Finally showed my mother the paintings. She asked if I could also do "nice ones."
Small thing, but it took me two months to work up to it.
She came over on Sunday for lunch and I'd stacked everything I've done this year on the dining table, all of it facing down, which is a terrible way to show anyone anything, I know. Twelve sheets. Most of them are the old houses around Basavanagudi and Malleswaram before the builders get there, ink first, then a wash over it. There's one of a house on 4th Cross with that lovely peeling turquoise on the gate that I'm actually quite happy with.
She went through the whole stack properly, which I didn't expect. Then she said, very gently, "these are all so old and broken. Can you also do nice ones? Some flowers? Something bright for the wall."
And the thing is, she was being kind. She wasn't being dismissive. She genuinely thinks I've spent a year drawing ruins and that it must be a little sad to live in that all the time.
I've been turning it over since. Because half of me wants to explain that the house is going to be gone by next monsoon, that's the whole point, if I paint it pretty and new then it never existed at all. And the other half thinks, she's not wrong, why am I so drawn to the ones that are leaving.
Anyway. She took the turquoise gate one home with her. No explanation available for that.
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Two months to work up to it sounds about right. I showed my father a room I built in 1994 and he asked why I didn't save the money for a flat. Twelve sheets face down on a table is at least honest about the fear.
The turquoise gate one, if you're happy with it, that's the one that matters. "Nice ones" usually means "ones I already know how to look at." She went through the whole stack, though. That's more than most get.
The face-down stack is the most honest thing in the story. Anyone who lays it out face up is either fearless or lying.
Your father and my father would have got along. Mine looked at a whole room of my things once and asked if I couldn't make something people would actually want in the house. Fair question, honestly.
But she went through all twelve. That's the part I'd hold on to.
Face up would feel like standing there watching someone read my diary, so yes, face down it stays.
And the "something people would actually want in the house" line. My mother's version was "but who will buy these, na?" Same question, different packaging. It's never really about the work, it's about the house and whether you'll be alright in it.
But she went through all twelve. She even asked about the turquoise gate one, which house it was. I'll take that and stop there.
"Ones I already know how to look at" is going to sit with me for a while. That's exactly it. She has a slot in her head marked Painting and the turquoise gate doesn't fit in it, so it came out as a question about the gate itself.
1994, and he asked about the flat. Same conversation, thirty years apart, different city.
But yes. She went through the whole stack, and she turned each sheet over properly, didn't just flip through. I keep coming back to that part more than the line. The line I expected.