Me and My Painting

During my childhood days, I think I was in my 7th or 8th standard, when my mom along with few other enthusiastic ladies in town, were pretty much determined and ultimately formed a Mahila Samiti (women organization). As far as I could remember, the organization was not very much into women welfare and all, but they organized hell lot of children extracurricular activities and cultural programs. Everything was perfectly fine, till they started those Sunday morning yoga/drawing classes. The classes were being conducted at a nearby school and OMG! it was such a torture for me. As my mom was an active member of the Mahila Samiti,  I couldn’t have bunked those classes. In fact, she used to take me with her a little earlier. At least, yoga session was little fun, but immediately after that we had to attend our art lecture.

My association with drawing and painting was simply horrible and I usually used to get highly tensed during my science exams, whenever I used to come across questions like “Explain with neat and clean diagram” I remember one incident in the art school when our art teacher asked us to draw a mango. I tried to imagine the shape of a mango and sometimes all of a sudden it used to appear in my mind, but only for fraction of a second and then used to disappear instantly.  I tried a lot to have kept the mango image inside my head for a little longer, but all my struggle simply went in vain. Ultimately somehow I drew something, but my teacher said that it looked more like an apple. Even though I was quite disappointed, but I had to console myself and wondered "It's OK, at least I could draw a fruit. Well, a fruit is a fruit and whether apple or mango, how does it matter anyway?

Immediately after the drawing class, we used to rush to our houses to watch the great Mahabharata TV soap on doordarshan at 9 am. After Mahabharata we usually used to play cricket match at one playground or the other. My drawing torture was not only limited to early morning Sunday classes, but I even had to participate in the drawing competitions as well, especially whenever it was conducted by the Mahila Samiti. During those days, one of my elder cousin brothers Rana Bhai, visited us after his 10th final exams. He stayed with us for almost a couple of weeks and Rana Bhai was not only brilliant in his studies, he also had excellent hands in painting as well. One day my mom asked him to draw a beautiful painting, so that she could have placed it inside the showcase. One afternoon after I returned from my school, I was totally amazed to see a stunning painting inside our showcase. It was an early morning painting and the sky color looked so glorious. The painting was in fact, quite simple and it only had a small hut, a coconut tree and few bushes. The cool part was that everything was colored completely black. Well, that's what they really look like at dawn.

I was so impressed with that painting and seriously wanted to try it out by myself. I asked my cousin brother "How you created such kind of a masterpiece and it looks so simple"

He replied "Yes, it’s actually very simple and the sky color did all the magic. I applied red and blue for that pinkish kind of effect and then, little red and green for the yellowish effect. Also a little bit of red and yellow for the orange effect.  Finally I applied the white color for those clouds. It's all about how you mix the colors"

Wow! The sky looked so amazing and colorful. My cousin taught me how to mix those colors and how casually we need to apply the brush. To be honest, It wasn't very difficult for me and on my very first attempt, I could create almost 40 to 50% of that kind of colorful magical sky. I was so much delighted and later experimented with the same painting, a couple of times more. My mom was so proud of me that time and said "See, if you try you could also make beautiful painting"

One day, I drew the same painting in one of the art competition and everyone was stunned to look at my creation. I noticed that few people gathered in front of me while I was creating my masterpiece. That day, for the first time in my life, I received first prize award in any drawing competition. Oh! I was so happy that moment. After a couple of weeks I tried the same painting in an another drawing competition. As we used to live in a small town, usually in all such competitions we used to see familiar faces, including the jury members as well. Even though, I was able to mix the colors artistically that day also and many people even liked it, but I received second prize that day. 

After few more weeks I again participated in yet another such kind of a competition. After I looked at the panelists, I thought to draw something else that particular day. But my painting creativity was only limited to early morning sky and I just went for it. Again I created a beautiful masterpiece and while I was busy with my brush, I heard few whispers nearby “Eeee, again, the same painting” I was little embarrassed that moment, but my painting could still manage the third prize. After that competition, I seriously decided that  I already had enough with my favorite painting and from that day onward, I never participated in any of the drawing competitions. Also I never ever tried to create the same masterpiece again. Last time I went home, I saw the same original painting drawn by my cousin, inside that same old showcase and whenever I use to see that thing, I somehow get a little nostalgic.

Healthy Breakfast

Sometimes all of a sudden my wife becomes very conscious about her regular diets. Forget about breakfast, even at dinner she use to take Daliya during those few days. That time I usually have the feeling that might be her favorite dress doesn't perfectly fit her any longer. Being a doctor, she use to give me all sorts of healthy diet gyaans and always try to convince me to go for a master health checkup, but I’m too lazy or maybe I just want to hide away from the reality. Few times I had to forcefully try out Daliya for dinner, as I didn't even have the option, so that I could have cooked my own food. Now what more to say about Daliya? In simple words it's horribly yuck and sucks like hell. 

Even though it’s extremely difficult for us to manage time to enjoy our breakfast at home during the weekdays, but Anjali somehow manage it sometimes. She really enjoy corn flakes a lot, but it’s kind of torture for me. I still remember how I survived my childhood days with that pathetic smell of milk and I think that’s enough for a lifetime. She also likes oatmeal a lot and my goodness! It looks so ugly and even the taste is so terrible. I’ve seen in TV and also in some magazines that oatmeal is one of the best healthy breakfasts. Sometimes I get very disappointed with my tongue and wonder "Why it has to be so stringent?" Later my wife suggested me to try Masala Oats and it tastes much better than its earlier version. But still I feel so miserable whenever I had to put those damn things inside my mouth and I usually try hard to bypass the tongue in between.

