My art will go on (and on)

Not that my family has a history of art failure, but my sister is undoubtedly the most artistic one. She was the first one to start doing henna with a cone, and she was so good I stopped running to the neighbourhood Lalli ki mummy whose idea of a complex henna design was one big shapeless 'circle' surrounded by four smaller ones.

With time, I picked up the cone. Not because I had any particular interest in it, but when you're the six-year-old sidekick of your ten-year-old elder sister, whatever she does is cool and whatever she doesn't is uncool. With time, she graduated to oil on canvas and sand painting and knife painting and what not, while SashBhai was content with doing a different kind of 'knife painting'. Muahahaha! :D Bad jokes aside, no matter how much of a tomboy I'd become, doing henna was something that did not leave me. In fact, I even did my sister's wedding henna. She, of course, could not return the favour because her hands were full with a hyperactive baby Aish wanting to express her creative input too.

Anyway, so when I came to Singapore, I thought that was it - I won't have the opportunity to do any more henna. And that's when I discovered henna for fund-raising. Fun-raising, rather. Henna works wonders at fund-raising events, especially with the non-Indians, and I've been doing it for almost 8-9 years now. And at all these events, they refer to me as 'the henna artist'. It embarrasses me. In all my years of aping my sister's sketching, painting and henna-ing, I have never referred to myself as an 'artist'. It is too grand a word. I prefer to be called the 'henna girl'.

So a few weekends ago, I was asked to do henna at the SVC's Olympic Dream 2007 - an event to raise funds for disability sports in Singapore. On that early sunday morning, I made my way to the stadium packed with people who had apparently been there since midnight! I was directed by the organisers towards the 'Artists' corner', a covered area housing a face-painting artist, a caricaturist, a realistic-sketch artist, a balloon sculpting artist. Whoa. I was one of 'em artists? Gulp. Anyway, I made my way to the henna artist table and stationed myself there. Soon there was a long queue in the 'artist's corner' and all of us got busy with our 'customers'.














Check out my little customer - her hand was so tiny that I was done as soon as I had started!

Soon, it was lunchtime and the crowds started dispersing. The organisers brought in lunch for the (literally) 'starving artists'. We finished eating, but the post-lunch crowd was not there yet, so we started doing random things to occupy ourselves. The balloon artist started to make wristbands with balloons (!) for the organisers. The caricaturist and realistic sketch guy started to sketch random things around them. And I, vaguely aware of something odd happening around me, started to make henna patterns on a piece of paper with great concentration.

Half an hour later, a big crowd had gathered in the artists' corner, but not to get anything drawn. They were just there watching. And that's when I looked up. The realistic sketch guy was holding up his canvas, and I was on it. Me, bent over my sheet of paper, making my henna patterns. Immortalised in charcoal - in all my wild hair glory. The crowd wow-ed.

One of them asked me, "You didn't know he was drawing you, did you??"

I looked at the artist. He was beaming at me, looking really proud.

"No clue at all." I said.

The crowd wow-ed again at the artist's ability to complete the sketch without the subject's knowledge, murmured and finally left. I smiled at the artist and then to myself.

Sheesh.

Of course I knew.

Why else would I draw random henna patterns on the sheet of paper with such great concentration? As an artist, I knew when to give another artist his due.

As an artist? Of course. I was an artist.

Keeping SashBhai still and quiet for half an hour is a form of art, you see.

:D