Drawing a Portrait

26.03.2024

Someone said something really nasty to someone I know today. Those same people who you want to see with a smile on their face and hear their laughter, those are the same people that someone out there is trying to hurt, to take the smile off their face and make them cry. It is a sad world out there. Someone told me that she cried which was upsetting.

The other day, I mentioned that one of my new friends drew a portrait of me in pen and ink. Today, I decided to return the favour. So I drew a portrait of her on my touchscreen laptop and sent it over to her. I did it in watercolours and pen and ink. I’m not going to share it here for obvious reasons – people are entitled to their privacy. When you work on a portrait of someone, it gives you a chance to study their face carefully. The shape of it. You construct it again with the lines, you look for what gives it that light within it. When the Indian poets and lyricists describe a beautiful face, they describe it as full of light. It is not a falsification – when I see a beautiful face, it really does shine with light. And that light is mysterious. Where does it come from? What does it mean?

Actually, I wanted to be a portrait artist and a portrait photographer. I am still thinking on whether I should invest in a very expensive camera to make it happen. Because the most interesting thing in the world is the human face. It is the thing with all the signs on it. It is the fount of communication. You learn how to talk and communicate by looking at your beautiful mother’s face for the most part. The thing that stops me? The ones with beautiful faces are not interested in being models for me. So what am I supposed to do? The only model I have is me. No one else. So it would just be selfie city.

I was almost late into work this morning because of the stupid tube line. I hate being late. Or being threatened with being late. Because I have been brought up to believe that punctuality is good manners. So sometimes, I arrive up to an hour early for work and things. I don’t understand how we have to put up with these ramshackle arrangements in supposedly one of the most developed countries in the world. The expectation levels here for service are so low. You see it all around you – poor customer service, poor delivery of product. What happened to pride in your work in this country? All the people seem to be ill trained, cowboys, half-hearted and work shy. Of course, most of them are just working for the money. They have no interest in their jobs. And they go to university and do a university course which they are not really interested in as well, most of them. But perhaps I am being harsh. Because I don’t hang around in super professional circles where they are probably all like me and have high standards for work.

It was a good day at work with the tours. Lots of good feedback. Everyone that does my tour tells me that they loved it. I wrote it myself, I worked hard in my spare time out of work to get it done. So it feels good to get the love. And I worked on an important message for women artists and women’s perspectives. Because what people don’t realise is that we are women. Ethnic minority men and Indian men. We are feminised. The traditional role of women has been given to us – rebels like Eve against God, the wellspring of a different knowledge, association with what is bodily and visual. You could keep on going on: equation with powerlessness and weakness, etc. That is why I have studied feminism. For us. Not to become a white, middle-class feminist who talks the talk of inclusion and diversity and then treats us like trash anyway while propping up white, middle class, oppressive structures in society.

Women keep on telling me that they don’t want to be seen as bodies. And me? I see myself as a body. I have worked hard on my body to become strong. I have been disciplined. I have been known for my body since I was a teenager. I have been known for my face since I was a child and my looks. Western philosophy says when you think of yourself as a body, you are supposed to be depressed. Because you see yourself as an object and Western culture has traditionally devalued the body in favour of the fiction of a soul. In my culture, your body is your income. Serfs and labourers are what we are. If you don’t have a good body, you die of starvation. For us, the body is valuable. For us, beauty is important. We come from the village, not the city. We come from a culture that sees the highest symbolism of things in the body like the idols of the gods and goddesses.

Should I really write about Helen any more? What is the point of it? But yet, we write. We think about her. Especially when it comes to the time to write this diary. I was looking at a little girl today and wondering what Helen was like as a little girl. When did she get the ambition to come to England? The country she comes from is beautiful (I haven’t been there, I am thinking about the photographs). Everyone says they come to England for the opportunities. But is that really true for her? She is obsessed with ‘independence’ like all of those young women. Why are they all like that? What did they have to do before their ‘independence’? They are not Indian. They didn’t even have to do anything. They are all Western culture people or Westernised. They didn’t do what we had to do for the family and to be in the family. Helen is mysterious like the rest of them.

Everyone says that my diet is weird. Today I had a box full of chicken wings. Everyone kept on saying that the amount of meat was too big. It is less than what I normally eat. There were no fries or coleslaw or anything. I eat a lot of food. Double most people. Why? Because I have the body of an athlete. Because I have a big brain which takes up a lot of energy. Because I exercise every morning and walk about a lot. If I don’t eat a lot, I get hungry quickly and then I get headaches. I have a very high protein diet because that’s what I need to keep going. My metabolism is fast.

Helen walks around a lot when I am around. Up and down. But I notice she doesn’t do it when other people are around. The meaning of it? Because I stopped talking to her. That’s when she started doing it. She keeps on walking away and coming back or closer. It is like the game of ‘fort-da’ which Freud observed when the child kept on staging ‘the presence and absence’ of his toys to compensate for the absence of his mother (Google search). This is what it is with her when I stop talking to her. If she thinks I am acting in a weird way, then she is also doing stuff. I am the kind of person that notices. Because Helen is the most interesting woman in the whole world to me. Of course I am going to notice things. I just don’t go on about it, especially in this diary. I have my speculations which I keep to myself. I observe.