Liberation

He was born to be a painter. But it was not until her death that he took up painting as a substitute to living. As he walked back from the burial ground on that rainy day, he decided to hide in the veil of imagination to escape reality. And pull out a thread of reality from the burden of imaginary.

People said there was magic in his hands. When he picked up his brush he created near impossibles. Each stroke on the canvas brimmed with a spark of genius. Each blank spot was adroity placed. Each blank spot spoke of poignant silence. They said he had an ability to create life with his art. And he knew it. Yet, he felt there was a tinge of non-existence in all his paintings. A lurking vagueness in the midst of vivid ingenuity.

Next morning he was stroking vigorously on the canvas, treating colors with utter disdain. His hand moved hurriedly across the canvas. Then, almost as if waking from a frenzy, he stopped. He could not paint the summer breeze. He tried every possible combination of colors. Yellow and orange. Blue and pink. White and almost white. But nothing could create the exact shade of a summer breeze. After an hour of futile attempts, he placed the brush back. He moved closer to the painting and held his head against one edge of the canvas. With a gentle blow across the surface, the greens smeared beyond the edges of the leaves, the browns freed themselves from the confines of the trunk and the blues crossed the forbidden horizon. It was there, in that precise moment, that he smelled her. Smell of a living woman covered in rain drenched mud carried by the summer breeze. He shut the doors and windows, and savoured the day.