By Nivedita Agashe
That summer,
when I was as tall as
my grandma’s knees,
she decided to send me,
to an art class.
Early in the morning,
I was woken up.
My sketchbook, pencils,
paints and brushes, packed.
Our teacher had
a grey beard,
thick glasses,
a penchant for
clean, crisp shirts,
and a smile that made
his eyes crinkle.
He looked us over.
A murmuring gaggle
of barely awake kids,
forced out of their beds,
much too early,
on a warm, languorous,
summer-holidays-morning.
“I have two rules,” he said.
We hated rules.
“The first rule.”
“You all need to take a bath
before you come to class.”
We hated baths.
“And the second rule?”
“When you paint…”
“Break all the rules there are.”
A blue sun.
Red grass.
Yellow crows.
Pink elephants.
And purple people,
were perfectly acceptable.
We stared at him,
trying to fathom a world
where no one was telling us
to colour within the lines.
And just like that,
we started taking baths,
before coming to class,
every single morning,
wide-eyed, wide-awake.