Chitra Sutra

May 24, 10: 26 a.m., Paris

On hearing that an imposing book, masterfully deliberating about drawing, was written nearly 1500 years ago in India, the blue eyes of Maria—the German woman—sparkled like crystals; and the blood coursing through her veins grew warmer by a few degrees. The interpreter, helping Maria and Manu Prasad to communicate, translated the intriguing bit of information into German.

‘Ach! An authentic book on drawing, scripted thousands of years ago?’

‘Not only drawing, there are ancient books written on the art of sculpture, dance and the rest of fine arts. Why, even the art of love making wasn’t left alone by our forebearers,’ Manu Prasad replied.

Upon hearing that, the woman’s naturally rosy face blushed further, and a shyness, which he’d not discerned yet in foreigners, crept across it. The fact that she was aware of Vatsyayana’s arts, although not an exponent yet, enthused Manu considerably.

The museum was designed in the Gothic style of architecture.

Ignoring the snowfall, the Parisians kept arriving to view Manu’s creations displayed in the exhibition hall. Though most visitors spoke English, for Maria the communication between continents could be eased only after seeking the help of an interpreter. The little German that Manu knew, and the small helpings of English that Maria was accustomed to, served as embellishments. The curiosity about the past which tinged her questions, forced him back to his tempestuous youth, spent near the riverside.

The River Nila’s sandy shores near the Nava Mukunda temple, a young man dreaming about vanquishing the earth, the rebellious wind yearning to cross the seas…. It was only after leaving one’s homeland that any silly object with a touch of Kerala, stoked monumental nostalgia of the great Sahyadri’s proportions. Affection towards the foreign lands was of a different sort. Without any prejudices or pretenses often seen back home, the men and women were waiting in a queue to write comments in the visitor’s book. Consequently, it was easier to communicate with them; Maria being the best example. The German woman was fascinated by the Tantric elements in Manu’s creations. The conversation extended through Indian art traditions and encountered ‘Chitra Sutra’ crossing over many centuries.

Maria was engrossed in a picture which embodied the earth in a woman’s body. The visual elements of the composition were green and fecund. As they stood entranced before the picture entitled ‘Woman’, Manu’s mobile phone started ringing, cleaving through the solemn ambience. Though he had friends spanning across continents, it was the caller tune Karutha penne, karinkuzhali dedicated to his homeland, to an unnamed dusky maiden with dark tresses, which the person on the other end was listening to. When the call ended before long, as an intentional ‘missed call’, Manu guessed that the caller was Renuka, and confirmed it from the screen.

Renuka’s missed calls were to be answered when all the hustle-bustle died down. Manu had enough time to return to his dialogue with the madamma, the white woman; and to take a leisurely stroll between Chitra Sutra and Tantra. But this time, this time alone, Manu’s lethargy was going to pay a heavy price.

‘Chitra Sutra has guidelines for realistic depictions. Cubism, Symbolism and Surrealism were born later. Along with instructions on creating murals and wall paintings that were popular in ancient times, and details on mixing ingredients for specific colours, Chitra Sutra also warns that the eyes should be drawn last of all, whether in a human or divine form.’

‘What will happen if you draw the eyes earlier?’

‘A picture is not a lifeless entity to us. It too has life. Since prana shines through the eyes, “the opening of the eyes”, graces the picture with the radiance of life.’

Though Manu’s sly intention was to impress the German lady, she devastated him with a response worth its weight in gold.

‘Even in the Holy Bible written two thousand years ago, it is mentioned that the eye is the lamp of the body. Even so, when Indians speak about the eye, it is not just about the external one, but also the inner eye which gifts life to the picture.’

‘You draw too, right?’

‘A little bit.’

‘I am curious to see your drawings.’

‘Oh, I am not a professional. I feel my sketches are rather amateur.’

Manu was still euphoric at being featured in the review of the Paris Times. In his global tour, it was the recurrence of the success experienced four years before, in the same location. The Parisians cherished art works with reverence. And they paid handsomely for decorating their drawing rooms with those, believing that their own lives became ornamented as a consequence. Since the price tags of Manu’s pictures had increased proportionately, the sponsor’s compliments had also doubled.

