Naked Man

 …it was a fine, cool, rainy and mesmerizing evening.  The clouds had stopped their love making but still stuck together leaving no space for the light to pass through.  The Sun behind those clouds should have lost patience and gone home to rest by then.  She stood still before her canvas with palette of all colors.  She was drawing the outline of the picture she wants to draw and the clouds and breeze were giving colors to that painting in her mind.  She knows that art is not a brain work but mind’s voice, souls rejoice, or souls cry.  She knows that art is the words that she couldn’t speak or may she do not want to speak.

Those that speaks a lot inside their mind but not outside becomes writers and those that don’t talk even within them but has a lot to say becomes artist using colors.  She had a lot to say but, at the same time, she knows least of the least people understands and others underestimates her.

She started with black, in fact slightly grey.  It was portrait of a man in his early forties with broader shoulders and heavy chest with dark black nipples.  His torso is not athletic but strong. Unusually, she was drawing the man with a small belly slightly protruding from his body which is unlike of artist holding brushes in general.  Most of them want to draw a strongly build man with flat stomach and curved torso and sculpted biceps and calf muscles.  No, that is not the picture that got manifested in her mind. It was a middle-aged man who was once strong and athletic but life had made him tired and naked; yes, it was naked middle-aged man that was in her mind.

She tried hard to bring it in to colors in the canvas. The harder she tried the slippery the image of the man. So, as her usual ritual, she started painting as slower as possible and then she lost herself in the man. The man became real in her mind and slowly he walked towards and she asked him to stand still in a posture she wants to paint.  The image shaped well slowly. His hands, his belly, his hips, his genitals, his groins, his thighs, his calf muscles, his foot and fingers. He completed himself when she was him. She merged herself in him, the Sakthi to Shiva, the momentum to the electrons in an atom, the energy that comes in the fusion and fission.

She felt completed but not satisfied for the story could have been told better, as all the artist’s unsatisfaction.  The stood tall, slightly bent with tired eyes and melancholic reaction in face but healthy hands and legs and genitals. 

What do you mean by the story could have been told better or what do you mean by story here for this is just a vulgar picture of a man?  - somebody passing by asked her. When an outrage or a harangue was expected, she laughed louder for few minutes irritating the questioner. 

She said, “The moment you said it is vulgar you already had a story with this naked man as protagonist in it but that is your story and that is the first success of this man.  And again, that is not what it is, not my story.  Look closer, he is not a common man who wants to dress up and show up in suite or tuxedo and wear shoes and ties.  He is uncommon who wants to be naked. This nakedness is not vulgar but nirvana or the body that disowns everything, the body that doesn’t carries the life of his past or future but the nature of his being alone.  Look deep into his eyes, little pain and sadness of the experience which he gained all these years that which is loaded into his head making his head slouch.  Look at the small scratch over his shoulders, those are love bytes, the identification marks of the intense love making in spite of all his pain.  Look at his uncombed hair, the carefree sense of self beautification for he knows that beauty we see in others is something that is inside us, as Rumi said, so the ugliness. 

Look at his hands ready to work, ready to carry weights but tired of the baggage he carried all through his life but won’t hesitate to carry again.  Look at his protruding belly, he realized he is not this body, not this mind and brain.  He started to relax too much and enjoy the tastes for he knows he can be back into his shape anytime he wants as this is all an illusion that mind plays in the virtual screen.  He understood the illusion, the greater maya. Look at his calf muscles, his legs and toes, ready to run and stomp on any thorns and bushes but he hesitates for he realized the run is not going to taking him to no place.”

“Look at his genitals…” she started and went silent for a long time. 

-why are you staring at that!!! They asked irritatingly. 

She laughed again, “you think that person I drew, those hands and legs and organs as somebody else, but those are part of me, from my mind and soul.  He is me in man form, my child who grew up only in hours.”

-insanity, they said and walked away from her.

“Look at his genitals, he cares least about this world, least worried about the culture and dogmas of this world.  He found the nirvana; everything is his and he is everything around him.  To hide his sexuality, to cover his body, to obey the dogmas of this world is a sin, he learnt.”  She said, from the heart of an artist.  There exists nobody to heed.

