Lines

Thirteen years back

When I was four

My favorite past time

Was drawing and coloring

And spending hours and hours

In meaningless scribbling

 

I did not know much

About perfect symmetry, shapes and sizes

Careless drawing

Splashing paints outside the lines

Coloring with heedless abandon

All that seemed to be totally fine

Because it was fun

 

Green lions, birds swimming

Purple trees and fishes flying

Square shaped earth with rainbow colored mainlands

Octopus sitting by the shore

Feasting with his eight hands

Sun with a smiling face

Men making houses under oceans

Group of tourist elephants going on holidays

 

Circle was seldom a circle

Squares had curved edges

Straight lines were like ocean waves

Triangles looked more like crooked hedges

Colors colored the entire white sheet

Colors were splattered beyond the lines

Colors were smeared in all directions

Because I was too young to know about confines

 

Fast forward... Ten years

I grew up

They taught me that lions weren’t green

And birds cannot swim

Trees were not purple, and fishes don’t fly

They taught me earth was not square but round

And continents are only made in green and brown

Octopuses don’t come to shore to feast

Sun doesn’t smile; it’s a hot fireball

Humans live not in seas, they dwell on lands

Elephants are not tourists, they live in grasslands

 

They taught

Circles are drawn how our eyeball looks

Squares have straight edges and four right angles

Straight lines are unbent, unlike brooks

Three lines touching each other

Is how you draw a perfect triangle

 

They instructed

To color inside the lines

They drew boxes and shapes

They made me practice

To color inside those confines

They told to draw everything

Exactly as it looked

To color everything

Just like it appeared

 

It was a matter of dismay

Something precious was destroyed that day

That little world of my own

That little world I created

With what I felt and not just what I saw

With what colors I liked and what I liked to draw

 

Today after all these years,

I miss those green lions and purple trees

I wish to see birds swimming and fishes flying

I long to see tourist elephants on holidays

I yearn to see circles looking like ovals

And triangles like crooked hedges

I desire to color outside those lines

And ask to the world

What was the need to create such confines?