Blank Canvas

Clarissa stared at the blank Canvas. It was the umpteenth time she had tried drawing that day and every time she had failed miserably. Heaps of scrunched white paper laid beneath her feet but even so, she wasn't done with the assignment yet.

Art class that afternoon had been immensely enlightening. "Art comes from you heart and not your head. It unfolds the mystery of your sub-conscious. You may pretend things to be otherwise, but always remember that a piece of art is the window to your soul. It never lies", he'd said. And She had nodded, to herself more than anyone else. At the end of the class he had told everyone to draw something that made them smile, without reason and in the most turbulent of times.

The pencil she'd been holding fell from her grasp and she bounced back from her reverie. She brainstormed again and again. She picked up the pencil and thought of various ways it could go. What was the thing she lived for ?

She thought of the place she had grown up in. A one-storey white house over looking a small lake. She remembered the countless times she had spent looking out of the window towards the lake. Especially on those sunny afternoons when the sun shone brightly and the lake glittered in all its glory. But no matter how much she loved that place, it wasn't what she was looking for.

It was already 2 in the morning . She put her head down on the desk in distress. And slowly at first and then all at once, she fell asleep.

In her dream, she saw herself waiting at a train station. She was standing with an yellow umbrella which was making feeble attempts to stand against the heavy downpour. She knew she had been waiting for a train but didn't know to where. The first train came along and she thought of hopping on it but it went away even before she could move. Another came along and then another one but it all left without her. She was getting tensed now. What if she was stuck there forever ? And just then another train had come by. She didn't know where she was supposed to go but knew that this was the train she had to get on. She ran towards the train and she knew at that instant that there was nothing that could stop her from getting on it. And the moment she stepped on it, she saw him.

She woke up suddenly and felt like someone had poured icy water all over her. She swiftly grabbed a pencil and touched the blank canvas with the tip of her pencil. She drew the edges of his jawline with long clean strokes and also drew the small curve of his chin. She drew his cheekbones, all sharp and bony against his other smoother features. She drew his long nose and below it drew the soft lips that she knew so well,curved to show his lopsided smile. She drew his hair, slightly ruffled but nonetheless striking. And finally, she started at the eyes. It took her sometime to think them but when she closed her eyes,he was there. She drew his big innocent eyes and the long lashes that she loved so much. In the end, she drew shadows along his jawline and across all the places she thought necessary. And it was complete.

She looked back at her piece and smiled, more for the subject she drew than for the drawing itself. Art was the window to the soul; Indeed.

Comments

On moving 6629km alone away from home

It was a fresh start, one that I needed desperately. Applications and documentation had taken so much of my time and sucked so much of my energy, I don't think I quite comprehended what the move was going to entail. While I was open to changes, I don't think I was aware of how much transformation across all aspects of life it would take to acclimatise myself to my new reality. I was just happy for a fresh start. Nothing else mattered. But turns out, getting on the plane is the easiest step in all of this. The amount of transformation I've gone through and learning I've done in the past couple months is truly insane, to say the least. Recently, a friend back home asked me how I was doing living alone and I thought about it. Honestly, it hasn't been all good or all bad, but the important thing has been rooting and balancing myself despite it all. Not sure if anything I've written will be groundbreaking or something that hasn't been already said 7 million time...

Questionable Choices

As of today, around 7 million people have viewed Deepika Padukone's Vogue Empowerment video. For the first few days, I just ignored it when it appeared on my Newsfeed. But a slew of jokes followed and I knew I couldn't ignore it forever. The first time I watched the video I had a deep unsettling feeling in my gut. Women Empowerment is a very important issue and all that the video pointed out to me was the societal double-standard against men in today's seemingly "modern" world. The video talks about matters ranging from the choice of clothing to choice to have sex (I'll come back to this one later) and something about being the snowstorm not the snowflake. The video has got so many things wrong it's not even funny. India has so many problems regarding the society bringing women down. India is the place where a girl being married to a man thrice her age is normal, where a girl has to pay the price when the only sin she has committed is being born a...

YOU & I

The sweet scent of summer had barely trickled into town. The trees were thawing, making way for color to seep back into the world. The sun dug into my eyes as I tried to take in the blueness of the sky. As my eyes started to tear up, I looked away and they fell on you. I didn't know you at all but as you made your way past me, I knew that that was what love looked like. You were beautiful. A tall, glorious vision I never wanted to forget. I wanted to encase you in a poem, to refrain you from ever leaving my mind, but you walked away before I could think of metaphors and similes. You didn't even look back. You just left. Too soon. The clouds greyed and the sky turned black. My heart was freezing and I desperately wished for the warmth of some one's arms around me. Much later, you told me how you liked people who could make their own fire. It was one of the things that I liked about you because it meant you didn't care how I wasn't looking for an...

Twisted.

