Malini Nair‘What’s an adjective that describes me?’ I asked.
‘Perfectionist’, Arundhati (my 11-year-old daughter) was quick to respond.
‘I think, conscientious’, my husband followed.
‘They both mean the same’, I thought to myself but felt quite relieved with that descriptor. I didn’t fully believe them, but didn’t want to prod them to think differently.
I am the queen of such games. This had become our weird family thing, especially on a relaxed weekend morning or when we were out on our precious holidays.
It was the beginning of our holiday in Rajasthan, which I had meticulously put together over 6 weeks. This trip, unlike our usual ones had participants from varying demographics. The youngest was 11, the oldest was 75; peppered with a generous amount of midlife crisis too. Their interests, dietary requirements, wake-up times, music choices, political opinions and the idea of the ‘why’ of a holiday were radically different. So, as you can see, I was trying to not just study the terrain of the state but also get in touch with the topography of every person who had bought a ticket to the land of kings.
The first half of the trip was just the three of us, and the second half had the rest of us. I focused on the first half, knowing that the second half could look a bit schizophrenic. It could have too many last-minute changes that would be outside my control. Control — I read somewhere quite recently that the distinction between a person who is wise and a person who is not is that the latter knows what he can control and the latter does not. Let’s just say I am still on that road to wisdom.
As I opened my pocket-sized planner and confirmed the things lined up for the day, I knew what I was most excited about —- The block printing workshop, which I was to do with my daughter later that afternoon. To be honest, this was the thing I was doing to celebrate my unending love for my daughter. I love art, and so does she, but we appreciate different kinds. You can yank my heart out with literary and performing arts; visual arts and craft does the same to my daughter. And so once in a while we take chances in the others medium, and try to feel what the other is feeling. I understand the importance of walking with her and letting her show me things that I would have otherwise missed.
The driver drove us through narrow lanes that got narrower during the course of that 20mns, till we finally got to a grey, non-descript godown. The aged metal board with chipped paint and rusted ends read ‘Block Print Company’ ; as direct as the Mumbai – Pune expressway. Surely, we were at the right place.
Our guide, a middle-aged man who resembled an English scone that was doughy in the middle with a sprinkling of white hair on top, greeted us at the gate.
As he took us through greyer and more unimpressive parts of the building, which would eventually lead us to the workshop space, he spoke about textile printing in general and block printing specifically. While my daughter paid attention, I didn’t. My mind kept thinking about how creative people could work in such uninspired spaces.
Now, I could see the door. It was a brown one, but it had splashes of green and blue paint on it. It looked like the colours couldn’t bear the drabness anymore and made their way there, minus any adult supervision.
The door opened to a room full of whites, piles of fabric in every corner, waiting to be dyed. The only brown I noticed in the room were men, who were also attacked by some of the colours in patches and stains. Each one of them looks like an abstract work of modern art.
We were led to a featureless, rectangular printing table with a white cotton cloth pinned onto the four sides of it. I ran my whole palm across the cloth to check for needles or any other pointy objects. Nothing. But it felt like my fingers were touching my mother’s heels —– cracked, uneven and worn out.
And out of the clouds of white came an undistinguished small man in a colour-stained banian, which I am sure was as pristine as snow at the beginning of the day.
The small, wrinkled, painted man got close to us. His ink-stained fingers held a wooden block in them. The wooden block was engraved with the most elaborate lotus with gentle vines growing around it.
“Hand-Carved, by me”, he said.
That was his introduction, just like him, not ostentatious.
Many metal bowls with different colours came to our table. He dipped the wooden block into the brown bowl first, then placed the inked block on the fabric, applied gentle pressure, and lifted it off the fabric. We saw the first layer unfold. Then he dipped it again in the second bowl of red and repeated the process, when the block came off it was a half-done lotus, and then he dipped it a third time into a bowl of white and as he lifted it off, we witnessed spirituality. A lotus, the same elaborate one that he had carved on the piece of wood, but this one was pink, gentle and alive. I looked at it and felt a little calmer about the chaos around me.
It was my daughter’s turn to take her shot at creating another lotus, another spiritual experience. He handed over the block to her. She didn’t hesitate for a minute. No instructions were given. It felt like they trusted each other from the beginning. She eagerly picked up the block, first dipped it in brown, then pressed it on the fabric, followed by red and finally white. She seemed pretty pleased with her creation as she lifted the final lift. The old man noticed the halo around his student. The only unsure person in the room was me. Her lotus wasn’t as perfect as the little man’s. As she went on to pick another block to work on the green vines, I looked at her disapprovingly.
“What’s not ok Amma?’, she asked.
“It’s beautiful Arundhati but you need to focus a little better. Your Lotus isn’t as pigmented as his.”
‘I like my Lotus amma”, she quipped.
‘I like it too, but don’t you want your work to look faultless?’
“If it must look faultless mam, she needs to be one of these printing machines”, the little man spoke directly to me this time.
‘I am sorry, but her lotus could look as good as yours with a little more attention’.
He went in and brought more pieces of white cloth with him. All of them were printed. They had flowers, animals, fruits, colours and lots of cute stuff on them.
‘These are all hand made by artisans like us, waiting to be exported, Go on take a good look at them’, he said.
I peered down at each one of them. One couldn’t help but notice the wonky circles, crooked lines, a few floppy ears and flower petals with not enough colour.
‘Are these export rejects?’ I asked.
‘No, these are going to Singapore and Europe this afternoon. Our buyers specifically look for the curves and bents to be sure that there is a beating heart behind the art’, the guide explained.
Your daughter is an honest artist, mam. She holds the squiggles, the twists and the meanderings with a lot of grace.
I noticed that the little man didn’t seem little anymore. His hunchback was still visible to my naked eye, but my insides met with the larger-than-life avatar.
He took the second wooden block with vines carved on it, handed it over to my daughter and said, ‘Ok, now let’s show your mummy how your vines will look more like you and less like me. Then it is your mother’s turn to make vines that look like her and nobody else.’
We stayed there for four more hours. While my daughter was busy washing, drying and packing up her honest work of art, I kept thinking about the family game we had played in the morning and the adjective I was so proud of – Perfectionist; The weight of which I have been carrying around for so long, must not be passed on. The possibility of being so many more things, without fear, must be my gift to her and me.
Just like the skilled craftsman man who patiently built layer after layer after layer to make his work look more like him, I would have to peel layer after layer after layer to look more like me. Let me also begin to think more like my fledgling, unafraid of curves and bumps, and know that it is a part of me and her; the reason why we are human.
‘
