Saturday 19 May 2012

AN ART CALLED 'CREATING'





Enter a carver's workshop. You will see a place too simple, lit up by a bare bulb, filled with  chisels, axes and blades, ruled by an eye for intimate detail.
Around the place, you will find, the works of the master, each of them dripping thousands of emotions. Works so splendid, it seems like creations of some spirits.




                              His chisel work among the stone,
                                        Persuading it of petal or of limb
                                     Or starry curve, till risen anew there sang
                                        Shape out of chaos, and again the vision
                                     Of one mind single from the world was pressed
                                        Upon the daily custom of the sky
                                    Or field or the body of man.

       But what gave birth to the splendid carvings is the stone.
A stone that would never catch someone's eyes, until it comes to rest in the magical hands of the carver. He carves out emotions from a mere rock and turns it into a mortal masterpiece that says a hundred stories and reflects a million feelings.


That is the art of creation that transforms something very insignificant to something that can leave anyone astonished.




Now step outside and enter the street just adjacent to it.

  Enter any one of the hundred small mud huts and you will be carried away by the beautiful fragrance of Incense sticks.
It is quite fascinating to realize that a mere black thin stick can take you to a land where fragrance takes birth, where scent and aroma live and where redolence drifts with the wind.
In a corner of the hut you will find some ladies rolling ugly yet aromatic plant material into thin sticks.

Under the stiff and still sunlight tip-toeing through the window
sat a lady in pink and gold, her wrinkled hands making sticks
turning the rolled plants into a house of essence
breaking the black walls spread the aroma
making her a magician !



This is the art of creation that can give rise to something that holds within it million experiences




Now let me take you to this place where garlands are made.
Short bamboo sticks hold the blue plastic sheet making a satisfactory protection from the sun.
Behind the site is a huge temple of Goddess Pullikaringali.

A basket flooded with pink tender flowers is disturbed by sun tanned fingers of a lady. She picks up one of them and pierces it with a needle.
She pushes it down the thread and it joins the other flowers, making it ten times more beautiful. 

 One by one, the needle of the garland maker 
   goes through a flower and soon it becomes a garland
which is much more alluring
much more admirable
and much more sublime.

This is the art of creation that hold the power of making something pretty, prettier.


It not a task, not a job, it is an art.
An art called 'creating'