Just for kicks!

(Canna Lily plant..picture shot on the weekend.)

Painting and photography are fairly recent interests that I started pursuing during brief periods of ennui in my life. Boredom (caused by repetition) strikes me now and then, and that, in my opinion is not a bad thing entirely. It has often inspired me to explore new areas of creativity, hitherto unattempted.

In the initial days of my brush with art, I remember a friend remarking mockingly that I was on the wrong side of age to get started with inane things like painting. There have also been no dearth of comments about how not having a compulsion to do a day job or not having to ferry kids to classes allows me to indulge in recreation of various kinds. Something for something, I would always say.

That said, not all my pursuits have been of much practical use, for they don’t fetch me money. Writing poetry doesn’t, neither does painting; least of all photography. No, they don’t even get much attention or recognition.

Lack of returns apart, I can quote other trivial reasons for chucking my interests if I want to. It is funny how I pore over the camera settings before taking a picture on my Nikon while the husband, who claims to have the best phone camera in town, just aims, shoots and turns in a sunset picture closely as pretty as mine. I smile, concealing my feeble frustration, and give him his due credit. And as if to authenticate my creative claims, I take a picture like the one I have posted with this blog piece and say with mock conceit, “Try creating this piece of photographic art on your phone. Technology, I say, has forced man to jettison his creative instincts. Tut tut.” He gives me a disdainful look and shoves the phone back into his pocket.

If money and mass appeal alone constitute one’s essential definition of success, I should have quit long ago. Of course, there are brief moments of disappointment now and then, but none so acute that will make me give up my exploits.

I will always wait for those pockets of boredom that will make me explore new things to do, like the one I am presently contemplating. New, crazy ideas set the pace of my life and rev it up. The economics of it may not add up favourably and there may be no returns, but then again, there are things we do just for kicks. They keep the everyday blues away, don’t they?