My mom tells me that when I was in primary school, the subject she used to worry the most about during my exams was Drawing! I was terrible at it! The colours would always go out of the OUTLINE. I think I mostly used pencil colours, wax crayons and sketch pens.
I learnt about oil pastels when I was maybe 8, and since then they are my favourites. But drawing was not my first hobby, it was just a subject for me. There was something that I started much earlier in my life, it was stitching. As per my mom’s memory, I was maybe 5 or 6 when I started it just by looking at her doing that.
She used to learn it from my neighbour auntie and I learnt it from her. I loved doing it! I used to make clothes for my doll, I tried really hard but could never make a teddy bear for myself. I used to try different ways of stitching with a clear my aim – a tight stitch so no one can tear apart what I make.
I don’t think I ever got a fresh piece of cloth, my mom used to get the left over pieces from her class or sometimes from a local tailor. As a habit (a bad one ;)) I always used to sit on the bed and pull up the shutter of my tailor shop. I had standing instruction from her that I should first spread a newspaper on the bed and then use a needle.
But! I remember once I was playing out with my friend, Anuj and all of a sudden I heard my mom’s voice to which I turned my head. I’m sure even Kaali Mata wouldn’t have horrified the demons the way my mom was looking at me. My heart skipped a beat. I think she does that sometimes even now. She was walking at a normal pace towards me with anger in her eyes and a needle in her hand.
Unfortunately, it was found unattended without a thread on the bed! And then she would start her lecture that if it gets inside the body it can go anywhere and cut the body from within (I somehow still manage to ignore her scary lectures).
Seeing this as my regular pattern, my dad came up with a solution and he got me very tiny stapler like machine for stitching from Red Fort Market. I remember I had started looking the dresses of the kids who used to come to my home for getting tuitions from my mom, just to get some idea for making dresses for my doll.
I’m a 90’s kid so my summer vacations used to be full of Doordarshan series. Suno Kahani, Natkhat Rani, some shows in which they used to make toys, a house with mud, etc. used to keep me glued to TV. So apart from stitching, I used to try all of that and do a lot of craft work like origami, thread painting, bhindi painting, thumb painting, etc.
Whenever I used to fall short of supplies, I used to call my mom in her office and I’d have everything by afternoon. I had stitched a world of my own and one day it all came to kind of an end. It was the entry of algebra and multiple books for one subject. I gradually started devoting more time to studies.
I think around that time only I started drawing. Cartoon characters, scenery, animals, that’s all I used to make and I used to copy them from somewhere and colour them. That was drawing for me. I even tried glass painting and emboss painting.
I think I also used to do some fun with waste, I remember I made something with left over wool and broomsticks. And that’s how my school days went. NCERT books became my pals and drawing or any craft work became a weekend affair and later on only after my exams used to get over.