The perfect painting

It is that time of the season when everyone is supposed to be happy. It is okay Dhruv, it is the time of spring and everyone is happy. Okay, everyone must be happy, or maybe everyone is told to be happy. It is funny that we live in a world where the mediums and our definitions of our beauty and happiness is fixed. Certain things should always make you happy and the other ones should never, just like how light and brightness means we should be happy and the night brings the package of sadness with it. That is the reason maybe I came to this park today, looking for my happiness and that perfect portrait that I can name, ‘life’. Just that every time I talk about a portrait it reminds me of how those friends or at least the people I called friends took those paint brushes, whipped it in toilet water and then brushed me over with it. It was spring season that time too. The flowers were blooming and were smelling just as beautiful as they are here today but I wasn’t, but the beauty always weighs over dirt and that is why no one cared to help me and enjoyed those beautiful tulips. 

I don’t blame them, I like tulips too. They look so soft in my hands, I feel powerful in front of them. I can choose when to hold them and when to not. I am not a montage to their wishes, they are to mine, unlike the time she told me that I had to do it even I didn’t want to. I felt the same pain as the tulip must feel when people pluck it from the garden to showcase its beauty to their loved ones. Its funny how people are, when they find something beautiful and pretty they want to make it theirs irrespective of what and how much it hurts them. 

So my drawing will include those wordless tulips, maybe they must have been told that ‘they must have enjoyed as they are the boy’ maybe that has what has silenced their pain. The song of the birds make my heart feel pleasant. Its like they want to talk to me. They want to sing their heart out as if they are trying to seize everyday. Birds are powerful and full of freedom just like all of us. We all too tend to have those invisible wings and we choose our own melancholy to sing. Like my parent’s song has always been about how I was never good enough and after the incident maybe not a man enough. My wings were cut off and I was caged, so I ask myself just one question everyday. How do caged birds know when it is spring? 

I know I can paint and that is why in my 432nd attempt I will draw this perfect portrait called life. All I need is beautiful birds whose melody can be captured in my painting in such a manner that everyone smiles. I know everyone loves spring so I know everyone will love my painting as well.

Few people just crossed me and glanced a smile. I smiled back. They must have smiled for the grass is greener on every side of the fence, their dog is in a good mood and the weather is just perfect as it is the time of spring and everyone is ought to smile but I smiled because someone just looked at me and just smiled. That smile wasn’t a grin or they didn’t want to make fun of me or did they? Did they get to know that I was raped even being a boy? Oh no! nothing wrong can happen now for it is the time of spring and spring makes everything fine.

I drew those old couple and their little fluffy dog. It makes me smile feeling there are people who do last a life time. 

The climate is perfect but it was perfect that day too. When my father had wrapped me in his blanket and told he was there for me. My mother had lit the fire and sat beside me to narrate a story because I couldn’t sleep. The coldest day of the year was perfect for me. The climate, was perfect then too.

Today I walk with anxiety in one hand and insecurity in other, maybe some one was right who said that the season of spring doesn’t leave anyone alone. The school is on a break and that is why those kids are playing football in the ground and that is what makes spring beautiful, but why didn’t any poet talk about that kid who just brings the ball when it falls in the drain. The one who is short in height and wears spectacles who finds joy in coming and just bring the lads their football because then he feels that maybe he is a part of them. That little kid is what makes my painting perfect.

I drew with what I knew, I drew with what I saw. I am supposed to be happy in spring because that is what everyone tells me. Maybe it was my turn to accept too. Maybe if I’ll show this painting to my parents, they’ll tell me how proud they are of me. My mother will bake cookies to celebrate my painting and then in the midst of autumn I will celebrate my most beautiful spring.

I completed my painting and named it spring, the grass was green and the tulips were pink. The birds sang in melancholy and people felt loved. The climate had the perfect sun and the perfect wind. I could have completed my portrait called life when my anxiety held the black paint and my insecurities captured me. It threw the entire paint on the painting and the colourful landscape was now all black. The black paint fell down and turn by turn swallowed everything into it. I still named my painting spring because no matter how it may look everyone tends to love spring.

So I want to go to my father and ask him that father did you like my painting and if he won’t like it then I’ll come back to this park again and draw my 433rd portrait of life.