art exhibition...

We walked around quietly… an empty office had magically transformed into a gallery that housed paintings by some of the biggest as well as the most contemporary artists in the country… I watched my ten odd students stop and lean a little closer to canvases… some stood there with their heads tilted and a puzzled look on their faces… ‘this looks complicated didi’, said Aarif… I watched them with just as much interest as the colours and forms that held them captivated… ‘didi that looks like ghond painting,’ smiled my smartie pants Naaz… ‘and I know this artist didi,’ said Sali… We looked a little longer at the jayshree burman in all its glory…
I think I loved watching them discover… fascinated by the techniques… asking me questions that I felt ill-equipped to answer… 3 whole floors of art work… and I thought Raju, summed it up best, ‘didi I have a headache…there is too much here that is beautiful…’

‘the beauty is you…’ I felt like hugging each of them closely… love watching them discover…love watching them express themselves… they make me feel alive… they let me be all that I am… they don’t care about all that I won’t be…

And then back at class as they sat and watched Sali do her own magic on my palm with her cone of mehndi… a little ritual we started a few years ago… I watched her focused face and steady hand as the rich olive green paste formed the most intricate and intriguing designs on my palm… a cool sensation spreading to me in the humid evening… the delicious fragrance filling the air in a subtle quiet way…here I was surrounded by my favourite artists in the whole wide world… anything they created was pure… original… and out of true passion… my most precious exhibition was right there in my class every Saturday… my freedom… my world… my art… was now so mingled with their’s…