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Image depicting miracle

The Miracle

Image depicting miracle

“Ronnie, do something with your life?”

“Be responsible!”

That’s all I used to hear for a long time. I used to hate going to family gatherings. It always ended as an embarrassment for my parents and me.

So I started spending more time on walks around our locality, all by myself and avoiding my parents. On one such walk, I saw an old man sitting on a short stool and painting vigorously on a wall. He was so engrossed in it but the expression on his face was… was…how do I put it? It looked to me like “pure happiness”! Seeing him at work, many people would stop and talk to him and appreciate his work. But not once did he stop painting and not once did his expression change.

Then it became a regular occurrence that I would sit at a nearby tea stall and watch him paint. After a few days, his painting started forming shapes. It was a mural – a mural of all the famous spots of our locality, all the people who used to chat with him and the small shop owners who would give him treats while he was hard at work.

One day after he had stopped working for the day, I gathered all my courage and introduced myself as Ronnie. He smiled and told me to call him ‘Baba’. “That’s what I liked to be called”, is what he said. We started talking, initially about general topics, but later on, over cups of tea, we started talking about my fears and sadness and how incompetent I felt.

That is when I told him one thing, I never told anyone before. How much I missed my twin, Robbie, whom I lost to Covid last year. We had actually planned to go to London to join the same office but that is when the world came to a total lockdown due to Covid. Though he took all the right precautions, my brother still contracted this terrible disease and we eventually lost him. For some time, Baba just sat still, and then he got up and hugged me. I broke down completely in his arms.

After I calmed down, Baba asked me what it is I wanted to do now. I told him that I had no clue. So he told me to come to the same spot tomorrow. The next morning, with a lot of apprehension, I went to meet Baba. He greeted me and that is when I saw another small stool right next to his. He handed me a brand new paintbrush and paints and told me to go ahead. I was so shocked!

I told him that I have never done this before. He told me, “Just try, you will never know what miracle you end up with.” So I started from a corner of the wall and as days went by, with Baba’s tips and ideas and help, I felt I was getting good at it. A month passed and while we were busy painting, Baba casually tells me to talk to my parents. I could never say no to him and so that night I did. We all ended up hugging and crying and remembering Robbie. After a long night of reconciliation, I told my parents that I would like to take up an Art course and never once did they question me. I told them that ART had awakened me, and how I, a depressed low-confident youth, could see a brighter, happier future ahead!

Three years to the present, I am now an established painter with a loving family. ‘Where is Baba, you ask? He is still at it, painting, but on a different wall’. Whenever I visit my locality, I do visit him. ‘What is my proudest work? The mural of Baba and me standing side by side smiling is the centrepiece of our first mural.

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SERENA SIBI MATHEWS

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