My first true encounter with art was when I read comics. The characters in the comics had a life of their own, independent of the handful of panels they occupied the space in. I always thought that even after I’ve read the comic, the world goes on for the characters. Characters like Chacha Chowdhary, Sabu, Pinky, Suppandi, Nagraj, and others seemed to keep me entertained with their stories and anecdotes. Then there was Phantom which was as elusive as the character itself. I knew that I had to read all the previous comics to understand what’s going on in Phantom and Nagraj, nevertheless I used to read them and savor the experience – you will not always know whatever your real-life human/being has gone through, you are a passing cloud and not the person whose life you just entered.

Whenever I hopped into the train for a long distance journey (any journey more than 10 hours is a long distance journey), I made it a point to have my mom buy me comics. And, I used to devour it in a couple of minutes and would go on and re-read it.

Then came the era of children’s magazines – it had a healthy mix of comics, anecdotes, short stories, out-of-the-world events, puzzles, and quizzes. One magazine would easily keep me entertained for more than a month, I would read and re-read it – as if to extract the last drop of the nectar. Now that I think about it, it’s funny that I am talking about it all and not include my age. True, in one way, my growth can be measured by the kind of books I read. There was the comic books phase, then came the magazine phase, then came the fiction phase, and so on. I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll go chronologically.

With magazines, I found my love for reading articles. Some articles used to be merely half page long, some would run to 4 and 5 pages. I didn’t realize that such articles were simply preparing me to read novels and non-fiction material which ran over 1000 pages at a time. I didn’t bother playing much, and I was good enough for myself. When I used to be bored and didn’t have anything to read, mom would give me a fistful of rice and ask me to count. It kept me occupied. On other days, I used to take a sewing thread roll and unthread it only to re-thread it. I was a cat.

Probably in my high school days, I got myself my first novel. ‘Chanakya’s Chant’, it was called. I got it in the Chennai Book Fair. I loved (still do) the concept of a book fair – books and books, and a child can get lost in the umpteen counters! It was around the same time that I got exposed to non-Indian music. The songs I first listened to are naturally the ones that I still hum today – Wonderwall, Fireflies, what not. Now, here is where the lines get blurred. I went into an experience overload and started gorging on movies, series, music, instrumentals, books, maps, paintings, murals, and anything that I could interpret for myself.

I had the joy of reading the works of giants of humans in their own right. I had the honour of watching movies and series made by visionary filmmakers. These ‘escapades’ immensely shaped me.

I took a dive into the deep ocean, head-first. I tried to find why a movie was made the way it was made. I started to appreciate the background music of movies. I used to listen to the background music, and it had a calming effect on me. The entire experience was so intimate, so personal that I doubt if I’ll be able to type it all and do justice to my experience in the first place.

As I type, my mind is playing ‘Kagome’s Lullaby’ for me. It’s from Inu Yasha, an anime series. I was so deep in the ocean that the soulful voice of Natalia Lafourcade found me. And yet, I feel like I have barely scratched the surface. There are only 7 ragas (notes), yet I’m humbled by the sheer number of original music churned out by the maestros. Whenever an artist exhausts his muse, he or she takes liberty and creates a world of its own. Lovecraft – Octavia – Gaiman – Mary – the list goes on. I realized it too late that I could have made a career in art or critiquing.

But then again, I also know that I write only for the sake of writing. I tried; I tried so hard to write and print pages so that I can sell a good novel and get myself a Wikipedia page. Who am I kidding? The minute I try to write something that I can impress someone with, my pen’s ink bleeds dry. You know about article that got published in ‘The Hindu’? I didn’t even proof-read it. Before that article I wrote on motherhood, I had sent more than 5 articles to the newspaper for publishing. I never got a reply. So, one fine day, my muse took over and wrote the article, and I sent it to the newspaper via e-mail. I forgot about it until it got published.

As I type, I have a fully formed novel idea (replete with character arc, plotline, chapter summary and preface) and 2 nascent novel plots with me. I simply am unable to write them. Yet, I’m able to write what I’m writing.

I started writing this piece in hopes of capturing a few of my escapades with art. Turns out, I’ve merely listed out the reasons why I can’t do so.