the heaRT...or noT?

 

I remember the beginning of this year. I felt I were in a race car with a shaky foot on the throttle. Everyone was very considerate and all I heard them talk was about how not easy the Class XII examinations were going to be, tuition,grades,entrance examinations. Gah!

I pretended to be dumb and deaf for some time. But inside I felt uneasy. Everyone else knew what they wanted to become or at least had had someone make the decision for them. Sometimes I’d wonder aloud, “Maybe I should become a movie director” after watching some major Mani Ratnam or Spielberg flick. One thing I knew—I would never join the zombie fray of doctors and engineers if I could help it. There are already too many of them in the country.

Six months into Grade 12 I’m somewhat still in the same condition. I haven’t bunked or flunked much. But I haven’t started learning my lessons or doing my homework either. You can find me glassy-eyed and distant in my physics class. I'd be floating in outer space. I’d be strolling the cobbled streets of Europe in the autumn when everything is gold or perhaps be trekking  out on those white peaks. And, suddenly TAP!TAP! goes the teacher’s ruler. And pop goes the thought bubble!

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Marnix is the 17-year-old son of our Belgian friends, Ilse and Ivo. When we visited Europe in the summer of 2008 we stayed at their place during our first week. Marnix showed me some of his drawings and sketches. I was at a loss for words! And he said those weren’t his best. They have 12 hours a week for drawing and painting classes at school. I felt envious comparing it to the measly one hour a week we have for art classes in schools in India, most of which are stolen by other-subject teachers. Later we visited the Royal Museum of Fine Arts. I walked from painting to painting lost in admiration, Jan Van Eyck, Pieter Paul Rubens, Antony van Dyck.

Although I couldn’t pronounce the names of the dozens of other Flemish painters I was absolutely awed by their skill, the attention to detail. Infinite emotions and expressions echoed off those walls. The words I can use are too small to give the true picture. Such was the magnificence of each piece of canvas. I then wondered. How many galleries do we have back home? How many of us visit them?

I watched the visitors at the museum. I was surprised to see more youth than funny-looking, bearded old men with ponytails and spectacles. A pack of schoolchildren cheerfully babbled their way through into the gallery hall, clutching their sketchpads and pencils. Does that happen here in India? Do we encourage arts as much it deserves to be?

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Once I made a random survey. I asked several people the names of three Indian painters. Almost immediately they said Raja Ravi Varma and MF Hussein. They fumbled for a third name. A few managed to remember the popular cartoonists RK Laxman and Namboothiri. I too was embarrassed knowing too little about our artists.

I’m pretty sure there are thousands of budding Husseins and Varmas out there today. But who’s to feed the fire within them? Where are you headed? What is your dream? You want to paint, you want to fly a jet plane, you want to act, you want to save lives. Why hesitate? No one is in your way except yourself. I realise the tough part is not about finding out who you want to be. The tough part is to make the decision for yourself.Trust me you wouldn't want to ask yourself 'what if.." later once in your rockers.If you've got it why kill it? The most beautiful part of you. Passion.