Had it been back home in his native place, the experts who gushed, ‘ Great, great ’, would hesitate to purchase the artistic creations. A pseudo-academic intellectual had once shamelessly asked Manu why he shouldn’t buy a pint instead of a painting! Poor thing, succumbing to the enticing seductions of the pint, had met with an early demise owing to a swollen liver.

By afternoon, the phone numbers of the Indian artist and the German admirer had exchanged hands, with the promise of being in touch with messages and calls.

After the exhibition, having surrendered to the intoxication of the Paris cocktail, the missed call slipped from Manu’s memory. All calls from home, that attempted to wake him up, went unattended. The next day, with a gnawing guilt that lingered more strongly than a hangover, Manu noted the missed calls on his phone screen. When his mind forewarned that something grave was behind them, he hurriedly dialed Renuka’s number and entered the air-space between Paris and Kerala.

However, instead of the ring tone, a recorded message greeted him at the other end.

‘The subscriber you are calling is switched off.’

Taken aback by the unusual response, he attempted to soothe his misgivings by reaching out continuously, but was met by an irrefutable, deep, silence. His mind became troubled, and was seized with worry. The attempt to convince himself that Renuka might have forgotten to charge her phone, which would have eventually slipped into a coma, remained futile.

Manu tried to speculate on what those four missed calls might have had in store for him. He recollected, by rewinding their old conversations, that Renuka had recently been sharing a lot about her mute son’s activities. Whenever she enthused that at the tender age of three, he had started drawing spectacular pictures, Manu had reminisced about certain childish doodles of charcoal and pencil on their home walls.

More than anybody else, Renuka was certain about the secret behind her son’s extraordinary gift.

‘He has been graced with his uncle’s legacy.’

Legacy. That word scorched Manu.

At that moment, a message, which would not merely scorch, but burn him alive, was on its way from his native land.

The knowledge, that there wouldn’t be a need to answer missed calls ever again, extinguished the living sparks inside him forever.

‘The subscriber you are calling is switched off.’

#

Kerala, January and further

It was when Renuka had conceived for the second time, at the age of thirty, that the three-year-old had started using Chitra Bhasha—the language of the pictures. She had never wanted to get pregnant again. Which woman would want to carry around that painful remnant of a struggle with a stone-drunk man? For Renuka, that seed in her womb was nothing more than the helpless scream that escaped her, as she lay immobile and exhausted. She yearned for it to end within her, instead of being born as yet another scream. What right did a woman have, to dream about an unborn child, when she was unable to give proper care to her little son, who was already alive? It was at that time of utter desolation, or rather, at a time of haunting nightmares, that her little boy had taken baby steps into the world of drawing, leaving her astonished.

The four-year-old who glibly answers 2000 quiz questions, the six-year-old who knows by heart 100-year calendars, the one-year-old who sleeps with a python, the eight-year-old Indian boy who flabbergasted the American senate with his intelligence…. when such prodigies appeared in media articles and internet, a three- year-old who sketched could also become a news item. The only issue was that he had not yet been given a proper name. Depending on the circumstances, ‘honey’, ‘sweetie’, ‘darling’, became his cognates. When affection brimmed over, the sweetness of ‘Manikuttan’, stuck to the mother’s tongue.

The child’s drawings far exceeded the experimentations that could be expected from a toddler. Initially, they displayed meaningless curves and lines. They were a cryptic language, akin to hieroglyphics, with symbols and unbroken forms. But soon, stoking anxiety in Renuka, the meaningless scrawls started converging, originating singular meanings. The pictures were overwhelmingly excellent, transcending all artistic imagination expected from a three-year-old. Certain drawings created doubts as to whether the child had eyes with X-ray vision. And soon, Renuka had to corroborate that there was something troublesome about his sharp perspective, which could penetrate deep inside objects.

The first of those pictures was of a crow. There was nothing bizarre about a common Kerala bird becoming the subject of the squiggles of a child. But when the picture was completed, Renuka found herself scaling a summit of bewilderment. There were three white eggs, waiting to hatch within the tummy of the black bird. Renuka could not fathom how, a little child, unable to express any idea verbally, could visualize such a truth.

When Renuka ecstatically lifted her son up, in the thrall of seeing the picture, a warning wrench from her stomach forced her to put him down. With a child’s natural concern, the boy gazed at his mother, who was supporting her belly.

