When my daughter made a bowl with newspapers

By Shevlin Sebastian

When I was in Class 4 at the St. Xavier’s school in Kolkata, the class teacher Miss Peterson said that the students should make a chart of the city of Mumbai, along with photos of iconic monuments and the history of the city. It filled me with dread. I was poor at artwork — cutting pictures from magazines and writing text using a felt pen.  

Seeing the panic on my face, my mother helped me out. However, when the charts were put up on the wall, I got a shock. Miss Peterson selected mine as the best. I had no option but to blurt out, “Miss, my mother helped me.” 

She smiled, nodded and said nothing. I believe my honesty saved me that day. Throughout my school years, I always had this problem with practical projects. 

God knew when I had children, and they came to me for help with projects, my old helplessness would come to the fore. So, He gave me a break. 

Both my children, a boy and a girl, right from childhood were adept at doing projects on their own. They could do drawings, cut pictures, and paste them on chart paper. They suffered none of the nervousness which I went through. And they did not need any help. 

It was a relief.

And my daughter Sneha, throughout her childhood, amazed us with the original things she could make. I remember a coir bag, a man with a thick walrus moustache painted on the back of a coconut shell and a beautiful large chart, with paintings and photographs, which celebrated her grandmother’s birthday. 

Then a few days ago, in the afternoon, at our home in Kochi, I saw her take a sheet of a newspaper, cut it, then fold it, and using glue, she made a vertical frame, like a circular fort. Within the frame, at the bottom, she placed a round cardboard. Then Sneha interlinked paper sideways into the vertical frame, and soon the bowl gave the impression as if she had woven it. It was painted black on the outside. Then, using craft paper, which she cut deftly, Sneha made multi-coloured flowers and leaves and pinned it on a green sponge she had kept inside the bowl. Overall, the impact was stunning. 

And Sneha did all this, with songs by John Legend, Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, Dean Lewis, James Arthur and Taylor Swift’s haunting new single, ‘Invisible Strings’, playing loudly on YouTube through the TV. 

So, amidst the raging pandemic, we enjoyed moments of joy.  

It also made me think about creativity. How some people have it and most don’t.

How things come so easily to the ones who have it.

Talented people, especially in the arts, are markedly different from normal people. They have an original thought process. They don’t follow a path laid down by others. They are keen to find their way. They listen to their intuition a lot. They don’t care what people think about them. They break the rules of morality and don’t feel any guilt.

In my career of interviewing a wide variety of people, artists have been the most interesting, whether it be in art, film, music or theatre. Journalists are not far behind. When you talk to these people, time stands still. The exceptional artists have magnetism and charisma. 

I believe in the proverb, many are called, but few are chosen.

Talent is a gift from God. But not all talent is popular. Again, a minority is given the talent that cuts through the hearts of a majority of people. Musicians like AR Rahman or RD Burman, singers like Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar, bands like Abba or the Bee Gees, or authors like Charles Dickens or Victor Hugo have it. There may be greater artists, but the majority cannot understand their work. 

This was confirmed by Rahman’s sister AR Raihanah, whom I met when she came to Kochi in 2015. And this is what she said, “My brother has been blessed with a God-given talent. Many music directors are geniuses. But nobody knows them outside Tamil Nadu. This mass appeal is a divine gift.”

So, for young people, the biggest question is: what do I have the talent for?  

Malayalam writer and public intellectual Mohana Varma told me recently that when he was sixteen, he was good at table tennis. But somewhere along the way, he felt that he did not have a genuine talent for it. So he stopped playing. He did not want to waste his time.

He also told me that his teenage grandson expressed an interest in painting. So Mohana arranged for an art teacher to teach him the techniques. But after three months, the grandson said, “I cannot paint images from my mind, but I am good at copying. I don’t think I have the talent.” 

Many people make mistakes in identifying the talent they have. There is an initial promise, and they think it is a genuine talent. But then it fades away. It could take a decade for this to happen. By then, it is difficult to start afresh. And one’s destiny is missed.  

To ensure a right decision is made, consulting your intuition seems to be the best way. For that to happen, you have to develop it. To develop it, you have to be reflective. And have the ability to go inside oneself. It’s not easy. 

But I believe that is the only way one can make the right decision. However, Mohana told me 90 percent of the people get this extraordinarily important decision wrong. 

But if you are lucky enough to be in the 10 percent, you will experience heaven every day.