Watercolors

To enable you to make a painting or draw a sketch, you need your mind in peace, or a certain restlessness.  Let me try to explain this.

Well, today I am looking outside my window and all I see is grey trees, windows and everything grey.  Really, everything is grey indeed.  The head gets gloomy and numb.  And perhaps, the only way to deal with this gloom is to draw something colourful.  In my opinion Water Colours can be one good choice here.  There is no need to draw something within boundaries or any specific colour, just find something cheery, I mean a cheery colour, mix a few drops of clean water, to it. Pankaj says, "thicker the paper the better it is; so,  the colour water can flow within as well as on the surface of the paper".  Just look outside the window, your window, and draw what you see.  Remember, no boundaries or no fixed lines, just your few cheery water colours flowing.  And, using "black" for colour here would only give more contrast.

Keep colouring keep drawing, you might get so absorbed in your work that next time you look up at the window, you will find that the beautiful darkness has arrived.


Below, one wintry day in Delhi...

 

One regular bronze

Read the news (link) to understand the word effort.

A 20km walk, daily, to get water for her family is comparable to once-in-a-lifetime bronze in the commonwealth games for a 10km one. Less distance, she ran. As for authorities, this way there isn’t much expenditure in training players. Let the tribal practice. Whatever- running, swimming, shooting…

Ahmedabad to Saharsa again

EDITED

Unlike last time this time I made it on time; yes! from Gujarat to a Bihari town called Saharsa in exactly 18 hours (plus minus 30 minutes). Especially, it is always exciting when you catch your flight running, and they give the chauffeur driven bus all to yourself in the nice airport in Ahmedabad. But, whether the spicejet or IA, your neighbour has turned into an individualist, he is not interested in talking to you. And for you, the same individualist, richer guy, want to know how the trains are cleaned? Either it’s a teenager with both fixed legs inutile so he crawls, or a navel exposing kid because the lowermost button of his shirt is not important, or the shirt’s a couple of sizes small. Compassion or pity, they live on your tips dear passenger, dear citizen.

In Bihar platform no. 1, the train has its one destination written in Gujarati, saying Amdavad. It comes into attention because for a moment the brain is not able to connect something written in Gujarati in a Hindi spoken part of the world (or for that matter Maithili or Bhojpuri).

Makkhis are in plenty. Closer look tells that they live in groups, with 20 to 50 in one, and each group a couple of feet away from each other. In the amidst it feels home no matter strangers pushing onto you when walking, and leaning onto you when sitting waiting for time to pass. The conversations though start up don’t go beyond a point, because it needs at least one of the two to sustain a conversation.

Newspapers are shouting for change, probably not knowing but envisioning what this change means. I share a few brittania cakes with the newspaper selling kid.

In the train, the five newspapers you have bought from different vendors are not yours because you can read only one at a time. You must give it to your surrounding neighbours who will casually ask you for one. You can treat him with chai too and then all his love and travel food is yours. Littees are a must have in Bihar, preferably homemade ones if you can lay your hands on a few by just being nice.