Friday at work is supposed to be a combination of boring as well as exciting, what with the weekend looming over and not many probably in the mood to work for long hours.
This past Friday was probably all of that but with there was an unusually high level of enthusiasm in the air thanks to a painting competition that was organised on the eve of holi . There was color everywhere in the canteen...poster colors, acrylic colors , white sheets to paint, various paint brushes, the completed and "in progress" works of art and most importantly the people.
Personally speaking, I am next to hopeless when it comes to painting but did give it a try. Lets not talk about the result but I have always wanted to do something similar to what Aamir Khan does in Taare Zameen Par during the painting competition. In the movie, he hangs up a sheet, does some drawing , throws some colors and paints on that in a most artistic manner , poses in weird angles to look at the effect, scrubs the colors on the painting with paper and even his own hands and the final effect is a masterpiece. Flashback to Thursday evening when I tried my luck with the paints. It had some of Aamir's effects but the overall effect was nothing short of ridiculous! What did happen though during this fortuitous time was that I met another colleague ,Jai(pronounced Zai for the relatively less knowledgeable folks like me!) , who was putting forth a very philosophical version of a human self-painting. We discussed our expertise in the world of art ( her expertise was definitely more than mine! ) and had a good laugh.
Cut back to Friday morning ,(the wait is indeed over!) Jai came over and suggested energetically that we do some crazy spray painting and indeed have the fun of throwing paint and colors and depict an awesome canvas at the end of it. People occasionally quote the legendary line from Godfather - "an offer that can't be refused" and this belonged to that category. What did we do next ? Zoomed up a series of newspapers , stuck them on the wall, "uploaded" a clean white sheet of paper, gathered some paints and water and the stage was set!! We started spraying paint in the most audacious of ways and soon we had several tens of thousands of colleagues ( ok that was an exaggeration) who came along to try out "THE" act of the day! The pure unadulterated joy of throwing color even satisfied your soul! We created a rule whereby the participants had to stand behind a line and hoist paint with their paint brush onto the canvas. We even thought of monetizing it! (For 5 rupees, you get 2 sprays! For 10 , you get 5 sprays(a good deal ?)) Jai tried the "J" in a way that was clearly inspired by Banderas' "Z" in the mask of zorro! In a single word, it was legendary!! It was aptly titled "Exclusively inclusive!"
The next act was equally awesome. We wanted to capture thumb/finger/hand prints on the white sheet and we soon had aesthetic artistic impressions from our colleagues who participated in large numbers to make it very memorable! Someone drew a flower with tips of their fingers, someone else left their "chaap" (literally like a stamp) , someone else left a good old tikka on the canvas. A myriad of colors and combinations adorned the "wall of thumbprints". All in all the entire event was super successful and I was bowled over by the talent and dedication of people who were participating. Paintings included, amongst others, colorful images of Lord Ganesha, wishing the Indian team, global warming, pure techie syndromes, welcoming the season of spring ,getting away from the corrupt black world and a variety of self portraits. A big thanks to the entire team that organized the event and to the absolutely insane and crazy Jai for going through with fantastic ideas!
What a way to welcome the most colorful festival in India! Happy Holi!
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