I am really excited to publish this post which was written in
collaboration with my dear friend Udayan Das who is a 3D modeller as well as a
talented 2D artist. Please read the story and let us see if you can identify
who wrote what!
The Bilge Master
It was late
and Samir was on his way to Rabindra Sadan Metro Station via Elgin Road. He had
spent the last nine hours doing what he didn’t want to do-3D modelling. But he
was one of the myriad masses who don’t have a choice. Either way, he shrugged
and kept walking. Just as he was crossing Bhawanipore College, it started to
rain.
He was
almost there and he didn’t mind getting wet in the rain anyway.
He checked
out the LED board and saw that the next train was in five minutes. It was a
rain soaked Friday night and it was cold. The petrichor could be smelt, wafting
into your nostrils like smoke from a cigarette. Thunder was heard in the
distance and Samir knew the city was in for a storm; just like the one Samir
had going on in his heart.
As he waited, he couldn’t help but be drawn towards the sight of the tracks:
the near-perfect way in which they were laid, parallel to each other,
stretching into the distance. To the human eye, it appeared that somewhere in
the distance, somewhere in infinity, these two steel rails met.
The vanishing point. That’s what it was called in art theory. An illusion, like
so many things humans were attached to. This illusion called the vanishing
point was a crucial part of perspective theory, which was used to establish a
virtual three dimensional space in the two dimensions of a flat sheet of paper.
It was thanks to illusory techniques like these that artists were able to create
representations of people and places… on a simple plane.
Art was indeed an illusion, but it was not a cruel one. Like human dreams
themselves, it was a representation of reality, imperfect, yet beautiful,
because they contained the imperfect, flawed, yet undeniably real emotions of
the people who created it and experienced it.
As Samir stared at the tracks, entranced, he thought of images: images in black
ink on A3 sheets, images in black pixels on a computer screen; simple lines,
showcasing the beauty and mystery of the rails, which appeared to stretch on to
infinity.
He was interrupted in his musings by the arrival of the train he was waiting
for. A voice that sounded as fed up as he felt announced unnecessarily the name
of the very station where he stood. Sighing, he waited for the rush of exiting
passengers to end before stepping in.
Fortunately, the carriage was mostly empty. The train was nearly at the end of
its line, so most passengers had already got off. Samir was able to find a
seat, unplagued by the sweat and close proximity of a myriad other tired
professionals returning home. Sitting down, he withdrew a pair of Philips
earphones from his pocket, connected them to his phone, and prepared to put
them on, when he spotted the man sitting right across from him, who was staring
intently at him.
This man, for whatever reason, had features that Samir couldn’t quite place. It
wasn’t due to the lighting: there was nothing wrong with the tubes installed in
the carriage. It wasn’t as though the man’s face was nondescript either. Yet,
for whatever reason, when he reached inside his mind to consider what he looked
like, he couldn’t find any words. It was a real-life example of the four
hundred and fourth error.
Shaking his head to clear it, he looked again. The man was still there staring
at him out of piercing black eyes, alive with a spark. Nervously, Samir said
“Hello!”
The man
merely nodded and continued to stare at him. After what seemed like an eternity
he replied “Hello! I am travelling to Kavi Nazrul.” Samir smiled and said ‘That
is my stop. Whereabouts in Garia do you live?”
“Baruipur”,
the man replied.
And in this
manner a conversation began. The two of them got off the metro together, and
exited the platform. Neither of them said a word. Samir wondered if he should
break the silence. Unable to find anything to say, he simply walked in silence.
Once out of the station, he decided to walk over to a small shop right outside,
where it was his habit to buy and smoke an evening cigarette before going home.
To his surprise, the stranger accompanied him, and also bought one. As they lit
up and took a drag each, a shared vice managed to break the ice between them.
“So, where to from here?” he asked Samir.
“I’m heading to Narendrapur,” he replied.
“I see. Living alone, or rooming with someone?”
“I do room with two others, but they’re barely around, hahaha!”
The two of them laughed.
The stranger took a drag, and looked at him with a sharp eye.
“So? What do you do?”
It was a fairly open-ended question, but the meaning was clear to Samir.
“I’m working as a 3d modeller for a startup,” he said, also taking a drag.
The man nodded, humming.
“And what about you?”
“Me? I work as an illustrator for a small book firm.”
Samir’s interest was now piqued.
“An illustrator?”
“That’s right. It’s mostly drawing for children’s storybooks and the like, but
occasionally a more interesting project turns up.”
Samir couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This man, who he had run into purely
by chance on the metro, happened to be doing exactly what he wanted to,
professionally. To be clear, he wasn’t interested in illustrating children’s
storybooks in particular. It was drawing that he was attached to. There
were living, breathing characters inside his head, inside his imagination;
entire worlds, that needed to be portrayed, in all their beauty, the good of
them, and the bad.
“That’s an enviable job,” he said at last.
“Hmm? Why do you say that?”
“It’s the job I’ve always wanted.”
“You draw?" the man asked curiously.
Samir nodded.
“I’ve been drawing for the past ten years or so.”
The man whistled lightly.
“So you started around the same time I did then. Yet, here you are, working as
a 3d modeller, and not a 2d artist. What happened?”
Samir took a long drag, finishing his cigarette before stubbing it out and
disposing of it. The man’s questions reminded him of parts of his life he
didn’t like thinking about. Yet, it wouldn’t do to not answer.
