Life's Colourful

Watching Eminem’s 8 Mile. Good movie. He knows his shit. Was never a rap fan, but this movie is real, it’s good. IMDB says lot of references to his old life.

Anyway, so in one scene, before his demo, he is practising his songs, and his sister is painting something. I paused the movie. Something suddenly zapped in my mind. I rewound and saw the scene again. No mistaking. The same reaction.

I remembered the time when I used to draw and paint. I don’t do that anymore. But there was a time when I was absolutely addicted to it. Poster colours, oil-based colours were a rage with pro’s, but I never fancied them. My favourites were water colours. My constant and faithful companion was Camlin’s 12 colour plate. The colours came in as crisp dry circular discs fitted in 12 different circular holes in the metallic compass-box kind of structure. The height of all gifts was a Camlin colour box. I would sit with them, a brand new brush that came with the box, and a katori full of water in the courtyard and paint. No pencilling the outline. Just flickering the brush over a paper. For hours together.

The colours would soon lose their individuality as they would trickle into each other. On paper as well as in the colour plate. The most colourful one would be white, showing traces of all the others. The solid disc would in time, turn into a ring and slowly the ring would break into small parched pieces. And I would start bothering everyone for a new box.

…….

That’s the thing with memories…You never know what stimulus would trigger specific ones. It’s not logical. That’s the fun part. You aren’t prepared. You are completely off-guard. You never know how and where they are gonna catch up. And while you are musing over them, for those few moments, your present turns into a colourful canvas. Brimming with emotions. With happiness, in this case.