Art is where heart is!

Aai was good at number of arts. She could, for example, stitch very well. The measurements that she would need for stitching these clothes never required the measuring tape. Yet the fitting would be precise. Practically every child in her extended family wore the triune of  "angade-topade-dupate" she used to stitch most enthusiastically. These baby clothes had lovely patterns and designs, too. The colour combo used to be such that every baby would look the cutest in it.

 As for her immediate family, two generations, her children and their children, dressed up in clothes she stitched. Amar and Kunal loved the "ABCD" shirt she stitched for them. Why did her sewing machine never go rickety? I suppose, that was because her art of stitching was from the heart.

In fact, that is a truism about all of her art explorations. But natural hence that none of her artistic representations was showy. Always would every attempt be from the heart. In fact, she was rather vehemently against showmanship and exhibitionism. Her (he)art hence used to be unique, real special. 

She made really special glass curtains. One such curtain, made of glass tubes, had a lovely peacock pattern to it. She had made brilliant use of colours and lengths of the slim glass tubes. It had a tinkling, soft sound, too, each time you passed by. It must have been back breaking work. This (he)art decorated the door superbly. she made yet another glass curtain with small bottles filled with water in various colours. A (he)arty beauty! 

She made exceptionally beautifully crafted arches to be kept around the plates of the celebrity of the day, that is, her sons, grandsons, nephews who would enjoy the Maunji Bandhan or the bride/bridegroom about to enter the holy matrimony. She used to decorate these arches with luscious peacock/parrot patterns and/or with creatively crafted paper or velvet flowers, The colours, the shapes, the designs were simply superb, yet again because it was art from heart.   

She could crochet well. The table cloth she thus crafted some sixty years ago still covers up every mess in the living room at Mukund Nagar. What I love about this white circle of delicate patterns is the purity of her candid acceptance of the contribution in its completion by her eldest sister-in-law. Such largesse devoid of vicious competitiveness is extremely rare in the art world. Her art, in brief, was so precious because it was always   from the heart!

Whatever she tried her hand at, be it verse making, be it singing, be it drawing unusual rangoli patterns, big or small, simple or complex, every art form she attempted, she practised with heart. Her cooking was the bestest example of the superior devotion she had for the culinary art and its end user(s). A separate blog entry it definitely deserves. For the time being, let me conclude with art is where heart is!

pratima@a thing of beauty is by-n-of the joyful heart!