Hi! This is Chitranka Ghosh, a crazy Bong hailing From Tripura. A dreamer trapped in IT rat race like many of you. Trying to break free from imaginary shackles and be sane. Life happened and we lost our calm yet we need to find peace and here I have shared my story of how I deal with all the noise in my mind and keep patience. So be calm and read through.
Be Patient
Patience: A word which is heard a lot, but incorporated a little less. It is not easy to adopt the art of being patient always.
After my 12th board, the entrance exam results were out. I scored amazing marks, so amazing that I was not able to get through any of the good colleges. People around asked me to keep patience.
After graduation, I got placed but did not receive the call letter for a very long time, people asked me to keep patience.
I wanted to switch company and was finding it hard to crack an interview, people asked me to keep patience.
I did crack an interview, but never got a call back from the HR, I was yet again asked to keep patience.
Since 3 years I have been facing certain issues and finally visited a therapist to get help, she too asked me to keep patience. So we can say my middle name is “Patient” now.
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Filmy
It is almost like “Babuji ne kaha gaon chhod do, sab ne kaha Paro ko chhod do, Paro ne kaha sharab chhod do..” type. The only difference is in my life “Sab ne bola tension lena chhod do”.
After all the ups and downs I totally do entitle myself as the one who deals with a lot of problems and can’t find peace and would not share much with people because the truth is nobody can help me unless I try.
Painting
I do try to be calm and patient. And every time I find it tough to get through, my old friend comes in handy- My colours, pallet, brush and a white sheet of paper. Putting colours on a white paper is always fun and especially when it is watercolour. When a drop of colour just flows on the wet paper and makes its own mark and pattern it is truly mesmerizing.
I love to paint and though I love art a lot I don’t always love the art piece that I make. This is where the “Art of patience” comes into play.
In all these years of painting, I realized that once I start drawing I am full of ideas and enthusiasm and energy. Midway through the process, I realize that this is not working out. The painting is not coming out as I visualized it to be. I tend to lose patience again and want to just get this thing done with.
But I don’t give up (this is only while I paint) because I have used colours and don’t like to see my money getting wasted. Yeah!! I am stingy. So I stick around, forget the initial “mind” picture that I had and try new ideas to make it work.
Take a break when things don’t work out
I stop, wait, think, change the colours, the margin, mix and match, put butterflies here and there and try hard to change the existing piece to crap into something presentable and appreciable. And let me tell you, this does work.
Recent Work.
The other day I saw an image of two horses and wanted to paint it. I started by first sketching the horses. Both were leaping in air, but my sketching ability did not do justice and only one of them appeared to be jumping, the other one was just on the ground doing nothing.
Adding colors
The sky had sun and the view was of a beautiful sunset. I started adding colours, I circled the sun and added a little orange and yellow here and there to make it look like an evening sky. The sky looked bad and the sun looked like a “Butter Naan”.
So I painted the whole sky yellow and after it dried I started adding orange and red colored clouds in the corners. Certainly there are more clouds in my life than sunny bright skies, so why not depict the truth, right?
After the sky turned out nice I moved to the ground. The picture had a green field, so I too coloured my ground green and it looked way nearer than it should be. I had to make it a little darker.
After I colored it dark, the color of the ground and the horses stared mixing up and as usual things did not work out. I was losing interest.
Food for thought
I got up, made myself a cup of tea, watered my plants, had breakfast etc. in short I was clearing my mind.
While was whiling away I thought why not add little grasses like in a paddy field, add flowers on them and draw few butterflies here and there and make it look more imaginary than realistic.
I put my thoughts to action and yes it looked better. I covered the other horse’s legs and now nobody will know whether it was jumping or standing or dancing. The other horse looked magical with its feet up towards the dramatic sky that I drew.
So, yes, everything fell into place, when all I did was clear my mind little bit while I was almost drowning myself into this thought that my painting has to look like the picture. The painting just had to look like “my” painting and make me happy, simple.
Glass Painting
Apart from Water color I also paint on glass bottles. After I have enjoyed the alcohol I thank the bottle which carried it by giving it a new life.
I paint on it using acrylic colors, and I mostly draw flowers because I totally suck at anything else when it comes to drawing on a cylindrical glass surface. At times I draw a shape and then don’t find it appealing so I end up coloring the whole bottle with one solid color in order to cover my mess.
And then I make few patterns and eureka!! Victory.
Success plays peek-a-boo.
Success does take a little bit more time, but then it shows itself, sometimes it takes more than a day, sometimes it just takes few hours.
Sticking around and not giving up does make me happy at the end of the day when I see my work. As I said keeping patience is tough, but you need to find something that can help you.
So all I would say is hang in there. Find your friend who can help you cope up with the difficult times. Be it art, music, gym, movies, books, etc… Keep patience and find your own peace. I am finding mine 🙂