I usually have breakfast at office cafeteria and they have quite limited stuffs out there. I’m already matured enough to take care of my health and try hard to eat healthy. Sometimes I take only fruit bowl from the counter for breakfast. Even though I like fruits a lot, but only fruits at morning time irritates my tongue a bit and I again go to the counter to get myself either dosa or idly vada. So I had to avoid fruit bowl, or else I end up consuming much more than my normal breakfast capacity.

Every morning whenever I look at those fruits at the cafeteria, every time I look at those corn flakes and oatmeal at home, I get to worry a little about my health. But on every occasion I somehow convince myself that it’s better to eat something rather than starving. 

I’ve been consuming idli vada since so many years and it’s high time I should look for other alternatives, as I fear that very soon I myself would turn into some kind of a giant idly.

Flashbacks Turned 18 Today

It’s feels so awesome to be part of such a huge army of metalheads all around. Well, I’m right there in the middle of the crowd and never in my life, I ever expected to be part of Wacken Open Air. Well, it’s the greatest and the biggest metal festival on this planet. It occurs every year in a place named Wacken, in northern Germany. It attracts all kinds of metal music fans, such as fans of black metal, death metal, power metal, thrash metal, Gothic metal, folk metal, and even hard rock from across the globe. Aha! the tickets are usually sold out just within a few weeks, once  they are made available. I've no idea how I managed to get the ticket, but I'm enjoying like hell. 

The melodious metallic sounds just mesmerizing my brain and the crowd simply going crazy at the moment. But shit! What happened? The sound gone completely mute and there’s some sort of darkness out here. For a moment I thought there’s a power failure, but how that could be possible in Waken Open Air? Also where  the hell the entire crowd disappeared all of a sudden? Oh! I could even hear Jia’s voice "Papa, Papa stop it now, you had enough of music, now it’s time for me to do some shopping" Aha! I came back to reality and it’s always a pleasure to see Jia's smiling face. Time fly so fast, it seems as if only a few weeks have passed since Jia arrived into this world. My goodness, it's 2030 now and just look at her, I really can't believe that she's so grown up. I could still remember that I started to blog just a couple of months before we celebrated Jia's first birthday and the below photograph was taken by my friend Sidhartha on that memorable day.

In fact, today my blog "Flashbacks" turned exactly 18 and it was in 14th of September 2012, when I published my first post in Flashbacks. All throughout my life I was not very much obsessed with those electronic/mechanical devices and gadgets. During our days when the market was so much crazy for mobile phones and tablets, I always waited for the prices to have come down and it usually used to come down drastically, like our Rupee depreciated in the year 2013. I feel so happy and proud that our Rupee is almost equivalent to US dollar now days. Well, technology is still evolving with the same kind of pace and even now days also I follow the same strategy. It’s only a couple of years ago that I had installed the high definition Virtual Reality package in one of our rooms. I think I should have waited a little more, as the prices came down exceptionally there after. 

I asked "But Jia, where you would like to go for shopping today?"

Jia replied "Papa, let’s try out eBay"

Well, eBay started in the year 1995, as an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses used to buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide. Throughout the years, eBay came up with so many new innovations and at present they are into full fledged virtual reality shopping business. They have their business spread across the globe and specially out here in India, they have penetrated deep into the market and giving a hard time to all other virtual reality, as well as other ecommerce competitors.

I asked Jia "Where's mommy? You can shop with her, as I’ve some work to do"

Jia almost screamed "No Papa, mom is over the phone, let’s go shopping now"

Well we have installed the virtual reality kit with dual port, so at the same time 2 people can travel into the virtual world. I scrolled the remote and changed the mode to shopping. Oh! The ladies already installed so many shopping apps and it took me a while before I could find eBay. As soon as I selected eBay, all of a sudden we are inside a massive and glamorous shopping mall. Oh! this virtual reality came as a blessing for men like me, as we don't have to physically visit the boring malls now days. Jia tried out a hell lot of dresses and as usual, she's very confused with which one to select. The good thing with virtual shopping is that, one need not require to go into the trial rooms, every time he/she want to try out a new dress. OMG! I still remember how I used to wait outside the trial room for hours, as my wife used to go inside with almost 5 to 6 different piece of dresses. Now it's so simple, as the monitor displays exactly how one would look like with his/her new dress. Well, the accuracy is almost 99% and computer scientists are working hard to improve it further. 

We strolled through each and every corner of the mall, but it's so giant and one could simply go on shopping the whole day long. In the mean time I also purchased some household items and a couple of bed sheets. Well, I hope Anjali would love them. It seems Jia is little confused with the budget and the products she's looking for. She explained her requirement to one of the executive out there and then just like a magic, all of a sudden she took us to a totally different new outlet. At least Jia looks happier now, it seems she would get her stuffs out here.

Finally after 2 hours of casual yet rigorous shopping, Jia could only select a couple of tops and she doesn't look very satisfied. She said that she would physically visit one of the malls over the weekend along with her mom. Oh! even such high tech virtual reality programming also couldn't steal away the real shopping fun out of the ladies.




This post is written for Indiblogger’s "The future of shopping" contest in association with eBay