Doodles

 Remember the school days? Especially, those lazy, end-of-the-day lectures, may be, of geography that a tired and rather uninterested and hence hyper boring teacher would manage to make utmost lackluster? You could be the front bencher or the back bencher. Boredom would be equally distributed though. How did you then manage to keep awake?

Doodling away would be the escape route to a magic land that gave a full scale scope to your ingenuity and imagination and creativity. Suddenly would thus bloom flowers of most unusual shapes, sizes and colour on the drab dull pages of the classwork notebook. The Garden of Eden, too,  would possibly not have those fanciful flowers. Of course, since you were not the naughty one, your notebook did not have to hide doodles that would be caricatures of teachers!

It need not always be flowers. On such occasions, Wordsworth would not have been able to compete with you as far as compatibility with nature  would go. Exotic gardens, dream soaked flora and curious fauna never discovered by any coloniser would come alive on the pages of your notebook.

Yes, that is the richness of the art of doodling.  Doodling is a curious combo of impressionism, surrealism, and realism. It can be both deeply lyrical and hugely funny. Most important of all, it is not the preserve of any age, caste, creed,class or region. It is often so vocal that languages, too, would pose no barriers.

When we were small, Papa got us a set that would create simply marvellous  geometric patterns of doodles. They could emerge in wonderful colours as well. In her early eighties, Aai, who always loved drawing and painting, too, got this treasure trove of a minor gift from yours truly. Hours would fly away on wings of shapes and colours with such delicate, fragile contraptions.

It is a pleasure hence to see the daily Google doodles. They are as great a message as the lovely Amul ads. These art forms may appear minor, but their impact is indeed major. Long live doodles!

Pratima@ Be thou a child or be thee old/ doodles forever provide swirls of gold! Thus emerged an art form you just loved!