Concerns too can transform into seedlings of artistic impulses, sometimes. On hatching from their shells, they could turn out to be inimitable creations. Every picture that was born in this way, crossed longitudes and latitudes in the form of missed calls. Though he was indifferent at first, slowly getting acquainted with the news, Manu too started experiencing the messages conveyed by the pictures. For him, this interaction with the world of pictures was like transcending the limits of time and space. Even while travelling ceaselessly, exploring world-class artistic creations, a tiny artist near the river Nila was constantly summoning him back. Manu had to return, place his right hand on the little one’s forehead, his eyes closed in benediction. That was an unspoken promise, made without any request.

‘I shall come to see his pictures.’

‘When?’

‘Not too late.’

It was during one monsoon, when the Nila was overflowing her shores, that their amma had come raging, her hand raised to hit the little girl innocently making charcoal sketches.

‘I shall break your hand if you make the walls dirty!’

The one who intervened to defend his sister, also got a tough reprimand.

‘Are you teaching all your wretched habits to this girl too?’

Good- for-nothing, useless in studies… these were all ‘degrees’ bestowed on the drifter who dreamt of travelling the world by himself, like a lone tusker. Manu left the sandbanks of Nila behind, determined that either his gift of drawing would save him, or he would end himself along with it. The young sister left behind, had been impaled by the thought that sketching was a horrendous sin.

The lone tusker measured the circumference of the globe by means of road, sea and sky. Even amidst all that, a single thread was maintained, remaining unbroken. Whenever he enquired, ‘You didn’t tell me your news, Renu?’, a reply would emerge from the other end: ‘Fine.’

Sealing her true self, posturing as somebody else, a single-word answer.

Renuka had to battle with the apprehension whether the child, who discovered eggs within a crow, could penetrate the hidden recesses of her own mind. Some creations, which hammered nails unequivocally onto her doubts, had already emerged by then.

Renuka had shuddered on seeing the picture that the son had sketched of his father: a bottle of liquor inside his belly, and a scorpion crawling over his chest. Though bottles of liquor were a ubiquitous sight in the house, the mother wondered where the child had glimpsed scorpions at his tender age. At the very first sight, the black legs and poisonous stinger of the scorpion had distressed Renuka. She had vague memories of having seen a creature like that in her own childhood, and sometimes wondered whether they still existed. Nonetheless, the child’s drawing of the scorpion within his father’s chest, deepened the tentacles of fear inside her. Even if he had seen a scorpion somewhere, it was beyond belief that such a little child could expertly render metaphors in sketches. The unique three-dimensional effect of the child’s drawings seemingly intensified whatever he imagined.

Renuka knew that a living hell would open up if her drunkard husband Ravindran ever saw the picture. It would drive the man, who considered the mute child as an accursed birth, mad with wrath. It entailed more caution to hide the news about the picture from her brother during phone calls.

Even when concealed, certain objects cannot stay forever in hiding. Manu saw pictures as an extension of consciousness, stretching far beyond the confines of a canvas, encompassing the whole universe. He experienced humans, animals and trees as pulsations of life triggered by the motionless pictures. In a photograph, one captured each object as it were; but when a picture was drawn, there was an element of prana transcending the inertness of mere sight. It was that element of prana, the life force, which Manu discerned, sitting thousands of miles away.

Afterwards, Renuka became perturbed by her son’s depictions of certain family members, wherein their inner natures made an appearance, whilst clad in their external guises. Unschooled in the theories of art, the mother found herself unable to explain the skill of creation which effortlessly brought to light what was hidden within. It caused her extreme anxiety when she was forced to see people through a different perspective. The sensation was similar to gazing at images through mirrors with diverse focal distances; a lesson learned in Physics classes.

While Renuka tried to convince herself that it was all a small child’s inexplicable imagination, her husband’s younger sister came to stay with them for few days. She attained puberty during the interval. Seeing the picture that her son drew during the days of the girl’s menstruation ceremonies, Renuka felt her whole body was being splintered. There was red lava spurting out from the navel of the young woman in the sketch. Though Renuka told herself the picture was the result of the child’s unobtrusive presence during the traditional rituals, it was not possible to ignore the oracular prophecies hidden in his pictures. When the enigmatic pictures grew in number, Renuka had to rebuke her little boy.

