A blank canvas

A few years back I had seen the Hindi movie 'Dasvidaniya' (the movie name is Russian for 'Goodbye'...'Until we meet again'). The story of the movie is about a shy man Amar (brilliantly played by Vinay Pathak) who lives a regular...rather boring...life. One day, he finds out that he has stomach cancer and will die within 3 months. He then decides to live his life to the fullest in the 3 months left and makes a list of ten things that he wants to do before he dies. The list helps him to buy that car he always wanted to have, learn to play the guitar, mend his relationship with his younger brother, get back in touch with his childhood friend, take that foreign trip and finally, confess his love to the girl he has loved since his childhood (even though she is happily married and has a kid....he still musters the courage to finally let her know in dumb charade style because some things are best expressed without words....one of the best scenes of the movie).

We all have our own 'Dasvidaniya' lists, don't we? Things we want to do 'someday', people we want to get back in touch 'someday', places we want to visit 'someday'. For Amar in the movie, it took something as dramatic as a terminal illness to actually sit up and do the things he always wanted to do. As for me, I think the creation of this blog at the end of 2010 has been a turning point. One thing on my list for many years was to start writing again 'someday'....and the end of 2010 was when my 'someday' actually happened. I have started writing again and that led me to take an inward look at the other things that I have always wanted to do 'someday'. One such thing was to paint. I have never painted before in my life but it is something I have always wanted to try. For the past month or so, the desire to paint grew stronger and so I decided to check what was available out there. And to my pleasant surprise, I found a paint class about 15 minutes from where I lived. For a small fee, they held 2 hour art sessions where they taught a painting from start to finish...the classes were especially for those who had never painted before. Perfect! So, I registered for a 2 hour Saturday afternoon session. I was excited! But when Saturday morning came, I must admit I started having second thoughts wondering....What have I gotten myself into?....What if it doesn't work out?.....But then unless I tried it I would never know....so I decided to go.

I arrived and picked a spot. There was a blank canvas in front of me and some paint brushes. A little while later, an American lady walked in and ignoring all the other empty seats, picked the one besides me and sat down. We got talking and as we warmed up she finally confessed....Don't know what I am doing here....never done this before....am afraid I will mess it up. It was like she was echoing my thoughts and I couldn't help but smile as I told her...Same here. She laughed and said....We were meant to be sitting by each other, weren't we? Let's be each other's cheerleader. The painting we did was a fairly simple one called 'Field of flowers'. As the instructor taught us to blend the colors and paint the sky blue on the blank canvas in front of us....I cannot express in words how wonderful it felt. I can now understand why some people love to paint. To be able to visualize and use colors to fill up a blank canvas....that feeling is blissful. As we painted the sky, the grass, the flowers....each stroke of the brush, each color that I used, every minute detail....is now etched in my mind. Having the cheerful lady next to me as my painting companion only helped enhance the whole experience further. As I signed my name in white paint at the bottom of the painting, I did it with a lot of joy and a sense of accomplishment. It is a simple painting and no masterpiece but it is mine and it sits proudly in my home today as a reminder for me to keep trying new things.

Signing off hoping to check off many more items from my list and this quote by Pablo Picasso

'I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.'