The fluttering wings of a moth escaping its cocoon are painted in powdered brown rust, tender and fragile against the background of the coffee colored canvas. Down to the last inch, the intricacies of an ordinary creature lure the eye with the shadows of light forming its own color palette against it. He looks captivated at it, snapped out of the tiredness of three days spent immersed in his freelancing job with a unique and upcoming software front.
His eyes roam all over the canvas, taking in the rest of the painting. Auburn flames cover the lower expanse of the canvas, arising from obsidian painting the edges signifying burnt coal. They flare higher, only a little distance from the moth still emerging from the cocoon. The upper expanse of the canvas is covered in the light shade of coffee supposedly representing the ceiling and wall.
It is intriguing. It is birth and death in one. It is genesis and demolition in one. It is the emergence of something profound yet tender, from a bleak and suffocating origin, with the blazing and colorfully rich arms of ruin awaiting to embrace it.
He sips on his coffee as the thought repeats but with a correction - self ruin rather than just ruin.
Auburn is a rich shade of red. And red is a multifaceted color. It is love, passion, devotion, courage and religion. But it is also anger, aggression, hatred, lust and obsession. He wonders, which of it does this shade of the beguiling flame intend to symbolise because there is no clear fit.
The game of symbolism is a layered one, intrinsic to self imagination as much as to another's comprehension. Because symbolism is a piece unravelled off a story, be it real or imagined, one's own or somebody else's. It is as much premonition as the voice of the unsaid. It is the tip of an ice rock for travellers above and the gigantic base of a mountain to the eyes peering within the sea.
The game of symbolism is a layered one, complex to play and complex to comprehend. But he sees his own interpretation as he stares intently at the painting. He does not know if his interpretation holds anything of the vision her thoughts wove before she translated it onto the canvas but they are what come to his mind as he looks at it.
_
"Life and death are two sides of the same coin"
She is dressed in a full sleeve maroon nightie, her hair in a high pony and her glasses framing her face.
"A continuous cycle also, yes. This painting here is really embodying the concept of life and death but there are finer nuances that force a deeper interpretation. This is not just life and death here. There are themes of self-demolition, premonition of doom, bewitching undercurrents of betrayal and also breaking free of something naturally binding you only to get ensnared. The use of auburn for the flames is really something I haven't seen before. Auburn is a richer red and red signifies many things. So is it signifying a negative emotion or is it symbolising how positive emotions can also lead to a similar end? Or is it both?"
_
Words pour out of him, unbidden and she stands hearing it. She has never had anybody, even her own customers discuss the intricacies, nuances and symbolism of her ideation and craft. There is always a story that her mind weaves before paints of multifarious colors and shades ink them onto the canvas. There is always a story which words will never be able to convey with ease and simplicity in the intrinsic complexity like her brushes can. A picture is after all worth a thousand words.
"The auburn flames are already waiting to engulf it while the obsidian coal tries to tell that the flames are burning off something that is already as dark as sin, like a negative emotion or motivation or even like a bitter incident or even a tragedy. Auburn is also attractive and the as the adage goes, like moth to flame, it's already known that the moth will move towards it, on its own accord, willfully walking into its own destruction. This is what is visible from the painting but how do all of it make the story I'm sure you intended to portray? What is the story?"
He looks at her intently as he finishes the questions, awaiting the answer.
She straightens from where she is leaning against the sill, pushing her slippery glasses back onto the bridge of her nose.
"This world which reveres a Goddess, also writes death for a woman before she is even out of the cocoon completely. Now death is literal and even metaphorical. A woman's dignity, her pride, her identity, her sanctity, her beliefs, her breath - no matter which of these is snatched, it is death. Auburn is the shade of red and it represents everything that you said and the coal fuelling it, these are vestiges. Vestiges of somebody's scars, somebody's trauma, somebody's malice, somebody's silence, somebody's outrage, somebody's grief, somebody's bitterness, somebody's avarice, somebody's guilt, somebody's anger, somebody's demons. They fuel these flames of both positive and negative emotions which walk under the cloak of an attractive shade. A moth is an ordinary creature. In the societal system of the world, a woman is ordinary. Be it patriarchy or misogyny or prejudice, a woman still is something ordinary, someone just there. If she has colors, she becomes an object of desire and adoration but she still remains average and ordinary in the standards of the onlookers. A woman, both a demoness and an angel, still is ordinary. They will be sanctimonious to respect her but they will never accept her success as the fruition of her own efforts but will come at her, if she uses their ways of the world.
Like the moth is destined to the flame, a woman is destined to ruin. In one way or another, small or big, she is destined to burn in a flame, righteous or morally corrupt, underserved or deserved. She will pay for her sins as well as others. It's just the way of the world. She'll burn in the aftermath of her own evil or she will burn in the sacrifices for her family, the silences she had to keep or she will burn in the effervescent flame of passion, love and duty. But she will burn. She will be engulfed. She is Sati. Not the woman who burns on the funeral pyre of her husband but just a woman who needs to fight, remain strong, burn bright and high, be it for whatever. She is Sita. She will never be free of people accusing her character. She will always have to prove herself. Always!
She is Meera. Her devotion will always be deep. Whether it is to her job, her life, her people or her own self, to good or bad"
_
He looks at her in awe. Her words so powerful but her painting more than it, now that he sees it through her lens.
"I am not telling a man has no problems or does not have to undergo any difficulties. I am also not telling that most of this painting cannot be a man's reality as well. But 'she' is the only thing that echoed in my head when I began this painting"
She says it and walks away, abruptly ending the conversation and prompting him to close his mouth, which had opened to give her a response.
His eyebrows furrow as he wonders why she would give such a wonderful monologue and walk away without hearing his acknowledgement to it. She indeed is weird!
_
WC: 1290 words
Love,
Pratyusha
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Edge Of The Night | ONC2024 ✓
General Fiction[Open Novella Contest - 2024] ONC2024 Longlister Round 1 & 2 Qualifier Prompts: 24,5 Tired of rising from the ashes, when his last reason to hold on falls apart, a man seeking peace moves into a new apartment. What he doesn't expect is to become e...