“Bad decisions happened, I guess,” he said, not attempting to hide his
feelings. “In hindsight, I was pretty stupid to not go for the thing I wanted
to do from the start. But for whatever reason, I always ended up doing
something else. Graduated high school and studied Literature in college. I did
apply to Fine Arts courses in a couple of good places, but once I made it into
Lit, I didn’t go for the entrances to those institutes.”
“Pressure from home?”
“To an extent. But more than that, I suppose I was afraid. Afraid that if I let
go of the sure thing, I might not get accepted to Art school.”
“You don’t need to go to Art school to be a professional artist, you know.”
“I know. But it’s more about the mentality than anything. I was just afraid to
take a risk.”
The man nodded.
“That’s understandable. Betting your future on your passion isn’t easy.”
Samir continued.
“Once I was done with Lit, I realized it wasn’t really a line I wanted to go
further along. I made my second mistake here. Instead of just trying to be an
illustrator, I decided to study for a diploma in 3d modelling and animation.
And now, here I am.”
“You don’t enjoy your work?”
“Not in the least. I mean, somewhere up there, there are 3d artists who have a
say in creative direction. But for folk like me, it’s all mechanical work. We
get a reference image, and our task is to copy exactly what we
see, and translate it into three dimensions. It’s boring as hell.”
The stranger had finished his cigarette by now as well.
“Sounds like a hard job.”
“It is. The firm I work for has high standards, so cutting corners is out of
the question. The only reason I even work this job is to make ends meet.”
The man grinned.
“That’s the primary reason for working any job, wouldn’t you say? You have to
pay the bills somehow.”
“It’s better if it’s at least something you enjoy doing.”
“Do you really think so?” the man asked unexpectedly. “If it’s something you’re
passionate about, something you really care about, wouldn’t you think a
rejection would hurt you even more?”
Samir stared at him, stunned. He could not argue with the truth of what he had
said. In fact…
“That’s one of the reasons you didn’t pursue a career as an illustrator, isn’t
it? You were afraid if you would be accepted or not.”
One might normally take a statement like that as confrontational, but once
again, Samir was struck by the truth of it.
“I have a fair amount of technical skill,” he found himself saying. “I’m self
taught, but I have studied the theory.”
“So you have. But fear is a natural human emotion, you know. Even people who are
making a living as artists experience it.”
Samir looked up at him.
“So you feel it too?”
“Of course I do,” he answered without hesitation. “Having knowledge of the
theory is one thing. Applying it is another. Even if you’re able to make
realistic, technically correct art, it’s no guarantee your work will be
accepted by others. The key is to make something that others can relate to.
Something with emotion. How does a human being know that the emotion he’s
feeling is something he can convey to others? That others would feel it too
upon seeing what he does?”
“He doesn’t.”
“He doesn’t. That’s exactly right. Trying to work as a professional
artist is taking that risk. It’s dealing with that fear. The fear of not knowing
if the message you’re trying to convey will get through. That it’ll be accepted
even if it does. And that’s my world. Nine hours a day, six days a week. I have
to strive to find a balance between what the client wants, and what I think is
genuine. Rejections? They happen all the time. Sometimes multiple times a day.
I have to deal with those.”
“That’s…” Samir paused, at a loss for words. “That’s insane.”
The man smiled.
“Is it though? I live with the pain of chasing a dream, the fears and insecurities
that come with it. You live with the pain of not chasing the dream.
Which of the two is harder? Can anyone really say?”
To that, I had no answer. Which of the two was harder? Honestly,
there was no one answer to that. It was something each person had to answer for
themselves.
“So? What will you do from here? Will you quit your job and attempt to make it
as an illustrator?”
Samir considered his question. It was something he had thought of doing many
times before, but ultimately chosen not to. Would this be the moment when he
would finally take the plunge? As he considered this question, an image popped
into his head, of an old couple, smiling as they waved him goodbye.
His parents.
A diploma course in 3d had cost a lot of money. His parents had born that cost
from their dwindling resources, simply to give him a chance to stand on his own
feet. If he backed away now, he would be throwing away what they had worked so
hard to give him.
His life was his to live, to do with as he pleased. But there always a choice.
To do right by the people who had been there for him since day one, or not to.
And he knew what his answer to that question would always be.
Smiling slightly, he shook his head.
“No. That’s not something I want to do. I do hate this job, but I have no
intention of quitting it.”
The man raised an eyebrow.
“Oh? And what of your dream?”
Samir considered the question. Why did he make art? Was it simply to
please others? Was it simply to earn money? He knew quite well that neither of
those was the case.
He thought back to his childhood. To seeing the work of Jim Lee and the greats
on the pages of DC comics. The legendary heroes from the world of comic books.
Kal El the Kryptonian, symbol of hope. Bruce Wayne, testament to human spirit
and determination. Peter Parker, a boy who chose responsibility over the easy
way out.
And further ahead, to discovering the breathtaking world of Manga. Seeing Son
Goku, a visitor from another world, fight to defend the Earth. Seeing Guts,
marked by destiny from birth, resist that destiny with all the strength and
dignity humans were capable of.
This was what had inspired him to draw. What had inspired him to imagine people
and worlds of his own, and bring them to life.
He did not draw for others.
He drew for himself, for his soul.
The worlds he created, the people he imagined; they were manifestations of the
things he held dear, the ideas he held dear, the hopes and spirit
he wished to sustain even in a harsh world.
It wasn’t for sale.
Never was, never would be.
“The dream lives on,” he answered with a newfound sense of purpose. “They own
nine hours of my day. The other fifteen are mine to do with as I please.”
