Viscom Bar Codes!
Viscom – Visual Communication! A college in Chennai tried its hand in delivering the course – not knowing what lay ahead in future! We were one of the unluckiest of poor chaps to enroll in what was a liability to the college. We were no way assets! The administration was a penny-pinching scrooge – trying to make at least one tenth of every rupee earned.
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| How To See God (Version 1) |
I was faced with the apprehension that every toddler had in Kindergarten including myself. Determination knew no bounds! Discipline was the keyword around which my dome shaped black shoes, skimpy lace, neatly pressed trousers, tucked in shirts, slim wallet (attributed to absence of money and business cards), stubbles on napes, satiny face, boxed hair cut and accented English expressed aristocracy.
Truth was barely the same. Here, I was supposed to be, and I was. But what had I been? For a year after school – unwilling to study – all my shirts had blue collars. Dense beard, overgrown mustache curving into the mouth, mild hairy chest unbuttoned, loose-fit trousers that suggested groin wasting – I always looked blue collar. Perhaps, the slight tinge of accented English, participation in intellectual and language forums, reading of English newspapers and the occasional word of praise from my mentor cum teacher projected otherwise – a depressed jobless topper in Engineering, a failed MA gold medalist or worse, a drug addict.
I was happy – with the intellectual aura I walked with, commuting on train or taking my muddy rain drenched streets. Even if others would not have known, I had known what I was up to. My mother and father waited, perhaps for the one surprising morning that announced them I was going abroad, doing crap or going to jail. My brother took his job, got paid in pennies and tried to balance it with my father’s stipend-for-retirement. An independent house, no worries for rent!
It was such fine morning that my brother got a 50% hike: it wouldn’t matter anyway for he was paid barely a few thousands. Mustering up some courage, he proposed, “Why can’t he study?”
We had never talked. My mother was the courier woman through whom we often spoke due to our past conflicts. “Who pays the fees?” said my manipulative mother. “I will try,” he said.
“Ask him to get application forms,” he said to my mother.
When all he thought was a Rs. 6000 fee for the whole year for my BA English Literature studies, I had tripled it by choosing B. Sc Visual Communication. Here I was; the reason for the so-called determination and discipline, which would soon fade away with time and friends.
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| How To See God (Version 2) |
Determination is tested, often by virtue of difficulties. Thanks to them, I lost them within a month. But then, I found it blissfully gratifying to answer the occasional questions thrown by teachers and vice-versa – asking questions to silence the teacher. Poetry, highbrow English, printed A4 copies of my short stories read by teachers – held as soft-copy in an enveloped floppy disk that didn’t work afterwards. I distributed my short stories to English teachers, striking awe. Finally, I gave it to a fellow student who lost the sole copy I had.
In an afternoon that looked like an evening, with clouds hovering in high altitudes, came a man who was bald. He had funny mustache, dense as a porcupine. He had worn long shirts, loose-fit trousers and looked like a pathetically poor man except for his paunch and well-distributed fat deposits at appropriate places. “Who is he?” said I to a face I cannot remember, because I did not see.
“Drawing sir!” said he.
“Bring it on,” said the man literally.
Some stood up in silence while others prepared to show their drawing notebooks. The action was unanimous – happening almost at the same time. Except for the preparers beneath – lunging forward underneath benches – those standing up had determined to remain silent, no matter what. It was funny to see that the silence was equally distributed and each bench had one or two of those non-finishers.
The man looked straight at me. “Who is he?”
“He joined yesterday,” said one of those guys standing up apparently trying to shift the focus on me, to avoid getting beaten.
That’s “enroll” bud I said to myself.
I stood up.
“What’s your name?”
“Dinesh,”
“Why did you join here?”
“I want to be a director,”
“Do you have stories?”
“Yes,”
“Come on let’s listen,” the man said with a smile adorned by his funny mustache.
Those standing up checked their wrist-watches.
“I’ll come back to all of you,” said the drawing teacher.
I told him a few stories I had written using particle physics, bio-technology and artificial intelligence that had him super awed. The bell rang. “Get a drawing notebook,” said he.
I nodded.
The first assignment was like writing bar codes. I tried my hand literally. The brushes had several numbers coupled with alphabets for each size. Everyone had a large metal ruler which I was supposed to buy too. I did. The ruler was not meant to be kept flat, since a brush was being used in place of a pen or pencil. The brush had to be kept on paper in a 45 degree slant balancing the hard metal part of the brush onto the edges. The line had to be drawn in one stroke. I tried. My hands shivered. I drew curves. The dipped black ink smudged on paper creating dots.
I showed my dots and curves to the man next day. I sobbed all night. I couldn’t make one neat line. I contemplated giving up smoking but the bar codes didn’t deserve it. They were too short lived. The bar codes were only one out of several drawing practices. I thought I could manage in drawing monuments, temple domes, spires, phalluses and in-depth details of sculptures that did not require rigid hands. Yes, sculptures were easy to sketch.
Most sculptures had curvy women titling either right or left. All I had to do was to draw too circles next to each other. Beneath, a bracket facing left below the left circle, another bracket facing right below the right circle! These brackets would not close. They would be like opposite poles in circular magnets that would repel. Beneath those brackets, a pair of closed brackets on either side, conjoined by a curvy “V” – Jeez, I drew a woman sculpture!
The drawing class teacher saw my smudged dots, thick to thin and thin to thick lines, lines that touched each other and looked like black patches, lines that curved to become a thin tail at the bottom with a thick head on the upper side. Gee, that looks like sperm I thought.
The drawing teacher looked at me and looked at my notebook. I know you would look. He drew his pen out and flicked the pen’s cap with his thumb. In a fit of rage, he started scribbling all over my smudged dots and thick patches. The paper slightly tore and the impression was on the next page. He tossed my notebook slightly in front of the table. I collected it and came back to my bench. Lucky, he didn’t tear papers and chew them with clenched teeth.
Well, to me, the system is flawed. I have the habit of overlooking everything and claiming whole systems wrong. Education must have taken research but then it is not without flaws. Exams are poor indicators of one’s real talent I would often think. Why would a drawing man, artist or painter learn to draw straight lines? “Do you know that directors need to draw?” said my drawing teacher very often.
Do you know directors don’t even write stories? I want to say.
It was on an assumption that directors needed to do storyboards that we were supposed to learn drawing. Well, I would hire a story board man. If a director were to, he would have to learn music, cinematography, editing, graphics, acting, make-ups, costume designing, publicity designing, public relations and what not! I would learn to write stories, and would learn to make them. To make them means the whole making process from pitching to releasing in theaters to publicizing. Did Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci draw straight bar codes before painting their frescoes and vault ceilings? Absolutely not!
Visual Communication is an assortment of several studies including communication, radio, video, audio, visuals, colors, photography, cinematography, drawing, graphics, 3D, 2D, languages and some peripherally dealt subjects as printing and publishing. A student must not be expected to have the same aptitude towards various subjects and if he failed in one or more, he had to be encouraged in what he excelled in.
Perhaps, that was the reason I failed and failed my brother’s fifty percent hike. Art and business are poles apart while education and subsistence are miles apart. When everyone thought I ended when I left the common consortium that believed to nurture success (in the name of college), that was when I was born again!
