Memories of rain

My friend’s artist friend once showed me his paintings. His name was Prince. Now, unless a painting bears familiar subjects like people, houses, trees, etc., I get too scared to share my opinion on it. To be honest, I doubt I would be able to form an opinion seeing such obscure art. For me, the best artwork is when you draw a man exactly how the man is, but not too close to his photograph though. Prince’s paintings were far away from photograph-like and they had no trace of the subjects I mentioned above. They were at the apex of obscurity. But there was one painting that reminded me of something. Took me back to my childhood days.

When I was a little boy I used to love Camlin sketch pens. Just loved those beautiful colors. I don’t know for certain if it was because of the penurious conditions of my family or solely for my fun, every evening, after school hours, I used to go to the backside of the school office room (clerk room to be precise) and look for the used stationery that was being regularly thrown out from the window. On one of such trips, I found six Camlins. And they seemed like new ones. I grabbed them at once and ran back home.

At night, I began to draw the typical ‘sun-two mountains-river-house-palm tree’ painting. Everything came off in the right shape and the painting was shining in six different colors. I had written ‘Art by Srinivas Kondra’ at the bottom right corner with a grin on my face.

In the morning, I noticed I was moved from my usual sleeping place. When I looked over blearily, I saw buckets and kitchen utensils being placed all over the room. This meant only one thing, it rained in the night. Then it struck me about my painting. I think I already knew what I was going to see. When I took it into my hands, the painting had no visible trace of the house, trees, or river I drew. One thing smeared itself over another. Now the full page was a bizarre mix of six colors. In a tiny drip our hut couldn’t prevent and the utensils couldn’t catch, rivers, houses, and mountains had slowly washed away. Prince’s painting reminded me of this story and it exactly looked like the bizarre mix.

I told him this story. He didn’t check his phone while listening.

Also, now we live in a cement house.