‘Chakkare, don’t draw pictures like these anymore. Amma’s feeling afraid.’

The reply was a knowing look; one which belonged to mature humans. Thirty-year-old eyes struggled to meet her three-year-old’s gaze. If creation was the true impulse of life, that was being interrogated in his mother’s court.

That night, a missed call carrying a heavy burden, made its way to the land of the Kangaroo—the creature that protects its offspring in its stomach-pouch. Manu had exploded in fury, on hearing that Renuka had banned her son from sketching.

‘What stupidity have you done? It would have been better to suffocate him!’

Renuka perceived a jury of charcoal-sketched murals standing in harsh judgment over her.

‘My son…shall I entrust him to his uncle?’

‘What are you afraid of ? You seem to be hiding something.’

‘No. Except for my mute child, I am not worried about anything.’

‘If you say that he is mute, that’s a big lie! Pictures are his language. He speaks loud and clear through them. Since he cannot use words, that energy too fuels his creativity. Do you know that silence has an incalculable power?’

The child was an old soul inside a tender young body. The scrawls and dots were his vowels and consonants. Manu forbade Renuka from evaluating her son’s body and soul expressions with the common laws of living.

‘I know nothing about laws, and don’t even want to know about them. By stopping drawing, if my child gets to speak, that’s what I would wish for as a mother.’

‘You stopped drawing in your childhood. You had speaking abilities too.’

Some words leave puncture wounds. They will swallow all replies and render you speechless.  It was after that, that the number of missed calls had reduced and the duration between them had widened. Finally, as though repaying all debts, when four missed calls circled the skies of Paris, they had to return, having been disallowed from landing.

#

May 31, 3: 45 p.m., Thiru Nava

‘This is our river’, Manu said. ‘Sorry, our river used to be here. ’

‘River?’ Maria stared in amazement at the endless sandbanks. Even at the ghat where the rituals for the dead were conducted, there was no sign of water. The door of the Nava Mukunda temple was shut. The stubborn rustling of the wind in the peepul leaves felt like the rabble of wicked souls wandering without salvation, coming home to roost.

Maria felt ensconced by a sense of wonder, more intense than what she experienced at the beginning of her journey. There are some shrapnel-like moments that turn life inside out. Such a moment had intuitively propelled Maria to reach the exhibition hall during the final session. During the conversation, the key to opening the inner recesses of the heart had turned once within the seven-lever lock. The riverside of the Nila by the Nava Mukunda, the sand banks celebrating the legendary celebration of Mamankam, the shadows of the peepul caressed by the wind, a three-year-old who had lost his mother…

‘A three- year-old who sketches?’ Maria shuddered beyond disbelief. ‘Oh God, I have something to confess! Yesterday night I was trapped in a surreal dreamworld of pictures. I saw a mute child speaking the language of drawings… I shrugged it off as a remnant of having visited the exhibition. And now, you are speaking of a boy like that! I cannot believe it… Chitra Sutra, a little artist…your land is truly blessed. I hope to visit it one day.’

‘Want to come along? I am going there, this weekend.’

It was a mere formality, and Manu had not been serious about the invite. In those circumstances, a response which went against all his preconceived notions, was rather unexpected.

‘Well, I might take up the offer, provided your invitation was not extended expecting me to say no.’

They had met for the first time only the previous day. No chemical reaction had yet occurred which warranted an invitation for a shared trip. No symbol had been imprinted on the mind apart from mutual respect. Even so, when an ineffable connection with promise of profundity started to take a life of its own, there was no reason to create a hindrance either. The lone vexing point was the intricacies of arranging travel papers for the sudden journey.

‘Oh, that’s not a problem. My uncle works in the embassy.’

When Maria overcame that crisis, seemingly fulfilling a long-prophesied promise, it became clear that nature was interceding directly. Proving that it was not just an emotionally impulsive reaction, Maria purchased an expensive painting set and canvas for the budding artist.

