Writers Jam

Long humid nights in a reducer-filled room (a chemical used for silk screen printing and used to melt plastic). Tanned dusky skin, muddy feet, loose bermudas, 100-rupee T-shirt smeared with toxic inks, poison-ink fingers covered with powder to avoid smudging the art prints for my next art series. The reducer was such a paradoxical element in that studio. It was the savior that would clean our screens for the next layer and the next art piece. But funnily, when you open that cheap plastic white bottle, it gets you absurdly depressed. All the dreams of creating that new colorful piece used to die inside that shitty bottle. The reducer diffused, escaped the bottle, and snatched those dreams away. Every single time. This mood was a constant every evening. Instead of choosing to wear a mask and gloves, we preferred staying depressed. I loved staying depressed. One day we decided to let the iridescent screens be in that room. Reducer-less, we roamed about in the muddy and arid forests filled with eucalyptus trees. Feeling the dull breeze and then observing the bullet ants sprinting towards the next refuge.

runawayawayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

It kept on raining for months till the lands cooled down and the crisp winter was here. New ink interests were growing towards the Indian ink that’s used with crow quill to create detailed illustrations. I didn’t have a new subject! The season had changed, the reducer and the depression were gone. What should I do? What do I see? Wondering, I sat beside a fire and then I sat in my cozy room, then I went back home and then I came back here, went to a party and I stayed weird everywhere. The weirdness grew on me on a dark winter night and that’s when I stood up all toasty and ran back home away from the fire, ran back so fast that I noticed nothing. Nothing in the darkness except the fire that I left and the bright moonlike flower that I came home to. I plucked it, 10-inch tall, without a single thought. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the bright moon in my room. It wasn’t laughing at me like my mirror did. It was smiling at me. It smiled and smiled until it died in my sleep. In my palms I found something greater than love. I found the one thing that very few find or are looking for. I found my beautiful chrysanthemum. And its smile is my favourite look of love.