This was just what the doctor recommended. A bright blue sky with the sun forcing its yellow into it from the corner, water all around my rubber float, and a bubbly in my imagination. I could not have been in brighter spirits. I could inject my spark of joy into a lecture on morals and drive hoardes to bask in its great sound. However, this was not what my horse had in mind.

Horses have never been called anyone’s best friend. Despite all the horse-you-know-what that Black Beauty put me through, I would still not call him my best friend. I knew from the instant that I gave him an unoriginal name, simply because I couldn’t rack my brains to come up with something clever, I was in for revenge. I got it back in black and white, and red all over, many times. The horse just did not like to be ridden.

So here we are now…two characters in my story…my horse and I.

My biggest dream was to own a horse. What with the fluctuating fuel prices and exorbitant rates to park your vehicle anywhere, an animal was the answer. Nobody knows what to say or do when you walk around with a horse in a city. I couldn’t ride it. I told you what he always does to me when I do.

Then came the most defining moment of our lives. My horse killed my wife.

New

Last month, I grew a year older. My family and friends made it easier to bear by partying with me for most of the day. Every time that happens, I visualize a big, warmly red heart housing all of us in its cozy room, and I feel deeply grateful.

And a new interest grew as well.

I got taken on a magic carpet ride and flew from wonder to wonder, which must be the tip of the biggest rainbow ever.

And here are a few of the things that I saw and managed to capture:

Realistically Speaking

When I was growing up, we had three coffee-table books at home: Rembrandt, Monet, and Levitan. My mom used to paint (she still does) and used to look at these for inspiration. My favorite among them was Rembrandt. I could sit for hours admiring some of the paintings in the book. There was one painting of a surgery, in which a surgeon holds a pair of scissors. The pair of scissors fascinated me terribly. It looked just like the one in my dad's pen-hole stand--of course, only in color. We used it to cut only paper. My dad had made it clear that I could not cut anyone's hair with it. Many times, I placed the scissors on the page where the painting was printed to marvel at the likeness. It was a treat!

But I hated Monet. His paintings were grey and morose. The bridge didn't look like anything that I would want to stand on to enjoy some breeze. The lilies depressed me. The rest were all just misty, and nothing that made me feel like Alice in Wonderland.

Years later, I discovered Van Gogh in a book by Irving Stone called "Lust for Life." The same year, I saw his original paintings at the Musee D'Orsay in Paris. I saw a remarkable self-portrait with swirls in the background that somehow draws your attention to the intense look in his eyes. It was an overwhelming experience to have read it and then seen it all in a span of weeks. And so I became an ardent admirer of Van Gogh, and all the other impressionists, including Monet.

For a couple of years after that, I must have gone on and on about them, that I got gifted a jig-saw puzzle of a Van Gogh painting, a calendar with paintings by Matisse, and a coffee-table book of Impressionists, from various dear people.

But now I like the realists better. A lot of people pass off their paintings in local galleries as impressionistic if they cannot make it resemble the real thing. That, according to me, is what gives that beautiful art form a bad name. I am impressed if they can create a realistic image on one canvas, and depict a state of mind impressionistically on another canvas. But passing something off due to inability, and then labelling it as impressionistic is not something that I relish. Because I have done it too!


One day, during a summer vacation, a friend of my dad's dropped in to visit. I went into the living room to say hello. He asked me what I was doing.

I said, "Painting." My family was too busy for me to do anything else.

I showed it to him because he wanted to see it. It turned out that he was opening an art gallery in Mahe, called Kalagramam. He asked me to turn out three paintings for an amateurs' exhibition there because Kalagramam wants to encourage young artists. Now I don't think I am an artist, but it was nice of him to suggest that I could exhibit too.

So I sat to paint two more. I did one of houses, which was easy and quickly finished. And the other canvas, I placed vertically, to paint a waterfall. In the end, it looked like anything but. Because I am a peace-loving person, I didn't destroy the painting. I merely pushed it so that it landed on its side and lay that way for a while. My cousin dropped in that evening, because her parents were busy too. She looked at it and said, "Earthquake? Is that an earthquake you painted?"

