Edited by: Aahana Banerjee
When asked about my creative interests by nosy relatives, I would just stare at the ceiling or throw my cousins under the bus, making them the entertainers. I neither knew how to sing or dance, nor could I draw a straight line, let alone paint like a professional. I had always found solace in making stick figures converse with each other in tiny thought blurbs and calling it my masterpiece. It was innocent and warm. As a child, I did not know that it would become a significant personality trait.
From doodling in the corners of my notebooks to displaying the same in presentations, I have made doodles my go-to medium of self-expression. My doodles have been scorned at, and I have been repeatedly scolded for making these apparently absentminded good-for-nothing scribbles. While they might be scribbles, I believe they’re neither absentminded nor useless; they are immersive and inspiring. They have the ability to captivate someone by their sheer authenticity. There is a certain beauty attached to their crude and unsophisticated nature of expressing things.
Creating art of any kind is one of the most therapeutic outlets, and hence should be equally accessible to everyone. However, in a society plagued by Sharma ji-ka-betas, individuals with complicated skills are always put at a very high pedestal, which discourages people who aren’t as exceptional from creating art. If I was not as good at painting sceneries as the best person in my drawing class, I was not good enough. Despite the very nature of art being subjective, it was reined by the comparative attitudes of my drawing teachers, intrusive relatives, and probing parents of middle-school kids.
I very comfortably gave up my drawing class because I thought I was better off watching Disney at home and trying to make a Doraemon in five easy steps than getting humiliated in front of my middle-school crush for not being able to draw a perfect sun. To date, I haven’t understood why anyone needs a drawing class in the first place, and even if you, unfortunately, end up in one, why are they so unbelievably strict? Isn’t the whole point of drawing to let your imagination flow? Why does it matter if my sun isn’t a perfect circle? It’s not like I was trying to make Rotis for dinner.
I stopped trying to make perfect figures; I doodled instead. I made doodles about my nasty drawing teacher, my crush playing with his favourite Faber Castle paint brush, the two annoying but beautiful white pigeons who always coo outside my bedroom window, my mother’s pressure cooker whistle, and everything and anything under the sun. I have grown up now, and so have my doodles. They have found ways of expressing my apprehensions and insecurities as well as my several sources of happiness in ways that words could never do. When I doodle, I lose awareness of thoughts that constantly pervade my mind. It is as if my thoughts tip-toe their way out of my mind, without my knowledge. For that brief moment, I experience relaxation of the best possible kind.
Doodling is so magical that it evades perfectionism. There is no way on earth that one can come and tell me that their imperfect sun is better than my imperfect sun. Doodling leaves no space for comparison, and in turn, gives me the space to actually take up space. I do not have to struggle to fit my thoughts and emotions into definite and conventional forms. They’re free to take the forms they feel like taking. A simple act of making irregular, odd, unsophisticated figures describing my state of mind allows me to make myself heard, to change the narrative and own it. My doodles are a repertoire of all my hard learnt lessons, vulnerabilities, and cherished accomplishments. One flip of my doodling notebook on a bad day reminds me of how far I’ve come and how far I’m yet to go.
If my unbridled account of doodling wasn’t enough, maybe a simple scholar search might convince you to doodle your way through life as well. To claim a hopeful space without any restrictions is a luxury, one that is literally at your fingertips. It will patiently wait for you to heed its call the next time you hold a pen. The choice is yours.