The Writing On The Red Wall

We were at an art shop trying to pick up a painting for our living room. Not one to understand the delicate nuances of a painter’s brush, I rely upon the colour used. Also as a preface to this piece dedicated to painters and paintings I must add that I have this unique non-ability of drawing even a simple straight line. Perhaps my Creator forgot to choose the brush and palette icon before hitting the “create” button. Could be a genuine error or could it be a talent lying in me covered with volcanic ashes, I mean bile juices and loads of fat.

The little bell that jingled as we pushed open the glass door set the mood for appreciating a world created with colours. Some say it with words, others through action, some choose in-action while others mime and this favoured lot express through colours. They can whip up a storm, shade a sun, carve a smile, express expanse of the blue ocean with a curve, smear sorrow or spread joy with equal ease, hold a well of tears in a single droplet and catch eternity in a glow. A story, a mystery, a question perhaps even a war all said through a brush and with a riot of colours.

It was this painting with mellowed shades that caught our eye. Fairly large squarish in size. We requested it to be mounted on the stand for us to take a look which the shop manager did. We stepped back and looked at it. The painting was simple, large clusters of tiny flowers in varying shades of pink and white on both sides of a pathway and a few steps climbing up and getting lost into the misty greenery behind. The steps had a touch of quaintness in them, were it in the way the bricks have been laid or were it the colour, I just kept looking. The droopy greenery behind lent an eerie calmness to the painting. Tall trees with thick foliage but the green was not a vibrant one but a subdued definite green with the leaves speaking of numbness.

The flowers in contrast looked a happy mass. Tiny with pointed petals speaking of a sharp character. Pink has been used in all its shades and a few white cluster give it that touch of divinity. In all the vibrancy the painter has been able to bring about a stillness, a unique contrast if I have read the painting correctly. The pathway is in a mixed colour of brown and green giving it a glow as it meets the steps. A short flight before it merges into the background. Where could the steps lead? I turned to my other family members and it was as if in perfect synchronisation that the question peeped into our minds.

The manager of the shop brought us back from the woods by gently reminding us that it was almost time to close for the day. Unbelievable, we were all staring into a painting wrapped in a golden frame for nearly sixty minutes! It was an unanimous nod. Carefully we took it home holding in rapt silence. I can vouch that our minds were still standing in front of the steps wondering where they lead.

Dinner time was spent in questioning the mist, the lone tall lanky tree with just a few branches at the top and the mood or time of the day. Twilight. Or could it be dawn, the moment before the dark blanket of the night is lifted completely. Or how about late afternoon, the thick foliage anyways would not allow too much sunlight to seep through. The cluster of flowers looked bright but the painting was topped with this layer of haze. Could it be clouds descending from the mountains and settling in on the tree tops? The steps give a hint of paradise beyond. Could it lead to the garden of angels or is to a graveyard where time stood still.

I do not remember if any of us said goodnight before we fell asleep looking at the steps merge into infinity in our mind’s eye.

Morning saw us all pretending to take a casual walk into the living room but the reality was that we wanted to find out if the fog and mist and steps lined with flowers were just a dream. Yes the painting stood there still packed in corrugated brown paper.

Mid morning my husband called in to say that a man would soon be there to put up the painting. It was a pregnant moment for me. It was my suggestion to have a wall painted post office red so that we could put up a beautiful painting on it someday. Soon we shall know if I had passed the test with my very colourful suggestion. The door bell rang.

The man got busy with the measurements and I sat on the sofa opposite with my cup of coffee. Corners marked, hooks drilled, I saw him yank off the cover and almost flawlessly put up the painting. He deserves a cup of tea I thought and went to the kitchen.

With coffee in one hand and tea in another I enter the living room and notice the man sitting on the stool and staring at the painting. He took the cup of tea without taking his eyes off. He started talking his gaze still fixed on the painting. Cannot be a road often traversed otherwise the flowers strewn on the steps would be trampled. Good observation, I join him in thought. Perhaps the steps lead up high on the mountain he continued. Could be. It has to be winter; you can feel the chill on the trees. True again I thought. Thoughts were chugging in like a toy train winding up a hilly track. The man left still casting a glance back on the wall. His parting comments as he unmindfully kept the notes into his pocket were that there was a story hidden in the painting.

I went back and stared at the misty serenity that a painter’s brush had created. If only the painting could speak it would tell us a story still untold. A journey perhaps into the mind of a mystic, a poet or just a traveler is for us to decode or leave it to our imagination to give it shape and form.

Years have gone by; the living room has seen many new additions and deletion keeping in tune with the changing fashion. The red wall remains with the painting on it. Even today it evokes the same thirst to find that story written so beautifully on it. Magic when woven with such passion and sprayed with the right shades of colour can only be a story of eternity.