Self Portrait @ 65

My last conversation with my mom was on books she has been hooked on reading these days. And all the different activities she has been involved with, throwing theme parties at our house, such as Bollywood night, monsoon beach, watching good old classic Hollywood movies at her friend's home theatre, writing poems, helping dad with his business and others. Her life seemed perfect to me.

Then my mommy asked me what I am up to these days (apart from work), Have I been reading, playing guitar, swimming? I knew I have become a lazy bump who goes to work, comes back, runs couple of miles, goes out with college friend, gets drunk (whenever possible) and sleeps like a log.

But I told her I am painting. I lied conveniently to her. Though she did not say anything, I think she guessed the truth.

Anyway, I wake up the next day morning. Scratching my back and looking at my ageing face in the bathroom mirror, I decided why not let my creativity loose and imagine how will I be (or rather will like to be) at 65 years. Hence I picked my brushes and decided to paint( all my oil painting material has been happily picking dust in my old cupboard).

Write up on painting: I was always amazed with classifications since I was a little kid, bold weak, beautiful ugly, intelligent stupid and many others. And what always baffled me is how do you define the boundary between the terms. Also I always wondered, how and why will god create some life form less grand than the other form. So I always said ugly is beautiful!! Stupid is intelligent....

Now at my 25 yrs, I am more confused than what I was at 10 yrs old. But at my 65 years, I want to gain knowledge of our existence. I want to know if there something more supreme than chasing big car, beautiful girls, having sea facing mansion (which I believe in now).

I tried my best to paint a calm and wiser face. I have given a golden and red shade to his beard and a tanned face(apart from the fact that I love tanning and long beard) for his acquired knowledge. I wanted to do abstract art when it came to little details such as eyes, ears etc. The black aura is ignorance that surrounds a person in his lifetime.