There was an earthquake in the north, and everyone was talking about it. So it was only natural that my cousin had it so much in her head that she saw an earthquake in my painting. It gave me an idea though. I dabbed more whites and greys on the canvas till it looked like a commotion and displayed it as "Commotion" at the gallery.

After the exhibition, "Commotion" was returned to me. But they bought "Houses" which looked like houses and was pleasant to look at!

All said and done, I could slip back to the Impressionists in another phase. But for now, I like real and I like the realists.

Blogger's Block

I just knew that this would happen. Writing in a blog is like getting on a stage, unrehearsed, and delivering lines that you cannot take back. I know I can delete this entry, but what if I want to delete it a few months later when I have suddenly become embarrassed by what I have written? If this were a page in my secret book (a real book with covers, with pages that you can flip, and write in neatly with a blue ball-point pen), I could rip it and crush it into a ball and fling it into my purple bin. But an online page is in danger of being read before being trashed!

A redeeming factor is that I don't think many people read my blog, even though I have boldy broadcast it on a social networking site! So I could still type lines after lines and post it, and not worry too much about it. But, recently, a smart aleck, who I barely know, told me he read my blog. I was surprised and, I must confess, elated. It was like someone had actually witnessed my scaling the Everest. It didn't go unnoticed!

He said, "So you write poetry?"

I don't know if you can call it that. Some feelings are so strong that you want to disguise it, and the best medium for that, I think, is verse. Stating what you feel so passionately about in rigid prose can just about kill the feeling. Besides, there is this need to pin the intensity of the feeling in words. I need to "photograph" it to remember it later when it has, sadly, subsided.

So I said, "Yes." That was a brave yes.

And then he told me that I have to read this unflattering comment that P. G. Wodehouse had made about poets.

He couldn't find it online, but has promised to look for it in his collection and type out the comment in an email to me.

Funny. I guess I'm happy to have made his day. Some people derive great pleasure from such things, you know.

But, that wasn't want I logged in to write. I logged in to write about blogging and how it frightens me a little. I am new here, and have cold...fingers! Seasoned bloggers love blogging and they tell me that they have gained a lot from it. They even meet other bloggers and discuss shared experiences. I am guessing that a shared experience is like white light splitting into a rainbow through a prism. What you write is white light, the prism is the blog, and the rainbow is when the others join you to discuss the same issue from different angles. That can be very enriching. I would want to live with that.

So, I guess that's why I am here, my head out of the covers, to see what blogging is all about. Sooner or later, I just might see a rainbow!

Blur

Her beautiful raggedy doll
With one gentle blue plastic eye
With fingers you can bite
Smelling like a doll does
Feeling like a favorite sheet

She cupped it close to her cheek
Rolled over it to the other side
Dolly now in her outstretched hand
She looked at it and stared at it

And then it began to blur
Like everything else
When you look too hard
And you look too close
It begins to blur

A New Year Wish Bottled in a Dream (written in 2007)

She felt her body sink into the soft, warm mattress and the pillow bulge out gently on either side of her face, warming her ears. Deeper and deeper she sank until she found herself in a dark, lonely space where an aircraft hovered over and a bridge that seemed to clutch its secrets to its belly spread across the vastness. A hint of a railway track, beaten down by time, filth and trains peeped out from under the bridge, but there was no telling to where it led or from where it came. She saw herself standing no taller than a finger in the edge of the frame, observing the eerie calm that a turbulence of many years had left behind. And on that tiny, barely visible face, which was her own, she felt the power of a smile that said she damn well knew to where she was headed...

Drowning Skyward

Across a table
My words danced to you
Your words enveloped mine
Until they twisted and turned
And spiraled upward
And exploded into a laugh
That descended into a smile
That softened into a gaze
Until we touched
And your warmth intoxicated me
And everything stood still
And we paused
And wondered
At the stillness
Until our words stumbled back
Staggering across the table
Yours reaching for mine, and mine for yours
And we followed
Despite ourselves