myriad hues

ages back when plastic crayons and pigtails with lacy ribbons still ruled my world,i had decided i would like to become a cartoonist.considering this ambition had loomed large in my life at a time when kids usually dream of becoming doctors and pilots is an amazement in itself.many a sleepless afternoons were whiled away in the baranda sprawled across the cool mosaic drawing pictures of unsteady men and rather ugly women,for however hard i tried i never could contrive the right eyes and the lips appeared disproportionate on most occassions.another picture i never grew tired of drawing was of a cat as big as a house and a tree all standing on the same plane and with mountains behind them overlooking a verry verry green meadow.i dont know why but i simply couldnt come out of that fixation.everytime a tried drawing something else,the cat always figured on the paper.and soonafter the tree,the hill,the house and the green meadow followed suit.i was much in love with the plastic crayons.the wax ones tended to conjure grotesque impressions on the facing page,and thus were much hated.
my first art teacher,a girl in her early twenties and allegedly a little cranky in the head used to sit with me for about an hour every saturday morning.she would often talk out loud to herself or smile sheepishly at me while i drew purple skies and green homes with great gusto.and inspite of whatever rumours did their rounds in the para about her apparent paglamo,i found her to be a nice,innocuous company who effortlessly lit up my insipid saturday mornings.
my art teacher in school was a major bully who held a wooden scale in her hand more often than she held a pencil.painting was more of an ordeal than a fascination in her class.her "katha bolchho keno.scale chhure marbo" boomed resonantly across the room petrifying little ten year olds compelling whatever artistic inclination they had developed over the years to rapidly fritter away.
gradullay in the years to come,although art and painting still occupied some place in my life( i have always drawn cards for teachers' day.i still do),the fascination died down somewhere.so did my 'beeg cartoonist' ambition.in a while painting had taken a back seat.drawing was reduced to a yearly affair indulged only when there's a birthday or a teachers day around the corner.
the change didnt exactly happen overnight.but i guess i was so caught up in everything new that was entering my life and at the regularity of being mindboggled by something or the other,that the change escaped me.i never realised when my most coveted dream rendered itself inconspicuous and silently slipped out of the backdoor.

and for once i wouldnt blame my folks for not taking me seriously(i hold it beeg against my parents for not really egging me to 'learn' or do much in life).painting is the cheapest hobby one can culture.ever.all you need is a drawing book and a box of crayons or maybe a paintbrush and some colours. i really could have stuck to my beeg dream.fact remains,i didnt.
and i dunno why i am saying this but i really believe,when i abandoned painting,a plethora of colours also happenned to abandon me.
and they havent returned since...