Infinity Inklings #40

Outside the margins

Today’s piece is another chapter in my India (and Oman) travel diaries — I’ve previously written about Jaipur here and here, explored rekindling childhood friendships in Lucknow here, and most recently, delved into serendipity while traveling here, the Uttarakhand fires here, and shared my photography from Kumaon here. If this was forwarded to you, be sure to subscribe so you can join me on this journey.

Outside the margins

As I sat in the kayak, gazing at the turquoise waters of Muscat a few weeks ago, I felt an unexpected urge to paint the stunning view before me. It was a feeling I hadn’t experienced in years, for until late last year, when I briefly picked up my watercolors, I hadn’t painted in ages. Fortunately, I had carried a pocketbook and a pen in a clear ziplock bag to keep me company on my ride — more for the aesthetic, than for the inspiration — and decided to give it a shot.

I still don’t know why the urge struck me. Perhaps it was the gratitude I felt for having that serene space to myself, a moment so calm and profound that words couldn’t capture it, nor could my iPhone — not that it would have done justice to the scene anyway. So there I was, balancing the kayak on the synchronized waves of the Arabian Sea, making rough strokes as my pen glided over the thin paper, which, to my surprise, held up well despite being showered by the salty splashes of the cresting waves.

Although I lacked a paintbrush and watercolors, I was excited at the thought of dabbling the pen on paper and making a mess of the notebook — a luxury I rarely allowed myself. As a ‘stationery fetishist’ (read more about my notebook obsession here), I’ve always kept my notebooks pristine. Growing up in a family of artists — my grandfather, an artist with paintings on more walls than I could ever count, and my parents both more talented than me in the arts — I felt the pressure to paint by the rules, which eventually put me off.

“Write in the margins,” my father used to instruct me, flaunting his beautifully cursive handwriting. “Colour within the lines; not a single bit should go out,” my art teacher would admonish, standing menacingly over me as I coloured in school. The constant pressure to conform to these rules made me dread picking up the paintbrush.

In that moment in the sea, though, I wanted to embrace imperfection. To give adult me the chance child me never got — a line here, a crisscross there, a few hatchings where a single stroke would suffice. I deliberately let the seawater drench the paper, happy to add character to my drawing. What better way to capture the sea than to have salt molecules mingle with the paper? Or was it just a passive aggressive way for the latent rebel in me to show the universe that he was salty at not having been afforded the privilege to scribble until now?

This common complaint, voiced by many, is all the more frustrating because, while I understand the need to follow rules, I’ve recently realized that it can be exhilarating to break them — especially in something as subjective as art. Even Elena Ferrante, in In The Margins, writes: “Beautiful writing becomes beautiful when it loses its harmony and has the desperate power of the ugly.” I couldn’t agree more — I felt the same about my painting, which in that moment was less paint and more a naked wet piece of paper with blotches of blue and a seasoning of salt and sand.

The original drawing that I painted in once going to shore.

But I felt content. I felt more like an artist then than I remember feeling when my painting came second in a third-grade art competition. [For those wondering, it featured the typical elements: a thatched hut with two windows, one door, and a meandering river in the foreground, with the sun rising between two mountains in the background. It was essentially a carbon copy of every third-grader’s artbook, but with one crucial difference: mine was more within the margins than those next to me.]

I read somewhere that returning to something that made you happy as a child can be surprisingly fulfilling. Yet, oddly enough, I don’t remember enjoying painting as a child. Maybe this was because, unlike writing, where I could be myself and find my own style, I never got the chance to be inquisitive and creative while painting. And so, eventually, I stopped picking up the paintbrush. Life got busy, and I exchanged the brush for the keyboard, letting my creativity flow more in consultant-speak and corporate jargon than in paints.

Reconnecting with painting over the last couple of months made me realize how essential it is to not only indulge in childhood hobbies but also to redefine our relationship with them, allowing these activities to reflect our authentic selves, unburdened by life’s unrelenting complexities and expectations. Painting on the beach in Muscat reminded me that joy can be simple once you unleash your creativity and free yourself from the constraints of fitting into a box. Whereas painting once highlighted my perceived flaws, I’ve now rekindled a relationship with it that I didn’t know was possible.

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To that end, and because the feedback from last week was for write-ups that had more pictures, I’ve added a sneak peek of some of the sights I captured in my recent India trip.

This is Kasar Devi Mandir in Almora, Uttarakhand — a quaint hilltop temple that was transformative for me in more ways than one.

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During a trek around Satkhol, I came across this lone tree, standing tall and majestic, overshadowing its neighbors. It wasn’t a famous tree, nor was it part of a well-trodden trail, but it lingered in my thoughts long after I returned, compelling me to immortalize it in my notebook. There was something stoic about it — tall, steady, and with those distinctive curls, as if it were Marcus Aurelius in anthropomorphic form, standing firm against the Himalayan elements.

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One of the many serpentine paths snaking around the Kumaoni hills — a patch of grey tar sandwiched in between the deodars, pines, and the occasional smattering of apple blossoms.