I had this creative urge but unfortunately I was unable to channelize it! I tried to paint after a gap of ten years but the feedback was that, it was made by my seventh standard daughter! (personally I thought it was quite a pretty picture). It was my dream site -towering mountains, a lovely clear blue river meandering through it, with pretty rounded stones dotting the placid waters, the bank fringed with green bushes and trees. The greens, blues and oranges giving me a lot of happiness.
I had invested a lot of money buying brushes, paints and canvas to begin my artistic journey. I had purposely not put my ultimate desire in the painting- that of a hut on the mountain slope mainly because I want to journey to my beautiful hut and a journey cannot be done with one creative step, can it be? But still no appreciation by my small audience!
I think that the fact that I had not invested any emotion in the painting made it so lifeless and two dimensional. I still have another canvas and when I do that painting, a little spirit of 'the hut on the mountain' will be reflected in it and the appreciation that we all crave for, will be mine!
It's so ironic that I now live on the eighteenth floor in a city like Mumbai and I can see the mountains in the far horizon (I thank god for that) and instead of a river I have a large drain passing by down below- so near yet so far! For the last three years I have been staying in this city of dreams, living a nightmare! every day has been an effort to survive but at the end of the day I have learnt that there is a very thin line separating dreams and nightmares. it is how you look at the picture- the smog that fills the city every evening can be looked at as the mist on a hilly forest ( You will say 'ha! ha! very funny!' in a sarcastic way) but believe me all it takes to change the perspective is your thought process.
Its been very tough ( being a pessimist) to transcend these heights. so every man can reach his dreams if he dares to do so. I discovered this secret very recently hence my attempt to put thoughts on to paper with a hope that it will help me scale my heights and clear all smog that clouds our mind.
I plan to push this very stubborn mind of mine to accept certain facts and hope you can do that to yours too and get your hut on the mountain as I shall mine.
