Never Let an Artist Die Inside of a Child by Anurag Bhatt

June 20, 2013
In our author special for this week, we ask writer Anurag Bhatt to share his thoughts on an aspect of creativity. This is his piece. Anurag Bhatt is the debutant author of Krishna and the Lake of Souls.
 
I had been rummaging through the notebooks of my previous years when I was a child, I found an artist in the few last pages of it. It was me and I felt nostalgia then. The artist in his early years scribbled some verses in a slapdash manner who he ever thought from a plain nonchalant heart, and doodled some humanly figures, perhaps of some teachers or some elders whom he hadn’t liked that particular time. But the scrabbles told an honest story. Those were the days of thinking without manipulations—that exactly how artists work, don’t they? 
 
If you have time to look through a child’s heart, you will feel the creativeness of an undeclared artist, but actually we have some so-called better plans for them, haven’t we? It’s a satirical question for us—don’t get serious. They are taught how to act in society and be told to what thing they should run after. Parents dream a very good and secure career for their children and they have complete rights to think for their children’s betterment. But many a time, they forget to ask if their children have dreamt anything beforehand. 
 
Parents or specially teachers get angry when a child makes some excuse and they start considering he/she has begun lying. They shouldn’t be haste in flogging the child. They should know the difference between a lie and an excuse. The very child is telling you an unadulterated story that had never happened—a complete candid imagination. Keep him/her telling and trust me, so many fantasies come along your way. Reckon the child can be a good raconteur. 
 
Painters always feel their canvas short and so do a child, too. Remember the time when you gave a crayon and a sheet of art paper to a child, but he drew pictures on a wall nearby, leaving the paper aside. We perhaps scolded, or maybe slapped, him. But, had we ever looked what were drawn on the wall? It was a flying fish or drowned mountains, or something we watch in fantasy movies for which we pay a lot of our curtailments and averted when it was free in front of us. The artist inside of a child was oppressed and when it grew older and saw someone living his part of imagination, he scattered.
 
Don’t let the artist die inside of a child. The smoke of burning funeral pyre of the artist will smother them from the core. Before giving shape to your dream, try to peep through what is hidden behind a small heart. Before repainting the stained wall, take a look at what is imagined. Before raise your anger for a lie, consider if this lie (excuse) is articulated by a child or a concealed artist.
 
You can find more on the author on his Goodreads page.

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