Beneath the Canvas

Rajesh was new to orkut. So I added him as a friend. He browsed through my profile and we were talking about it on Monday morning - Apr 27th ’09.

He complimented me on my art and then asked a very startling question. The most sensible one I got in a long time.

He questioned me why I paint only objects. And I realized that it’s so true!!
At first, I dint know what to answer to this question. But it was the truth and that pushed me in to thinking so much about it. Why was I painting only objects? I thought about all the art that was posted on orkut. Then I was trying to recollect all that I ever drew or painted. They all confirm that. I have always been painting just one object. It seemed so silly! Yet true. I never really did any scenery work (Just one thing as far as I can remember. I was the scene of the railway gate near my college in tirupathi. I was sitting there with my friends and drew what I was seeing – without thinking much). And when I tried to think of a reason, I really couldn’t! There is no reason why I specifically choose to draw just one object and not a scene or a view.

May be, I just don’t have the perspective vision. I cannot give out the perspective of the complete scene to my painting. I will simply need to work on that. Work on how to project different things in respect to my object of focus. I hope its this simple. Just about my paintings.

But this also opens up a bigger revelation. Like in that movie I was watching a couple of days before - DCH; this was the observation from my paintings. This probably gives off an aspect of me.
May be I never look at things as a whole? I don’t look at the complete environment in which an object is. I show the object alone. This is a very important thing and I will need to work on this about myself. I shouldn’t look at a particular person or event. Every aspect in the environment has an affect on the object. There is a reason why someone or something behaves in a particular way. They behave so under the influence of various factors which could be known or unknown to me. One needs to look at the whole scenario before deciding or judging a person.

The strange thing was that I like the personality assessment and graphology kind of stuff and constantly try to learn little things like that. I try to decipher traits from others writing, actions, drawings and talk. But I wasn’t able to realize such an obvious trait in my own paintings! This also shows how less we look at ourselves while we are always busy with everyone around.

Ok... now after all this talk, you will want to look at my orkut gallery. Won’t you? ;-)
http://www.orkut.com/Main#Album.aspx?uid=11266396456800096487&aid=1

Name-sense

This incident took place a long time ago. I was working with xyz as a network engineer then.

I had to visit this client for some network issue and drove down to their office.
This was post 9/11 and the security in all the buildings in New York was at an all time high.
Any visitor had to register his name and other details before he can enter the building and he would get a receipt with the details.
So I stood in the queue to get that done. I was in a hurry and was waiting impatiently to get through this. There was a white lady sitting at the counter. She was middle aged with glasses perched on her nose and seemed to be the no-nonsense type.
Finally it was my turn and she said ‘hello’ asked my name.
I replied “Raj Kumar”.
“What?” she asked again.
“Raj is the first name. And last name is Kumar”
“Can you spell it for me?”
“R as in Romeo, A as in Alpha, J as in Juliet and Kumar is the last name”
She looked at me and scribbled it down on the receipt.
But she was smiling as she did so.
I was little puzzled but I was in a hurry. I grabbed the receipt and ran towards the elevator.
Once into the elevator, I got curious about why she was smiling.
So I fished the receipt out of my pocket to find out. I looked at it and couldn’t help laughing!
This is how she wrote my name: “Romeo And Juliet Kumar” :-D


P.S.: A true life incident. Courtesy: Rajesh