Akin to a holy river which had long vanished within the earth, the Nila waited for them in the guise of an empty stretch of sand. The river was more like a desert except for some pits and puddles evoking the remembrance of an erstwhile era, poignant and moist. If one could call an ancient memory which had disappeared into the sands as a river, that was the Nila.

A konna tree, that had blossomed out of season long after Vishu, stood guiltily with a bowed head. They had to cross beyond that to reach the half-opened door, and face the servant maid.

And behind her, a pale, mute child who stood yearning for the touch of his uncle’s hand upon his forehead.

On seeing the garlanded picture inside the room, the innumerable missed calls that never received a reply, ricocheted within Manu.

After the introductions, the maid struggled to contain her sorrow when she realised who Manu was. Staring at the garlanded picture, the woman spoke in a strangled tone: ‘She slipped…from the stairs.’

How insignificantly was a death being presented! Just like dust billowing when a dry wind blew.  Some errors, however, demand multiple paybacks. Manu felt deep contempt for the journeys to his native soil that he had postponed, finding endless excuses. For the first time he felt scornful about the peripatetic lifestyle of a globally famed artist. As he embraced the child abandoned by words, Manu felt the tremors of the charcoal sketched murals. Maria must have felt those too; she wished to see the little one’s pictures. Though the one who had longed for her brother to bless his nephew was long gone, the drawings would perhaps convey the language of her soul.

The first drawing that caught his attention, was the crow bearing the three eggs. The sheer perfection of the sketch mesmerized him. It was a pinnacle which could not be reached with the imagination of a mere three-year old. Anyone who appreciated the zenith of creativity, was forced to bow before its elegance.

The thrill bestowed by the first picture, led him to the rest. The little artist had conjured up a radiant world of emotions in not just human beings, but also in birds and animals. It was a style of presentation which made it apparent that the child had his own perspective about everything that fell under his gaze. Each of the sketches was, quite literally, a proof of the inner eye which granted life to a picture, as Maria had elaborated about Indian art.

As he traversed through the insights conveyed by the pictures, Manu understood that someone had opened the cryptic lock of Chitra Sutra to the little one, after binding his tongue with silence. Unless an invisible, great artist had stepped inside and made the child draw, it wasn’t possible for such pictures to manifest. He was touching and feeling world-class pictures, which could find a place in Paris or any top art exhibition in the world. The drawings vociferously proclaimed that even the much-acclaimed greats of the art world would have to give way to this small boy, not too far in the future.

Progressing steadily, the son’s depictions of his mother came into view.

Most pictures testified to Manu why they had been kept hidden from him. Many important truths came to light, including the sketch of a foetus in its mother’s womb, which the boy confirmed through his drawings.

When death is imminent, the life-spirit whizzes past a series of revelations. If so, the last missed call which had travelled via the skies to Paris, what had it wished to reveal?

As he moved with great anxiety through each picture, one of them suddenly grabbed Manu’s attention, escalating his terror.

He could not help gazing at it, again and again.

The unborn child sleeping comfortably inside the stomach, and the black leg of a scorpion extending  murderously towards it.

Manu felt horrified to decipher the mysterious script inscribed in the sketch. As he plummeted into an abyss of inner turmoil after reading the secret of the picture, a nebulous moan, filled with pain and terror, emerged from the one who had drawn it. The obscure cry had more clarity than any word.

Thinking that, along with drawing pictures, it was the responsibility of the artist to sustain the truth of those, Manu felt that all crowns of creative glory that he had coronated himself with, till now, had been meaningless. Unable to handle the blistering heat within and without, he shuddered in agony.

Manu had kept aside a question, chiseled to sharpness, for the drunkard who staggered his way in, late at night.

‘Shall I take the boy with me?’

He had expected a spate of abuse.

‘Take the damned brat wherever you want.’

Curses can sometimes turn into boons.

If the pictures the son had drawn for his mother could speak for themselves, they shall end up pronouncing the final judgment for an evil man.

When he stepped out with Manikuttan towards the shore of the Nila, sunk deep in the sands, the wind, hastening to cross the seas, gathered force. As he started his journey, holding onto Maria’s hand, the little artist’s glance slanted to the darkness enveloping the south yard, where his mother had turned to ashes.

The instant she hugged the child close to herself, Maria understood that just a moment, a day, or utmost a week, was enough for a woman to become a mother.