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Tulips - Manjusree Sen Manjusree Sen is an educationist, activist and a writer from Camberidge, US.

"Quality of Life" means many things to many people. Regardless of our high-paced. fast-track lives, what do we dream of, really? Do we look forward to another 60+ hours work week, the hours getting longer as the workforce contracts with each new phase of company re-engineering? More and more, our options seem to keep shrinking, don't they?

Yesterday, after a year or so had passed from far more frequent visits to a studio to paint pottery, I set aside my list of priorities, must-do-firsts before I could give myself permission to play. Finally, I permitted myself to have fun, to rediscover my creativity, to paint, to be a child again. So, I strolled over to the studio near me, throwing my cares away, literally.

I took my time. My "subject" was in my head. A tulip. I saw it in my mind's eye, it's tall, supple stem, the petals, a dark red, with yellow hues, perhaps several in a vase, forming a bouquet in crimson bathed in golden rays of sunlight that poured in from a winterland window, snow still clinging along the edges of the windowpane.

With deliberate, measured marks of time, now on my side, for a change, I surveyed my choices of surface on which to paint my subject, and picked two small tiles. Then, with equal deliberation, I chose my colors: kiwi for the stem and leaves, a crimson red for the petals, a golden mustard for the sun's rays, "biarwood" for the windowpane, and, of course, stark white for new-fallen snow. I was ready. But I still had a ways to go. Carefully, I selected my brushes, a pencil to sketch my subject, a bowl of water to rinse, and a tray for my colors.

There were many youngsters in the studio on this busy Saturday of family outings and activities. The studio was noisy. A little boy hovered around my table, and then a little girl. I said, "Hi!" I got some smiles and "Hi's" back...to add to my Quality of Life. As I began my sketch, the noise disappeared, as if the smiles from my new little friends melted away any distractions from my object at hand, my drawing. Completed now, the bouquet of tulips reminded me of the vase sitting on my table at home...the dark red tulips I had tried to draw for a class in watercolor last week. A gift from a life-long friend, this class brought me into the world of mixing colors from primary to greys, violets, and deep, deep greens. Whether I imagined a delicate flower, the wings of a butterfly, or watched as our art teacher drew ominous clouds in a sky of ever-deepening purple hues, spread across a golden beach below, as the waves break and foam on the shore.

I finished adding colors to the tulip bouquet and its window "dressing." I wondered how the colors would be when glazed and after firing in a kiln. I was eager to see my tile, a small but very meaningful token of the quality of life I seek, perhaps have always sought throughout the upheavals of a fast-track lifestyle. A lifestyle that has kept me from the very life I value the most.

I sat with the second tile before me. As if totally spent, I had no idea what to sketch next, feeling an indescribable void, empty of ideas, feeling lost, again. As I sat there, feeling frustrated, that my quality of life was slipping from me fast, the noise around me in that crowded studio was so much din, a scraping of chairs, the shouting of impatient children, nervous adults deprived of the innocence of childhood, grappling with fear, apprehension, troubles, and worries.

And then the book of tulips fell into my hands. The crowded studio led Mari to my table. She asked if I would share my space, which seemed fine to me, and as she sat down, I noticed the large bowl she held, and saw the intricate drawings inside, delightful "under-the-sea" life of shining fish and flowing plants. Before we learned each other's names, or what we did, the usual social exchanges, I blurted out how stuck I was with my second tile; that I loved tulips, and could I show her my first tile rendition? Mari was eager to see what I had done, complimenting me on how well she thought I'd done. From there, she talked about her own experience as an artist for the last thirty years, and offered to be my mentor. For starters, she explained how I could open up my expression with wider strokes of the brush across a large expanse of surface before I confine myself to small pieces of tile. We talked about Georgioa O'Keefe, and then she mentioned Anna Pavord's "The Tulip: The Story of a Flower That Has Made Men Mad" (Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 1999). I'd leafed through this book a year ago, hoping to add it to my library, and now, I was given a chance to leaf through it at my leisure. Leisure and my muse were what I sought and these were granted. Indeed, my inner vision opened up, and a tulip was born on the small tile surface, included in the miniature painting were striations on each petal, the random beautification of the tulip by a virus, as I read in Anna Pavord's history of the tulip. This elegant, expressive flower had its origins in Iran, in the heady warmth of the Middle East, traveling from there to become rich harvests in Holland where wealthy Amsterdam burghers paid a pretty penny to enjoy the vagaries of a true champion among flowers.

Mari and I parted company after her daughter joined her for their trip to Manhattan for a quality of life experience only known to mothers and daughters, the kind of friendship that equals no other, as the one I had with my mother. I wished them a happy journey, paid for my tiles to be glazed and fired, returning home with a book whose contents I cherish through visions of tulips and their infinite hues.

Till we Connect again next week...