If I were a painter…

Sometimes I wish I were a painter. Wouldn’t it just be wonderful to paint my thoughts? I would have canvasses sprawled all across my room showing what I felt. Wouldn’t it be a hundred times easier than explaining my feelings to someone? I’d paint my thoughts—fill them with colour. Myriad colours—each expressing a different emotion. Sketches that would hold my feelings, prejudices, thoughts and assertions.

I’d paint my fears in the form of a deer hiding from a hunter. I’d splash my freedom on a canvas in the form of a girl sitting on a swing under the vast blue sky. I’d chalk my pain—a dying rose being trampled upon by an indifferent lover. I’d tell the world of my gratitude by drawing a man kneeling in prayer at a mosque. I’d express my disappointment in the form of a child holding a waffle cone looking sadly at the ice-cream fallen on the ground.  I’d show my trust in the form of a firm handclasp. At my success, I’d illustrate a tall building breaking the sky open. And when I’d lose, I’ll portray a girl trying to get up after a fall. When I’d fall in love, I’d paint a couple holding hands by twilight. And when I don’t know how I feel, I’ll just splash colours all over a canvas; red first, blue next, purple thereafter and finally douse the canvas in black! Black—in the hope that I may be able to paint twinkling stars on it when I see a ray of hope.

When life seems beautiful I’d paint flowers, children playing, the sky, a mother, and a smile. And when life seems low; I’d paint in grey shades, I’d paint a barren land, a turbulent sea, a broken hut, a dusty book and a solitary tear.

Alas! I cannot paint.

Hence, I write.

– Sameen