George walked to the table and picked up a slice of strawberry cake as Malee took his place in front of the drawing board. He couldn’t care less how she would draw it, but knowing she had attended any formal education a few years back, he doubted it would become out any better than his. He sat down on the chair and extended his hand towards a new beer bottle till Mary gave him a stern look. He gave a cheeky smile back and retracted his hand. Mary was his biological mother’s personal care taker and had been taking care of him since he was a baby. No matter how much she behaved in front of the other servants in the house, she was not afraid of him.
While he was munching the cake and trying to reach to the beer bottle, Malee was busy building the outline of the scene. She stated from the centre, the road and slowly made her way to the outer scenes. It wasn’t a replica of the photo; she wasn’t constantly looking at the picture as she made her marks on the paper but referring to her mental image of the scene night market that she had stored in her mind. This was in contrast to George, who was looking back and forth, back and forth between the drawing paper in front of him and the picture that Mary had printed out.
The professor looked intensely at the young servant girl in front of him as she made a mockery of the lessons he had given to George over the year. It impressed him, to put it mildly. As he had told George many times over their lessons, the purpose was art wasn’t to replicate the picture or object in front of them. That was what the printers were for. Instead, the purpose was to fuse the object reality with the inner subjective feelings. Mona Lisa was a good example, not just because it was famous, but because the creator, Leonardo da Vinci, brought out her subtle smile to the edge of infinite mystery. The young servant in front of him wasn’t the next Leonardo, but she had the making of an artist. George was more interested in science and technology, especially on how much compound interest he could charge his friends for the loans.
George didn’t notice the drawing came to life as Malee’s body was blocking his view. He didn’t realize the sudden silence that came into the room from the rest watching Malee drew. Especially the professor who wouldn’t hesitate to correct his techniques, from him holding the pencil, to the colors he painted over. He took a quick glance at Mary to ensure she wasn’t paying attention to him as he slowly reached out his hand from under the table to the beer bottle again. He got hold of the bottle before hiding it in his school back beneath the table for after dinner appetizer.
Malee’s drawing too stunned Mary to notice George’s hands moving beneath the table, along with a bottle of beer. She didn’t expect Malee to draw that well, especially considering that it was the same poor, uneducated girl from the slum who was selling fried potatoes in a pushcart a few days back. She drew on the paper with more of instinct than George, who drew like a fish out of water. He was more interested in trying to draw to be as similar to the pictures or fruits as possible, but she was drawing not to the picture in front of her but to the picture she wanted. The scene emerging from the drawing paper wasn’t same as the photo that she had printed out, but it was the night market with stalls and people occupying it. It wasn’t entirely perfect; the people weren’t proportional, but they were alive, not square shape images that she often would see from George’s hands. She could feel the crowd, the stalls and the night lights as the crowd moved from one stall to the next.
George had finally done with the cakes after gorging several of them till he couldn’t take in anymore. He wondered if he would still have the appetite for dinner after taking in that much of afternoon snacks in one sitting. He rose and went over to Malee to observe how badly she was drawing and he stood still once he saw her hands moving over the drawing board. He could only muster a single word from his wide opened mouth.
“Wow!”