhaps the single most important cause—for children to abandon art in general or drawing in particular is fear of mistakes and a loss of spontaneity.

I realised this even more so in the last two weeks, when I happened to attend a spontaneous drawing workshop by artist Gopika Nath. The 10-day workshop was conducted on WhatsApp and had exercises which were aimed at making one shed inhibition and experiment with different techniques and mediums and tools. For example, we had to draw to music with eyes closed, or we had to see video clips of dance performances and draw quick one-second sketches or draw directly with a pen without lifting  the pen from the paper, even draw with different tools other than pen/pencil/brush, like a jhadutilli (a twig from a broom) or a stone or a piece of cardboard. Whatever one fancied, one could use. The most interesting for me was drawing with the non-dominant hand and blind contour drawings.

This meant drawing with a pen directly with my left hand and also drawing without looking at the paper and without lifting my pen. These were timed exercises and I had such fun. The results were childlike and bold. Drawing directly with pen on my sketch book gave me such confidence that I had never experienced before despite drawing and sketching now for many years. The one thing that this exercise enabled in me was letting go of the fear of that line on paper. Whatever came out on the paper was spontaneous and actually the result of eye and hand coordination. The mind was asked to shut up and it was the intuition at work. We were asked to focus on what we felt when attempting the exercise. I felt one with children I teach. Suddenly I experienced their simplicity, their freedom, their intuition and their uninhibited bold strokes.

About a decade ago, I had attended a workshop on drawing and sketching with Mark Warner, someone who is considered the best in teaching the same, and I remember how he had asked us to attempt similar exercises then. I had loved the exercises even then, but I wasn’t awed by my own results.

I probably laughed at them and never saw what they were intended to make me see. Maybe I was not ready to let go of my fears or maybe I didn’t pay much attention to the lines and forms and feelings and just laughed at the crooked result. Maybe I was too caught up in the right and wrong or maybe the time had not come. I did not understand then, what I understood now. The importance of letting go of fear, the importance of attempting that which one is unsure of. The importance of discovering new lines and forms and expressions, the importance of introducing new things like these into your daily practice and then the confidence rubs off on all the different works that one attempts.

From the kids whom I teach and from the last 10 days of work, I learnt a whole new way to deal with my ideas. I learnt a lot about art, drawing, spontaneity, myself and my responses, but most of all I realised that anybody can draw.

If you can see, you can draw. All we need is to lift that pen from our table, take that paper and just draw what we see. Leave the judgement of right and wrong aside. Get into a childlike frame of mind and just draw. Sometimes with left hand, sometimes with right, sometimes without seeing the paper, sometimes to the tune of music and sometimes abandon that pen and just pick whatever you can find, dip in some ink or paints and just draw.

I am thankful to my mentors and my students (my children) for helping me finally see what it takes to draw like a child… Just drop that fear!

©Shubhra
#8  July 30th, 2020

#MyThursdayThing will be published every Thursday, on my blog https://shubhrathoughts.blogspot.com/  and shared on my social media handles.

How much is too much trust?

#MyThursdayThing

When I published my post last week, a friend responded, “It is always interesting to know what is happening with your life, Shubhra.”Well I won’t disappoint him, as I have an even more interesting tale to tell this week. My friend’s WhatsApp got hacked last week and the hacker reached out to almost all her contacts via groups, etc, impersonating her and asking for money. None of her hundreds of friends fell prey to the desperate call… except for yours truly. 

On one evening last week I saw a message on a group from my friend asking if I have Google Pay. I responded with a yes and then she came on a one-to-one WhatsApp and asked me if I can transfer Rs 4000 to her as she needed it urgently. To give a background, my friend and her husband—also a dear friend—are the sole care-givers to their elderly mothers. So, with two elderly moms in the house, lockdown and a night curfew, and all the fears that an anxious post-Corona mind can think of made me weave my own story when I received the message. I was convinced that one of the Moms was unwell and that her husband must be busy sorting some related issue and she needs to pay a vendor who at that hour can only be paid through Google Pay. The entire narrative was crystal clear and not in my wildest dreams did the thought cross that all this could be a fraud taking place. I did ask some relevant question about Google Pay and NEFT and then I made a call, unfortunately on WhatsApp. Since the WhatsApp was hacked, the hacker disconnected the phone, further confirming my story that something really wrong has happened and I must help.That’s what I did, I transferred Rs 4000 to a hacker thinking I was transferring it to my friend. And just as I finished the transaction, I got a message from her husband that her phone has been hacked. The face-palm emoji was hovering all around me but the deed was done.

What followed is what always happens post any accident, incident etc. Analyses, hind-sight, expert comments, advice, etc. Post the message about hacking, I called my friend’s husband and told him how I had already paid the money. Exasperated (since he had already been dealing with his wife’s hacked phone), he said, “But why would I ask you for Rs 4000? If I had to, I would have asked for more.” In my head, however, a voice prompted, “Because you know that I could give only 4000. For anything more, I am not the person to call.” Other friends in the closed group drew my attention to the English used. Some said, why would she ask for money on a group? I had answers for all as my story in my head was so convincing that stopping short of picking my car and going to their house I had imagined all possible support to offer them.

The next two days went in complaints to the bank and to the Cyber Cell. I wasn’t sure if I would get my money back. I was also relieved that it was only Rs 4000. However, I was intrigued at myself. So many people got the message, but I was the only one who took the bait. Why?  I guess I operated on trust. And in fact, something more than trust—the call of reason that should have made me call her husband when supposedly she cut the phone, or made me at least wait for a few more minutes, was totally overtaken by my imaginative fear that something was wrong. Do we all go through this when reason succumbs to fears? All the friends in the group laughed, conferring on me the status of the ultimate friend. I was told no one can come close to me in this one. I, on the other hand, was not so sure. I felt really childlike naïve and very foolish to have succumbed to such a thing when all around us there is news of how people get duped.

