The day the fish almost did not get painted
Yesterday I sat down to paint, all my colours were ready, the paper was stretched, and then I could not find my neem twig anywhere. For those who do not know, in our tradition we do not use a brush for the fine line work. It is a twig, chewed at one end until the fibres soften. My grandmother painted the whole of her life with such twigs. My mother too. So this small stick is not any small thing.
I searched the whole house like a madman. My daughter was laughing, saying, "Baba, you are looking at the same spot three times." And it was true. Because it was in my own hand the whole time, I had picked it up without noticing and was holding it while I searched for it.
I told this to my wife and she said, "Ramesh, this is the sign that you are getting old." I said, "No, this is the sign that I am thinking about the fish panel too much." The fish motif in our painting is not decoration, it is about auspiciousness, about the beginning of things. So it was a good thing to be thinking about.
In the end the fish got painted and it came out well. But I am thinking, when the twig is gone one day, what will the young ones use? My students all use fine brushes from the shop. Maybe that is fine. The hand matters more than the tool. But I will keep my twigs a little longer. Some things are not for replacing so quickly.
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Ha! Now that tickled me, honey. Searchin high and low for something that was right in your own hand the whole time. I've done that with my glasses more times than I care to count, Lord have mercy.
But I understand what you're saying about that twig being more than a twig. My grandmother's thimble sits on my windowsill to this day, wore smooth as river stone from all the years she pushed it through quilts. It's not the cost of the thing. It's whose hands held it and what those hands made with it. When I use it I feel her right there with me, steadying my stitches.
I'm glad you found it, baby. That painting surely was meant to get done.🙂
The thimble thing is right. It's the hands, not the tool. I've got a chisel my old master gave me forty years ago. Still my favorite in the box, though the edge is long gone and I've re-ground it more times than I can count. Any catalog sells a better one. But it's not the steel I'm grabbing for.
Glasses on your head, though. I've done that one too many times to take the fish painting man's side on this one.
Yes, glasses, I know that one also. My reading spectacles I have found in the refrigerator one time, do not ask me how. But the chisel story I will take ji. Forty years and still you reach for it, that is not habit. That is the master still guiding your hand. My mother's twigs, I keep them in a bundle, the old ones. They are dry and useless for painting now, but I cannot throw them away.
Ha, the young ones will laugh, but these small things are not small.
Ha ha, yes, my daughter was not letting me live it down the whole evening. To lose a thing that is in your own hand, that is very old age beginning, I told her, and she laughed even more.
But you have said it so beautifully about the thimble. That is exactly the thing. It is not about the cost or the usefulness even. It is that the hand has a memory of its own. When I hold the twig I can feel my mother's grip, and her mother's before her. The teeth marks are there, you know, where they chewed it. Sometimes I think I am pressing down and it is actually her hand pressing down, teaching mine.
Your grandmother's thimble on the windowsill, that is a good thing. She is there with you every time you thread a needle. God's blessings to you for understanding this, ji. 🙏