Minuet in G

My day has begun with two options- Laundry or Victoria Secret. I am still in dilemma, whether to wash one or buy one. Weather is good. Heat of the sun is blown away by the cool shiver in the wind. I might just go out.

I wonder.

I put on Beethoven's Minuet in G to ease my way out. Some one has said it and said it right that after silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. Silence I have enough. I am used to it now. May be that's why I don't get any answers anymore. Music is a better option.

Beethoven begins playing. The leaping music brings a smile on my face. My hand dances to the music pouring out of the speaker and my head swings along, accompanying the rhythmic fingers who on their own seems to portray Beethoven playing the keys. The music rises and fall, so does the energy, sometimes intermingled with sweetness of young age, sometimes with the naughtiness that spills only from the eyes which are in love. It has a softness of both a woman's curves and a child's smile. It has the haughtiness of the customs and the serenity of the short steps taken in the court dance that accompanies it- slow and steady, aware of where they are going and where they want to go. It has in it the freedom like the one a bird carries under its wings.

I too want to get up, twirl and jump up in the air. I want my body to feel the rhythm in the notes. I want to dance as I see it in my head. I feel shy. I feel I will look like a fool dancing on Beethoven. But then I hear the music again and realize that I will be thought insane only by those who could not hear the music. That's a good explanation. My head buys it. And any way there is no one around. So I get up tip toping on my toes, copying a few steps that I have been practicing watching those dancers on the screen, I jump here and there, letting my body bend and turn with the music. I feel no fear. I feel invulnerable.

Funny how as the music changes, so does the dance. So much like life, I think. But music feels so liberating. How easily it relates us to the earliest times and the latest. I wonder how Beethoven would have felt when he was composing it or when he played it for the first and the people clapped. Or did they? Did he like it? I know not the answers to these questions but I know that he played his music, unlike so many of us who happen to take our music to the grave. I don't even know if I can think with sounds. I wonder, if I can ever dance on my own music and not what life plays for me. May be one day. As for now I am happy with the borrowed notes from Beethoven and glad how successfully they are sweeping away the everyday dust from my soul. I feel peaceful. I feel a rush. I feel the height. I feel the depth. I feel full. I feel empty. I feel youth. I feel maturity. I feel all. Its like the actual has been taken out of me and now the music is whispering to me the secrets that I haven't known before, which makes me wonder as to who I am, and for what, when, and where.

I now know what people mean by when they say that "it is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites-opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is not polarity-where energies flow smoothly in one direction-there will be much doing but no music."

I still haven't made any choice, but I know that the last one hour had been the best hour of the day. Music has whispered.

Colours

She is Draupadi. I painted her yesterday. It took me five hours of paint brush and an almost three feet canvas to finish her. In the end, I felt very uncomfortable. Something about her straight hair, wide eyes, full lips and a workable nose made me uneasy. It was the first time I painted a full face. May be that was it.

I never sketch. I feel that it bounds me. The lines control the possibilities of what could have been. That's why I just paint. I love the vibrancy with which the colours overtake the dull stretched cotton, the way they amalgamate together irrespective of the relationship with each other, expressing without any complication the basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. The most amazing thing about colours is that even though there are only five colours the combination of them create hues never seen. This reminds me of what Julia Cameron said, "Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite-getting something down." I believe that. Colours have this uncanny ability to bring out what is hidden in your subconscious and then follow those emotions till the time you get them right on the blank canvas. Its only then, I believe, one can keep the brush down. That's why I like painting. Its like colours have this possession over me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me. Like my mom always told me- "the true meaning of painting comes into existence when Colour and the being become one. That's when one becomes a painter." I am not an artist. I am a painter. Colours not only provides me with an assurance that even though I have brought to the surface my subconscious, my thoughts are still safe and free, flowing in whatever direction they wish to choose. May be that is also the reason I dislike giving names to my painting.

But yesterday, it came out all in open. Even though I didn't sketch, there was this huge set of questioning eyes that I painted and felt answerable to. As if they were asking, "Everything in your heart will flow through my eyes. How do you like it?" I felt I had painted my inability to speak through her closed lips and life tangled in customs through vermillion, nose ring and the pattern on her neck. I felt bound and held together. I felt betrayed. I kept the brush aside. With colours all over my legs and hands, I stepped a little away to have a better look. As I was looking at her, I realised my choice of colours. Her face was orange, her neck had a pattern. I thought hard. Fire. The word came to my lips. Fire has shape, an ever changing one. Did my painting has one too? I didn't know. So I turned off the bulbs, open the blinders and looked at it in the natural light. It looked more peaceful. I turned the bulb on, it looked aggressive. Yes like fire, I decided, "my painting, too, have a shape, an ever changing one." That's when it hit me. The colour, flowing hair, open eyes and the pattern on the neck which is supposed to be on the feet- its all against the tide, yet glowing- Draupadi. The colours have done me justice once again.

Monday Blues

God knows I work, so many hours
I neeed a change of scene
I know some day
I will fight the power
To be a man of means

I hear the words pouring out of my husband's mouth every Sunday evening. The music is missing and lyrics not in sync. But the meaning always remains. At the beginning of spring, last year, I used to feel jealous of him every Sunday evening. 'Damn this H4'. But Beginning from April this year, I look forward to it. I get to stay alone. It's not serenity as my mom puts in. Yes, the birds are chirping outside my bedroom and computer is making wrrrrring sound; small bushes have risen up to my window like, as Rabindranath Tagore said, "like the yearning voice of the dumb earth", sunlight is seeping in through the dusky clouds, laughing as it lands on the mess in the room, still its not serenity. There is not a single human sound, well not for next one hour and then a vacuum will roar high and loud in the corridor. Till now I don't know who cleans it. I would like to tell him/her about the stain I left ten months ago, right in front of my door, as the detergent fell while I was carrying it to the washer dryer room. I haven't till now. Confession does a lot of good. May be it will help me too. But for that I will have to wait. Apart from that there is only jabbing of keyboard that is audible. It’s not serene either.

Like every Monday I plan to clean the house today. I hope it will bring me Monday Blues. Most of the times it doesn't. Well may be because till 4 I sit on the same couch, in the same position thinking hard. Sometimes my head hurts. But I don't stop. I think. I think a lot. I imagine all the answers to the 'W' questions. Sometimes time fly fast. Sometimes it just stays with me... stagnant.

What is the time now? I wonder.

Instead of looking at the clock ticking laboriously, I catch the sight of a bird sitting on the window. How much I hope to be that bird. The bird stares at me for a whole one moment as my thought finishes. What is it thinking? I look at her closely and I see cold water droplets falling of her. I open the window. It flies in. Its then I know that the bird hopes to be me. Glad, I look at time, while it whirls inside the room. Its 12:45.

I get up to clean house. Monday Blues. Hope. That's serene. And that's why from this year's spring on I have begun to look forward to it.