1 As we were sitting atop a hill overlooking the city, I told you how I loved sunsets. The fervor of the day changing into night, the caramelization of everything under the sun, the breathtaking frenzy of colors and how no two sunsets ever looked the same... I told you how I loved it all. You looked at me quizzically like you didn't comprehend a word I'd just said. You then confessed to me how you felt there were better things to do than spend time watching sunsets and gently kissed me on the lips for the first time ever. 2 It was a sweltering summer's day and we were both melting under the Kathmandu sun. I'd asked you to come help me out buy a dress. You asked me what sort of dress I wanted to buy. I had no idea yet so I told you the first thing that came to my head, something that always made my heart happy- Red. You mirrored your expressions from a few weeks ago. You confessed you didn't think I could pull off a Red dress. Maybe I should go with a tra...

I had to live without my phone for 10 days and it didn't go well.

Few months after I bought a phone, the worst thing that could happen to a person that bought a new phone happened to me. My phone started to dysfunction. My brand new phone, that I was paying way more than I could afford, was having issues. And like any normal person, I too went through the 5 stages of grief. I pretended like I did not see that my apps were crashing and my phone was restarting randomly. I would just put my phone face down when that happened because I did not want to deal with it (kids, don't try this at home). And then I levelled up to the next stage. My phone would restart exactly when I was trying to send an important text, make an important call...or take a picture, or a million, of a beautiful sunset and boy, did that piss me off. I tried to look up solutions online but I couldn't find any that worked for me. Then I started bargaining. Is my phone shutting down and starting up on its own, which takes a total of 20 secs, really that big of a deal? I felt li...

Chase

Picture of my friend Pooja Shrestha shot by Apekshya Rijal All my life, I’ve grabbed the bull by the horns Never sat back Never really minded the thorns “Roses will be worth it Just wait for your turn” I should have turned back I should have run. Tugging and pulling Fervent passion ruling I let it get to my head Words, a million in my mind left unsaid. All that chasing And mindless engaging Sowing but never reaping Giving Never receiving. Tedious bouts of rejecting And being rejected Honestly? I’m just a little dejected.

How I Met Your Mother vs Friends

Photo:Pinterest I watched How I Met Your Mother for the first time when I was in 7 th grade. At that time, the jokes most likely went right over my head and I probably didn’t understand the context to many things but still something about Ted Mosby resonated with me, even then. I have always struggled with keeping my love in check like him which has led to various failings throughout the years but Ted’s always had my back by being one step ahead. For these reasons and more, I whole-heartedly love the show. On the other hand, I watched F.R.I.E.N.D.S. a couple years later and thought it was mostly nice. I’d all but forgotten about it until last year when, for some reason, everyone started talking about it. I, by no means, thought it was a bad show but I couldn’t fathom why everyone liked it so much . People started labelling it superior to HIMYM which didn’t sit well with me. So I decided to re-watch F.R.I.E.N.D.S to gain perspective which led me to the conclusio...

Book Review: Kafka on the Shore

I love reading. And most of the time I go through books like a termite on wood. After I sit down with a book, the book only gets closed after I get done with it. However, this was not the case here. It's safe to say that Kafka on the Shore is the strangest book I've ever laid my hands on. Haruki Murakami, for me, was always one of those writers, holding whose book made you a serious reader. So, as I venture into adulthood, I wanted to jump into more thought-provoking, serious-people books unlike my usual YA genre around which my interests circle. Looking back, I could never have fathomed what was ahead of me. Because this book tested me. It tested my patience. It tested my humanity. And most of all, it tested my ability to do something that I absolutely despised. In this case, it was finishing this godforsaken book. This book has two main protagonists. We get to see inside the head of a barely 15-year-old Kafka Tamura who has run away from home to escape his f...

thank god it's friday

I don’t know if it’s just me or time seems to be moving a lot faster these days. I simply refuse to believe that it’s been 3 weeks since I joined my new job. And it’s end of March already? No fking way. I haven’t written for a big audience in a long time. If you know me, you know that I have always loved writing but over the past year, life caught up with me. I don’t know if mid 20s for everyone is a whirlwind or if it’s because I moved to a new country or because I was finishing up my Uni, working 4 days a week at my unpaid internship and 20 hours/week nightshift at the job that paid for my life all at the same time, everything was always too much. Sorry to my friends and family that I haven’t called in a while but calling takes too much effort. It’s my least favourite method of communication. But know that I miss you and I love you. Life isn’t bad at all, just a lot. I did try to start writing again in the past year and a half. But everything I wrote was stupid. I didn’t e...

Rust & stardust

There's not much to say about love beyond what has already been said But in the past, every time we fell apart I always used to find new ways To bleed on paper about you. Yet, this time has been different Because the words I spit out about you now don't make any sense Just like how we fell apart doesn't make any sense. Every time I sat down to write this, My thoughts always went back to that one time When you said I'd never be able to write anything without you in it, ever again. I laughed and rolled my eyes at you then But I knew you were right Even during the long stretches of radio silence between us, my words always seemed to find their way back to you. You were sometimes the hero in my stories Sometimes the villain And yet, you were there Car...

...I speak my mind =)