Detailed Drawing

It was one of those magical evenings. Aadi had his dinner and was fast asleep. Diya also had her dinner all by herself (watching some new DVD). Ankur and I were done with cooking and cleaning. And it was just 8:30pm!

The night was still young ... so, I decided to spent some time with Diya. I told her that I'd teach her to draw something new. We got some paper and pencil, I started drawing a human figure (a man with shirt and a pair of pants). Diya kept watching me apprehensively. I knew it was a bit complicated for Diya - so I reassured her, "This is a lot more details than you may want, so you can pick and choose whatever you want to do".

She looked happier and commented, "Yes, I can try and do whatever I want to!". Then she indeed drew a human figure - a woman - mostly a stick figure. With Diya's fluent efforts, suddenly the legs became extremely long. She realized her mistake and didn't like it at all. She made sure I had no smile on my face. Then, with an afterthought she decided to give a realistic touch to her stick figure. With one horizontal like she deftly made the two extra long legs a skirt, and added some big flowers on that. That definitely changed the aspect ratio of the figure. Anyway, the show went on, and I amused myself watching her efforts for the next few minutes.

After all that Diya said, "Now, it's my turn to teach you a new thing - how to draw a real house!". She confidently turned the page over, found a scale and drew a margin all around. I was indeed impressed since it was a while back that I demonstrated that to her (and also remembered commenting about that's the way real drawings should be).

Soon a house started emerging on the page, with a running commentary on what all things to remember in each step. She started with the main house, then the roof, and added some windows with "real curtains". With only the door remaining she asked me, "Now, can you tell me what I am going to draw next?". I decided to be a little mean and smartly replied, "The door!".

She wasn't expecting the real answer, and was taken aback momentarily.

But then she gracefully recovered and remarked, "No, it's not the door ... I will just add some details."

I made a Herculean effort to suppress my laughter for the next few moments. But then she made it easy for me. She looked at me smilingly, and we both broke out into spontaneous laughter! :)