Sejal D. Dani

From PhalkeFactory

Sejal.jpg Adolescence

A summer morning on a hill station. The morning is pleasant. The sky is radiant with colours.Golden colors mix with red and the sky smiles with joy. The flowers look as if awakened from sleep. Mango tree with ripe mangoes and a creeper twine around the tree. The child looks at the creeper and asks herself how does the creeper go up? Is it trying to reach its destination. The child takes a piece of chalk and draws a leaf on the wall. The child’s father is surprised looking at the wall. Soon it was time for school ,at school the child hears the sweet songs of charcoal and the music heard was more than music.Vists the church everyday where comfort she always finds always a room for more. It opens up its doors and transforms a person, knows its own depth in the soft gleaming candle light. The statue in the church has its own memory. The church bell rings giving three notations. The child leaves from the gates of its memory. Soon rushes to the class room and recalls what she had seen and what she saw came right back to her. Pulls out a paper and draws an outline of the figures .The teacher looks at the figures and appreciates the child but was not satisfied with the other marks in class. The child was depressed. The moment was critical. A friend of hers requested her to watch the movie “Life of Christ”. The name Life of Christ attracted the child to see it and somewhere wanted to relate her life to an abstract notion. And thought maybe this would break the spell of her loneliness, emptiness which she has been with for longish stretches of time. To overcome her depression decides to see the movie. As she enters the theater she feels like she is entering into a dark dungeon as she is seated remembers how she saw the starry night. While traveling she used to look up and presume like they were moving stars. Since the child is small could believe that the stars are actually moving but they really aren’t. So the child’s mind is like a dark dungeon with little stars standing still with no movement until you choose a star for yourself. Like small holes in an umbrella. The child imagines the sky as the black umbrella and the stars are the holes in it. Suddenly there is a light she sees the shadow of God a sheet of drifted snow. There are pictures in her eyes,that shes havent seen. Tender landscapes of blurred drizzles and scratches. Slurred impressions of what she thinks is true. But then what is truth? What is love? And what is art? the child asks herself . The migrant thoughts now stay here to take her yet another memory. To the private re-enchantment of precious minutes gone. You will lose yourself to an idea yet again. And miss the picture in your eyes that one has never seen. She thanks her friend for the joy split into her being. FOR A DAY….some moments respite from membrane. Soon the movie ends. She returns as if unreturned from her own rainbow. Now there is a purpose for living ,a hope in the night. Now the child has its own flight. She also thought that they are closest to us who best understood what life means, who feels for us and who are bound to us in triumph and disaster for many changing years. The glory shines on her of heaven and earth across her face and still feels the embrace slide down through sight and sound of every place. She realizes that the quality of life is in our mind not in material.


By:- Sejal Dani

More Artwork

Self Portrait, Sejal

Version Two, Sejal


ADOLESCENE


PROCESS OF PAINTING