Saturday, December 20, 2014

99 days

One lazy evening few months ago, I decided to sketch a bit in my nice tiny notebook. The one with yellowish handmade paper. I loved the black pens that I kind of took from my dad. He asked me if I would be using them. I was skeptical. But then I wanted them! I didn't know if I would use them ever, but I just said yes and put them in my luggage. And here I was, with the black pen and empty paper. Trying to draw. I had no clue what I wanted to draw. I just doodled a bit and was excited. I took some photos with my old phone.

I came across this blog where a lady drew for some 300+ days. Daily. And she posted the sketches online. Mostly pencil sketches. That's when I randomly decided to draw. For 99 days. Why 99? 9 is my favourite number and 100 is too cliche.

I used MS Excel to determine what would be the last day for the project. Well, it was my friend's idea. Obviously. Dec 18th it said. That's far. Super faaaar was what I thought. But then, one day at a time.

Slowly there was a theme  of sorts. I started drawing whatever inspired me on that particular day. It became this dear diary to me, but with pictures. I made my first tumblr blog. Uploaded them weekly. Learnt some editing techniques on picasa.

It was fun. I discovered myself in ways unknown to me earlier. My parents initially laughed it off. Because they felt that I used to draw much better when I was in 5th standard. I hardly got any feedback from friends. But he did remind me and would ask about my sketches, almost daily for reasons unknown.

Recently when amma was here, I was showing her pics of my latest sketches. And looks like she enjoyed. She really liked them. That meant a lot to me. I did get some feedback from Facebook friends. Not as much as I would have wanted.

Some of the questions that I encountered- Why did I do this? A lot of reasons. Did I plan this? Well, no. Will I do something about this? Maybe. Will I get anything out of this? Obviously. (Why would someone even ask me this question)

We are constantly losing our identity. Getting sucked into the corporate world. Falling prey to the materialistic pleasures in life. And one day, there you are, drinking and getting pained with life. Accusing life to be filled with boredom. Trying to find people to talk to.

If anything, I have learnt to be alone. I have learnt to enjoy my thoughts. I have learnt to keep my phone away and observe the sky and the roads and the traffic. I have learnt to lose myself and feel good about it.

Some small thing to connect to have that sense of belongingness. Some tiny thought to make you smile and feel good. One word to set you into that thinking mode. This is all you need. This is all I need. This is all we all need.

Here is the url-
upadhyaybindu.tumblr.com


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