by Mehreen Ahmed
red wine
On the crossing
of Victoria and Harriet Street stood a massive block of grey apartment building.
Up in the front of each flat, balconies jutted out like open matchboxes,
creating a blind spot for the incoming traffic. It posed an undeniable threat to
the traffic on the road. Notwithstanding, the building had much to offer in the
way of charm.
It would have
looked quite stark, had it not been for the indoor plants and furniture. Some
balconies had synthetic black chairs placed around a white table of six. Others
had two strong wooden benches to seat eight people abreast. Or maybe a couple
more could squeeze in too. Commonly, all the flats had plants of many shapes and
colours. Bunches of scarlet geraniums, white and yellow chrysanthemums hung over
the balcony rails. Rows of vines and ferns trying to reach out to the sky. The
beauty of the building was enhanced by such motley colours of each of these
early blooms. The blind spot made the traffic slow down, that’s true, but they
could not take their eyes off the balconies’ vibrant beauty either. Each driver
that passed by had a peak through the windscreen, gazing at it at least
once.
An artist spotted
the building at the right time. She took up her brush and decided to paint it in
nuanced detail. From a distance, this building looked surreal. On the canvas,
she brushed a uniformly cold structure first. Then vastly varied human stories
as they percolated within its walls. On a rainy day, when the clouds descended
heavily, the building had an awfully dull perspective, which gave the building a
grey, surreal look. Particularly, with an untrodden path running by it,
vanishing midway out of vision. What little remained to see of the path was a
few wet bamboo trees aligned on the edge of half a path, drooping tender shoots
and emerald green leaves. Either way, through rain and fall, cold and heat, the
artist’s rendition made it pale or bright, as wild as mood swings. However, the
structure remained solidly rooted to the ground.
When her painting
was just halfway through, the artist sat down cleaning her brush. And then
something struck her incognito. She put the brush away and picked up cans of
paint one after another of pastel green, rhubarb red, “alentejo blue,”and
lavender purple and splashed them vigorously on the canvas, nearly suffocating
the building in a sea of callous colours. She panted as she did so. Sitting down
afterwards, she reflected upon this idiosyncratic behavior on the canvas. It was
a complete devastation. She painted a child’s look of horror penetrating through
the riotous colours. A mother holding the child’s hand and desperately trying to
make a quick getaway in utter panic. The artist conjured up an image. She took
up her brush and moved on to the next canvas. The hilltop of Harriet Street,
where she stood, gave her a vantage point to look through the workings of the
minds of the residents. Freakish thoughts of mad desires were being reshaped on
the canvas. These appeared in the coloured waves of fuchsia pink, blood orange,
and translucent lemon. As though she was painting the essential gases: nitrogen,
hydrogen, oxygen and the silken aurora borealis in the full spectrum of
celestial colours to represent human love, rage, and sorrow.
Her eyes opened
up to each apartment in a unique way. Mothers cooking at the stove; girls
watering potted plants on the balconies; lovers’ entwined bodies kissing at dawn
break; readers engrossed in pursuit of philosophy; couples arguing over silly
things, causing domestic violence and eventual break-up; children going crazy at
the computer games; musicians engaged in playing pianos at evensong. All events
happening at once, everyday, each on its own orbit as viewed through the windows
of her mind. There was no dearth of colour as she indulged herself in colour
upon colour. An inner reality of abstraction superimposed unhindered. And then
the artist thought of the figurines on Parthenon of the great antiquity.
Possibly, she could paint real people and bring them to life. And she did. She
painted little figurines, residents of the apartments and brushed them with
every stroke heavy with colours, infused life into them. They took their places
now on the pantheon of life’s theatre. Within the cold marble of each
insignificant apartment wall, human tales played out their own significant
dramas. Stories of happiness and misery, one too many, each told earnestly in
various ways.
The artist now
heard them speak, cry in passionate outbursts as life’s veritable tales unfolded
in casual conversations. “Why was she called that, ‘Mogli’s mother,’ a male
figure, demanding to know why a certain person would be called so all through
her life some four hundred years ago on this very soil? Who was Mogli after all?
Has anyone seen him that she should be called so? He addressed a crowd of
people, whose cold muteness suggested that even they did not know, who Mogli
was? Maybe Mogli was an illegitimate child of this mother, whose identity was to
be remained a mystery forever so that no one would ever find him; yet, Mogli
would be the one to have survived the test of time in a bizarre irony, even
after four hundred years had passed. He would be remembered through a mother
known only by that, ‘Mogli’s Mother’ nothing more. No one ever saw this boy.
What was this mother’s story after all? Mother of an unwanted child. In a
four-hundred-year old figurine, the artist was drawing a dancer, performing a
dance for the Lord of a clan on a moonlit night. With a flimsy cotton wrapped
around her barely covered body, she was taken by the young Lord as his paramour.
A baby boy was born over a period of time. She was now seen breast-feeding it.
The next depiction was of the Lord’s men marching into her hut and snatching the
baby away. The helpless mother cried out in pain; the seductive dancer of the
young Lord was sent to exile. Here in the new land, she called herself,“Mogli’s
Mother.” To this day, she was known as “Mogli’s Mother.”
What was
the portrait all about? Tales, old and new, finding their way on this canvas of
life, whispered into the artist’s ears; everyman and everywoman going about
their daily chores, as always since the inception of human history. Old replaced
by a new wave of life on this resolute earth. Within these walls of one own’s
apartment, plants grew, by the minute, at every turn of the season. Balconies
were seen in different shades of colours. From God’s eye-view, seen from an
outer space, the artist painted everything including changes. In one of the
balconies, a change had occurred indeed! Flowers from one of the pots had died;
in the event of this, in the same soil, a resident decided to plant tomato seed
to foster the growth of a different life, in a different moment.
About the author
Mehreen Ahmed is
an internationally published and critically acclaimed author. Her books have
been nominated for Aurealis Award for Fantasy Short Story/Novella (2015), Ditmar
Awards for Best Novels (2016), and Author Academy Awards for Global Award
Literary Merit and Publishing Excellence in Historical Fiction (2018). She lives
in Australia.
