Pritam's Blog
The Bed
Although more than a painter, I like to think of myself as a writer (even though my English sucks, and I am not even a ‘painter’ in the truest sense of the word), for that’s what I have always wanted to become, and I spend more than half of my day just reading and writing, there is no denying the fact that the ‘painter’ side of me plays a great role in shaping the ‘writer’ in me…
For it is in the process of making sketches, I come across stories that cannot be portrayed in just one scene of a sketch (or maybe it can be; it’s just that I am not capable of doing that), and that’s why I end up writing about it, for writing has this advantage of covering a wider spectrum of time and space…
So a rich man got in touch with me through a friend. He wanted me to make a sketch for him . When I went to meet him, he said that it was upto me to decide what should be the sketch. He just wanted it to be something ‘deep’.
Now I am not the kind of painter who makes “deep” arts… I make portraits. So I told him that.
“Give it a try…”
“I do not know anything about you. I have no idea what you would like…”
He told me that he was an open book, and I could ask him anything. But I knew it was not going to help. For people who are open books usually have a few pages missing from those books…
So instead, I asked him to show me around his house, so that I could observe his surroundings and understand him… Surprisingly, he agreed. His wife too joined in, of course, if you know what I mean :)
But even that wasn’t helping… Rich houses are all alike. They don’t have calenders printed by garment shops on cheap paper hanging from the wall, on which they have ‘saved’ important phone numbers; they don’t have the broom peeking from under the sofa, they don’t have tin roofs which leak on rainy days. Everything was perfectly in place, and didn’t convey any story…
But then they took me to their bedroom (I could feel that the wife wasn’t comfortable with that). It was as perfect as the other rooms. But…
The bed was too small for even one person (I mean if I consider the way I sleep).
I couldn’t help but ask him about it…
He said:
“When we got married, both of our parents didn’t accept us. And I didn’t have a stable job. I rented a small room. There was no space for a big double bed, not that I could afford it.
“During those years of struggle, we slept together, entangled in each other’s arms in that small bed. We were poor, but madly in love, and so happy in our own way…
“Over the years, I became a successful businessman. We moved to a bigger flat. We bought a new King sized bed…
“And somehow we drifted apart… I got busy with my business… And she, with her household chores, raising kids…
“One day we realized that in the process of changing our lives, we became part of a rat race… And since our world had extended a lot over time, we had more options for ourselves… And that’s how we got busy, and moved away from each other even though we were together…
“And surprisingly, the same thing was evident when we were sleeping… We no longer sleep in each other’s arms, but on the two sides of our huge bed… Separately…
“We talked, and decided to change the bed… We got a new single bed…It might sound stupid, but that’s what we did…
“Surprisingly, things began fall back to their old places… Slowly, the love and closeness between the two of us was back…
“I learnt to keep a balance between my business and my love. .. She learnt to balance between her household chores, kids, and me…
“A few years later, my business extended and I bought this house… But the bed is still the old one…”
I couldn’t think of how to portray this amazing, deep story in a sketch… But it was one of the most amazing lessons of my life….