The ultimate validation to the whole thing (of being foolish and of being a great friend) came from the policeman who attended to my complaint. He called and asked me what happened. When I narrated the whole incident, his first point was, “Madam, itna padhe likhe hone ka kya fayda”(Madam, what is the use of being so educated?). I responded promptly saying how would I know that it is not my friend, what if she was in a genuine need? His next response hit the nail on the head, “Waise madam, isme koi shak nahi, bhagwan sab ko aapke jaise dost de. Par ye batao, itni jaldi emotional hone ki kya zaroorat thi aapko? Thoda pani peete, sochte, phone milate fir paise bhejte…”(There is no doubt, madam, that God should give everyone a friend like you. But why did you get emotional so quickly? You should have had a glass of water, thought a bit, made a call or two and then transferred money).

Probably in his Haryanvi accent he gave me a lesson for life, or food for thought. Making me realise that even when displaying empathy, one foot needs to be grounded in reason. Or that fear always gets the better of reason and one needs to be careful of that.

I got temporary credit from my bank for the amount I had transferred and the police told me no point trying to waste time on the hacker, just be careful next time. It indeed was an interesting and philosophical week. So much so that I needed a break after all this. I packed all my art material and came to my mother’s house along with my sister. Meeting my parents after 4 months of lockdown was definitely a balm and a much-needed break from the action back home.

©Shubhra

#7  July 17th, 2020

#MyThursdayThing will be published every Thursday, on my blog https://shubhrathoughts.blogspot.com/  and shared on my social media handles.

Cohabiting

#MyThursdayThing

After 5 weeks of regular writing I missed #mythursdaything, last week. When I set out on this Thursday commitment, I knew a gap would come once in a while. But it came sooner than I expected. Let me start by saying to those who were waiting for it: I am sorry. However, the good news is that it wasn’t laziness that led to the break in momentum. I had a valid reason, which was that I got stung on my leg by a wasp. It was so bad and painful that for 3 days I was completely down. The sting was so strong that it led to mild fever and the anti-allergy tablets led to drowsiness. The result—I wasn’t able to write or paint or do anything much.

My house has balconies on three sides and come spring time, wasps and honey bees all start hovering around and building their hives. While the honey bees like the plants, which I have in plenty and look for the back of the leaves to start building from, the wasps go into the funniest of corners. I found them inside the AC, and inside the cooler’s water tank. Then once I found them in a wire opening in the roof of the room. I even found them in the side gaps of the balcony door. They are on all sides of the house and in all corners.  They just fly in and out of the house as if they own it. 

Earlier we would use the mosquito racquet to stun these wasps unconscious and throw them outside. Then I realised it was not appropriate and stopped attacking them. We made peace with their existence. We would just try and stay away from their way and if they came in our way we would use a broom or a newspaper to show them the door.

The honey bees, on the other hand, did not disturb us at all, barring making their hives on our plants and attacking if we tried to water them. Largely, though, I found my way around it by avoiding hitting their homes directly with the spray and sneakily water the pot.

All was okay till the wasps made their hive in my studio and the honey bees chose the lemon plant in my balcony where I sit and meditate and sometimes have my evening tea. Whenever in the morning I would take my seat, the honeybees would start hovering around. They were scared and disturbed by me and I was scared and disturbed by them. Cutting the leaves, shifting the plant, shifting my seat—I tried everything and then gave up. I mentioned this incident to my friend, telling him how I behaved like a real estate person by displacing the bees and breaking their dwelling. He mentioned how I am missing the opportunity to get organic honey by doing so. Honey or not, I just wanted my plants and balcony to be accessible to me. The dilemma was sorted when one day a monkey came to the scene and then when he was bitten by the bees, in his pain and anger he broke a couple of pots and also destroyed the hive. No honey bees since then.

No such luck with the wasps, however. I had to remove the hive from my studio and a few more corners and I am sure they did not like it… I let the ones away from me be—don’t come in my way and I won’t come in yours. But is life that simple? One evening last week, I was watering my plants. It was beginning to get dark and I was also on a video call with my friend who had just bought her first ever car. Suddenly around the same lemon plant, I felt a prick on my leg. I jumped a bit and shirked it away mistaking it as a thorn from the lemon plant. Little did I know that I had been stung by a wasp. I totally ignored the sting on day 1. I did not rub the area with iron (they say it helps remove the sting). I did not have an anti-allergy either. Next morning, I went for a walk and put my poor legs to some 8 kms of exercise only to come home in a lot of agony. I took a look at my leg—ugly, red and swollen. I knew the wasp had had its revenge for the hive that I had removed from my studio. Rest is history. It took 3 days of ointments and anti-allergy medicines to get back to normal.

The thought that this episode left me with was, who was in the right? The honey bees making their hive just on that very spot where I sit or the wasps making their hive right inside my studio? Or me trying to protect myself and my sister from their stings and all the pain. Who has the first right over these places?

In our homes, in the cities, in our villages, the fight is always around this. Who has the first right over the land, the resources etc. In the forests however, everyone exists together, they cohabit and the food chain also works in harmony. In our cities and homes however, both of us are in unnatural surroundings—the bees and us. And so we fight for the survival and our right to passage.

Currently in our home, all places outdoor are doubly checked before we stand or lean over them or water plants to avoid any more stings. Inside the house, however, we are still stuck with the question, To bee or not to bee?

©Shubhra
#6  July 9th, 2020

#MyThursdayThing will be published every Thursday, on my blog https://shubhrathoughts.blogspot.com/  and shared on my social media handles.