Scattered All Over

How important is interdependence?

he was an artist.... from the very first day he started drawing odd shapes on the floor with his brothers old crayons, the artist in him was raving... but HE did not approve......... HE would sometimes just look up from the "work he brought home" and scowl at the meaningless doodle.... but that harsh scowl would only momentarily blow a cold breeze over the little artists making the fire inside him quiver.. but not die... but resistance grew gradually..... it started with.. Y aren't u practicing to write u're A's and B's more.... y don’t u do more sums.... then came the next blow... "WHO THE HELL TOLD U TO RUIN THE LIVING ROOM WALL??" ... five little strawberries sprung out of five little knuckles ... they smarted from the string of the foot ruler...... mummy ..oh that poor pale soul... couldn't do much.... she just quivered like a tuning folk..... once he bedroom, the study, the living room and all other rooms were banned, the only solace was the kitchen..... no one bothered about its sooty walls.... but he was happy to draw little moons, and stars and flowers on that black landscape... when the entire circumference of the wall was filled with flowers and cats and dogs and robots 2.5 inches above the ground... and there was no more space to let the crayons run... She put him on the kitchen table.... that elevation gave the little artist a whole new perspective.....a new angle... a new canvass...........so he happily doodled away.....
no one cared..... even mummy was a little too scared to appreciate the art... or she didn't know.. she just hoped and prayed that the "drawing frenzy" will dissapear as the child grew up...

but it didn't.... it was like a destrcutive flame that kept growing and growing.. illuminating his eyes and his whole being as it spread...... its light was palpable when he took a crayon... and reproduced his little world of purple ponies and yellow round beetles.... montessori was over...... then came grade one...... then grade two.... with the years came little friends...

Despite the homework, despite the long hours of travelling.. he would come home take off the shirt and shoes.. get down on the ground and draw a picture.... at the back side of an old calendar.... he would still draw while mummy fed lunch... next came homework........he would still crouch on his belly and do his homework....... and then draw another litte doodle before running off to play....

Mummy collected the little drawings.. she was just happy... to c the little ones musings.. But unlike other mums.. she didn’t show them to anyone.. she didn't frame them... she didn't discuss them with her sisters.. or his sisters or Mrs. Wicks next door... she didn’t want to think of him as a little artists.... It was just a phase... a thing which all kids do.. nothing else.... it will disappear.. or so she thought

Even HE was quite..... ur.. proud... neh just bemused by the weird aliens and even pleased by the Big headed portraits of HIM with "DADDY" written in squabble letters...

but... it wasn't a talent... a gift.. neh.. just the silly gibberish of a kid... destined for bigger things //// for better things.... in a plush oak office.... dictating to a plush old secretary....

Then the next blow came.... "WHAT? ARTS CLASSES..... WHY THE HELL DO U WANT TO GO FOR ARTS CLASSES... I AM NOT GOING TO WASTE MY MONEY OR YPIR TIME ON SUCH NONSENSE.... WHAT THE HELL DO U EXPECT TO DO BY LEARNING ART,.." HE didn't scream... HE just dissected his dreams with HIS cold, clinical rational.. The flame shook again.. and lost a bit of its intensity in this hurricane.. but it did not die..

mummy.... or that eternal tuning folk... whimpered a protest... but.. it wasn't even audible......

a few kids from school went for arts classes... he didn;t want to talk to them that much... atleast NOT about all the fun stuff they were doing at arts class.... the collages.. the different ways of drawing dogs... and cats....

School had only one period... and nothing was taught... cos then the teacher didn;t have anything to say during the arts class........ they just drew what ever cmae to their heads......... HE was the best... until grade 4..... then he started loosing marks..... becuase he did not have his style.. he did not know technique.... the advantage of a superior imagination had long eroded...

It was this that dealt the hardest blow.... no matter what happened earlier... he always knew he wanted to draw.. because he always thought he COULD...... but now... he couldn't... it was like the un cashed cheque that expired.... an unrealised talent..... blunted...

He toteally gave up on it... he broke his crayons..... his harris brush and squeezed out all the tube colours into the little cups in mum's egg holder... and then enacted a masai war ritual where he mixed it all up.... until the muddy brown gooo was dripping down his wrists..... and then he kept hand prints... all over his room wall..... the last piece of monograph .... before he threw away the broken crayons... the splintered brush and the crush paint tubes..........

Aesthetics was merely another subject for the OLs ... thats it.... since he couldn;t dance or sin the only option was literature.. he luved it... it was like a too small patch for the whole left when the ART was ripped out of his soul.. words helped to bring out trapped imangination, and the bottled up resentment.... but the same ferver... the same light... that brightened his eyes.. and illuminated his aura was forever dead... hey theres a limit to which an "insignificant" OL subject could rekindle U're inner tubelight.....

There were more important things to do.. LIKE scrutinizing and rectifying the calamity that lead to only 97 in science or figuring out which idiosyncracy prevented the two eggs following the majestic ONE, in mathematics... (it was sheer retardation to get 99 for math... gosh..it irked HIM sooo much... )

Well the years passed... it was like a never ending movvie with climax after climax..OLs came and went... ALs came and went... and likewise "other" higher qualifications came and went.... his brain had a nice autopilot.... he didn't know why he was doing it... what he was doing it for...
there was no real reason except that HE was happy/ or he invented that reason due to the sheer inability to think of anything else...

oh hell.. life could have gone on autopilot... like watching a movie... pretending that it was happening to someone else... but heck... the little soda bottle popped.... just like that.. and the acidic bubbles hit the brains... and upset the autopilot circuitry.... damn.... then all hell broke loose

It was hard to fool u're self and play along with the luv-hate relationship with HIM.... it was even hard to come to terms with HER mousy ways.... her sheer weakness.......

when the looking glass was shattered, the splinters of self realisation gashed his heart... the tinier pieces forever got lodged inside the intracate artery complex.. digging in just a nanometer into the flesh with every heart beat...

a life with out that inner light.... hey it wasn't bad.. it just made him a morbid, medeocre mortal just like the thousands of zombies who flaot arnd..... entangled in magnified trivialities like "office", bills, weddings, funerals and impotency tests squeezing out what is leaft of "LIFE".

BUT.......... that is NOT what he wanted he wanted.....,. or he didn't know what he wanted... was it the curse of dependance that ruined his life......

will shredding all the ties.... cutting all the milestones around his neck save him from drowing in the quagmire of "mundane purposeless existance".......

but u can;t just severe some ties.... chemo doens;t kill all cancer cells.... (after they have run riot in u;re body for so long).,.. even if u do kill all of them,., they will regrow....

So is the drive for "independance" a futile excersie?... there is never true independance right....... say u cut u're loose from one rotting nest... then u will crate naother nest of u;re own and rot in it... due to shear insecurity --- cos insuarance agents do not feed u soup when u're paralysed in bed..

Or is interdepedance the answer...................................... ? what is it... how do u uuk strike that balance.. is it possible in all relationships.. how and when do u severe detrimental ties..........