                                                                                                                                                     [SK]

 

A stupid story;

 

A stupid story; Once upon a time lived a man called Huuman.  He is strongly built; his hands are stronger enough break a coconut in one strike and his legs are so strong that he can run double digit miles without perspiration.  He ate at least five meals a day and slept 9 hours daily and worked hard for 8 hours in his paddy field.  Daily, on his way back from his field to home he saw a butterfly at the same spot.  First few days he saw and observed its colorful wings and left. He didn’t think about at after that very moment he crossed the butterfly.  Once a thorn prickled in the spot where he used to see the butterfly and he stopped and bent down to pluck the thorn and the butterfly flew to him and sat on his shoulders. From then on, as and when he stops there, the butterfly flew to his shoulders.  He didn’t touch it or offered his hand to ask the butterfly to sit on his hands.  He just left it as it is to sit where it likes to sit.  He felt happy to see the trust the butterfly had on him and he got obsessed with that feel of love and started to stop even in the morning to see the butterfly.

The Butterfly too reciprocated his love for him and flew to him in the mornings too.  Slowly, he started thinking about the butterfly in the mid of his work and he ran to the very spot but the butterfly was not there since it is its time to work or may be rest after work so he returned to work.  After his lunch he suddenly remembered the butterfly again and he ran to the same spot and it was not there and when he was about to return the butterfly came flying to his shoulder from his behind.  Overwhelming in happiness to feel the love he felt in his heart he stood there for a long time.  Then the frequency became three as he started running to the spot after his lunch too, also the duration increased and affected his productivity.

He didn’t care about the decrease in productivity as the feel he thought as love for him from the butterfly, flying around him and sitting on his shoulder preceded.  As he got used to it daily, he started talking to the butterfly about his pain, his work and his family.  The butterfly sat still flipping its colorful wings slowly as if listening quietly which gave Huuman a feel of satisfaction and insane happiness.

The day of harvest came and his work in his field stopped temporarily.  But he decided to go to the butterfly spot just to meet his colorful love.  This time he went little late in the morning to see the butterfly was sitting in the shoulder of another man, the owner of his neighboring farm. He was shocked and furious but then he thought as he reaches near the butterfly will switch shoulders to him; but the butterfly ditched him.  He went to his field and sat under a nearby tree as the harvest season was over and work will begin only months later.  He was sad and furious at the same time.  He didn’t go during the lunch time and he didn’t eat.  In the evening at his usual time, he walked crossing the butterfly spot and the butterfly came flying and sat on his shoulders.  He felt happy and forgot everything but told the butterfly how much he felt sad to see it sit on other man’s shoulder.  The butterfly listened patiently on his shoulders flipping its wings slower than ever before.  He took a longer time than his usual time, and while he was talking the butterfly suddenly left his shoulder and flew to same man who he saw in the morning. 

Huuman got furious and shouted at the butterfly about its loyalty and his love. Within seconds he approached the butterfly it flew away and disappeared in the fields.  He was sad and furious again and left home.  Once after reaching home, he didn’t take bath or eat or sleep.  He sat silently in a corner of his hut.  His mother called him many times to eat but he didn’t respond, so she finally decided to have a conversation with him on what is going inside his head.

He explained the whole scenario and his love for the butterfly.  The Mother listened carefully and once he finished his story she said “Son, how soft are you to fall in love with a tiny butterfly!  How sweet of you to feel sad for the imaginary love that you have built for a butterfly”. 

“No, Mother it is not imaginary.  It is real.  The butterfly trusted me but I don’t know what made it to ditch me and leave me for another man” Huuman said.

“Son, first of all it is a Butterfly.  The meaning of Love of that species is different not the one our species have in our brain.  Its love language is different.  It doesn’t even know what you are, it may be thinking you as a moving tree with different spores you carry over your body especially on your shoulder which has fallen on your shoulders while you walk crossing different plants and trees on your way. Stop looking at it has your love and start loving it as butterfly and love the butterfly for its own nature.”

Huuman sat in the same place for an extended amount of time and got up to take bath.  He ate and slept.  Next day he woke up very late and after his bath and breakfast he walked to his field.  When he reached the butterfly spot the tiny creature came flying to his shoulder. He smiled at it and dusted his shoulder.  The butterfly came close to his shoulder and flew down to the grasses where he stood.  He smiled and walked away.  From then on, he stops and dusts his shoulder just to see the butterfly coming and flying around.  He never stopped loving it but he loved it as it is and not as what he wanted the butterfly to be!