The Beauty You See in Me is a Reflection of You

 

Colours are what make modern day life more interesting. I have most of my life had to travel a long way to my place of study. Those long hours on the road were made more interesting by the changing scenery in tune with the changing seasons. My mom used to drive me to college when I was doing my under graduation and I drove my car during my post

graduation. Lucky for me the roads were not as urbanised as they are today giving me ample spots of changing flora to gaze upon. The spots were never missed. Partly because they were the spots where traffic or the curvature on the road force me to look at and partly because they were a feast and even in rush hour traffic my eyes would still roll in those

directions to steal a glance. Some of them were man made to make the place more

beautiful and some of them were random wild creepers taking over a long forgotten large

tree by the side of the road. These plants would showcase their beautiful dress ups

according to the seasons in all their glory and that would give me a wonderful variety of

scenarios to drive through. When I did my  post graduation although the roads were more of

tar and buildings the city had started fairly maintaining its medians with plants. Maintained

plants would be a feast for a while from plantation time till the rainy season comes. Then the maintenance will slowly drop giving me a view of minor wilderness to watch especially during the mid night to early morning drives. Then summer shall take away all the plants that are planted by burning them with its hot days leaving me a view of complete wilderness where plants that decided to grow on that soil thrived. With this and the n number of eyeshadow palettes and lipsticks that I own, I quench by thirst for painting these days.

Earliest modern rock paintings are now located in Indonesia. These dating back to 35000

years have rewritten history which upheld the belief that Europe had the most ancient cave

paintings. Ancient Indian rock paintings are at Bhimbetka caves and are roughly estimated

to belong to 40000 B.C.E. or earlier. Historians consider the beginning of making of art to be the oldest point of origin of a higher order of human cognition. 

This is officially the beginning of modern human life on earth. Art has a unique feature. It isn’t the same in everyone’s eyes. The moment an art is made it acquires the capacity to take any form an be conceived as anything by the onlookers. When I was a kid I drew and painted a lot. A variety of art forms I have practiced. When I was a kid, a small kid we all had to draw something in our last class. The teacher had asked us to draw a house. I finished my drawing but after seeing it my teacher wanted to see my parents.I was waiting very uncomfortably until the class got over. She got hold of my mom who had come to pick me up and showed her the painting and talked for a long time. Apparently she had shown how I had created a garden and drew some birds around the house instead of painting just a house like the other kids and needed to be nurtured in fine arts. That was the beginning of my art class. So I started painting.Whenever I painted something I have had people give me a variety of different perceptions of my painting. I used to get offended by that when I was a kid. Now if its not a portrait I don’t get offended. If its a portrait please tell me it looks exactly like who it’s meant to be. 

When we look at these rock paintings we are of course allowed to see what we want to see. This leeway is not quite helpful if the onlooker is an archeologist and is trying to decipher the painting.

 

Ever since the discovery of hieroglyphics and the possibility of modern day writing being a modification of pictorial languages, scientists have begun to question whether the art forms we found in ancient caves were actually only of artistic value or had a deeper message. That’s how they have concluded that some instances where we thought we saw an animal being painted are in-fact locations of particular constellations during a major celestial event and the art is an entry of historical record kept in their living space. 

Human face is a complex structure. The muscular elements of this complex move to make any expression that you see. The face doesn’t have one muscle but has a variety of muscles arising and getting inserted at a variety of bony sites. Hence the underlying bone structure, presence, absence or amount of fat layer and the muscular movements that are unique to every human being make the basic elements that make a facial expression. There are 20 muscles in the face playing key roles in creating the basic 21 facial expressions.These are the basic expressions a person makes based on their emotions however the facial muscles do not stay stiff all through the day. They keep themselves busy. Based on what the person is thinking, listening to and most importantly reading the eyebrows, muscles around the mouth (these sometimes have a tendency to be over active , twitch or get clenched based on the tooth positioning inside the mouth). 

When I was a student, a staff member kept telling me that I am very rude. She said my eyebrows looked evil and that makes me look very rude. So i went to the best beauty salons in Chennai every 15 days to reshape my eyebrows until my internship when my eyebrows were nothing but a single row of hair. I used to have very thick eyebrows so during this period even my relatives couldn’t recognise me. Then finally someone told me that I shouldn’t be worried about what others think of me and stop plucking my eyebrows. Ironically this was my regular parlour maid and she said that because I wouldn’t get off her chair and there wasn’t anything more for her to pluck. Also I was almost out of college so I didn’t bother much about it after that. 

A Doctor joined our team where I worked. Anytime we crossed paths he would look down . If he had to pass by me he would take a roundabout route and not cross my chair. I am not someone who readily says hi to new people. Given his special care to avoid looking at me I let it slide and we had almost worked for fifteen days before we got formally introduced and then he says he knows me very well. A few months later when we were casually chatting  I asked him why he didn’t talk to me for a while when he joined duty and he said “ oh its your face. You always keep your face angry. I didn’t want to talk to you. “ Those were actually the days when I was very busy working on two of my articles and was actually overworked. And I know for a fact that when I read I tend to have a raised eyebrow and a strained upper lip. But that doesn’t happen all through a day and definitely not when someone comes up to say hi especially for the very first time. But you can’t tell what they see can you? After all each human brain reads each painting in a different manner until told otherwise so it’s natural for a person to read another person’s face and its expressions in a manner which is not what the underlying emotion is causing especially when they haven’t met or read the person’s facial expressions earlier. 

There are some people though who can have a sweet face when they request something from someone and can hover the sourest face when they are in the place of giving. Then there are some people who have plastered a smile on that stays on no natter what happens. They are universally loved, lucky human beings. But do you really know the person or what lies beneath those expressions? 

If you haven’t noticed you actually do not know what lies beneath any face that shows or that you think shows an expression until you actually decipher their personal expressions contextually backed by their verbal and emotional feedback. If not all you see is what the person wants you to see or what you want to see in the person. Not what the person for what he actually is.

 

Today scientists have discovered a new species of small snakes and names them “anguiculus dicaprio“. Are all human beings actually of the same species? If cognition os the factor that differentiates modern day human species how are people who think, plan and execute their plan in extreme opposites placed in the same species?Do the rapists and criminals belong to the same species that constitutes great thinkers and reformers? Is the same flower in the median on a busy city road of the same colour to everyone who travels in it? 

“The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you” - Rumi.

-Dr Thenaruvi Marimuthu🎨🖌️