behind the paintbrush

Ashok peeped over the top of his copy of the Times. The man in the opposite seat had drifted off to sleep. His snores came out in intervals, coinciding with the rhythm of the train. His moustaches quivered with each breath, a silver mass of frost on the branch of a bare tree in the wind. Ashok smiled and folded his newspaper. Then, slipping out a small black notebook, he opened it to an empty page and hid behind it with a miniscule wood pencil. His strokes were light, quick and clever and the empty page soon changed form and the yellowing white of the page transformed into a man, a fat old man, snoring with his mouth half open and his head tilted up against the headrest, who has just dropped off to sleep on a moving train.
There was humour in the lines of the drawing and Ashok could feel it. The problem was, people never saw his pictures the way he did. Every one of Ashok’s paintings was perfect in his eyes. Every hint of expression on each of his subjects’ faces was there for all the world to see, his compositions were clever, the colours just right and yet…he never seemed to make it big.
The carriage gave a sudden heavy jolt and the man woke up, yawning. He shook his head to clear it and, staring hard at Ashok and his glance, eased out of his seat and went off for a smoke. Ashok sighed and banged the notebook down on the seat beside him. He’d just have to finish the sketch without a model. He glanced around the car.
The girl in the window seat was laughing at him. Ashok stared defiantly at her, wondering whether he should have let his mother iron out the wrinkles in his shirt when she’d offered to instead of shooing her out of his room as usual.
“You were drawing that man,” she grinned. “I saw you.”
Ashok rolled his eyes. “Clever observation.” He pointed out, keeping the sarcasm in his voice as low as his irritation permitted.
“Sorry,” she started again. “I guess that was a stupid thing to begin with. You knew that better than I did.”
He nodded abruptly and turned back to his paper, hoping she’d take the hint.
She didn’t. “Do you draw for a living or is it just a hobby? Can I see what you drew just now?” She held out her palm for the notebook.
The way she talked was a little annoying. Ashok handed her the notebook and hoped that’d keep her quiet for sometime. “I’m an artist…”
She flipped open the notebooks and flipped through the pages and smiled. Ashok didn’t understand whether it was a smile of appreciation or one of contempt. Knowing people, it was probably the latter. She looked longer at the last picture – the one he’d been drawing – and then handed it back.
He pocketed it and waited for an observation. None were forthcoming, however, and he told himself that he was glad and escaped behind his newspaper again. He was not, however, to be let off that easy.
“Can I tell you something - ” She started again, hesitantly. “…about yourself?”
Ashok grunted from behind his precarious shelter. The girl looked at the sports page of the newspaper for a long time, as if she was looking through it at the reader’s face, a strange look in her liquid grey eyes.
“You hide behind your paintbrush…”
The train rattled to a stop as Ashok lowered the morning paper but the girl had already reached the door. She hesitated at the step and then looked back at him.
“Just…be the paintbrush. Be the painting. It’s not about the subjects. It’s about you.”