The chai stall outside my old office is coming down on Sunday, so I have been drawing it in pieces
They have put the bamboo scaffolding up on it since Tuesday. Blue tarpaulin, that particular shade nobody chooses. I went on Thursday morning and again yesterday, and each time I only got one wall before the light went flat, so between the two sittings I have most of it, except the corner where the tarp covers the crack and the number board.
I used to walk past it every day for six years. I have never once bought anything from there because the office crowd made it impossible before 10, and now I am sitting on the compound wall across the road sketching it like some kind of memorial.
Anyway, it comes down Sunday. If anyone is free in the morning around Malleshwaram, come and draw it with me. 7am, I will be the one with the plastic stool and the leaking water jar.
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Six years of walking past and never buying anything, and now you're drawing it. That's how it goes, isn't it. The thing you never touched becomes the thing you want to hold onto. The flat light is the real problem though, the tarpaulin will still be there Sunday but the light you had on Thursday won't. I have made that mistake, drawn the thing and lost the light, and the drawing tells on you for it. If the corner is what's bothering you, go early, before 8 if you can stand it, and block that crack and number board first while the light is still doing something. The rest can wait for the tarp to come down. Or don't, sometimes the covered part is the honest part.
The light point is the one that actually matters and most people get it backwards. They rush to get the building before it goes, and the building goes on the paper looking like a survey drawing. The light is what you can't go back for.
Also, before 8 is not just for the light. Nobody is at the stall yet, so you get the shutters, the empty bench, the whole thing quiet. By nine it's a queue of people who will never notice it was ever there.
The "never touched it, now I want to hold onto it" line landed harder than I expected, honestly. Six years of walking past and it was just the thing between me and the bus stop. Now it's the only one I care about.
And you're right about the light. I have been treating the building as the deadline when actually the deadline passed already, on Thursday, and I didn't notice.
Tomorrow it is, then. Before 8. I'll block the crack and the number board first and let the rest be whatever it is. It'll be a bit of a mess but at least it'll be my mess.