To my surprise

If you give a 1 year old a sheet of paper, he will most likely tear it or stuff it in his mouth. And that is what Urjas did at one. He wasn't ever 'handed' a sheet of paper, but always found some lying around the house.

At two and a half, he got his first delightfully colourful packet of crayons from Bhargavi maushi. The moment he opened the gift his eyes lighted up. Before this, he had used miscellaneous colouring items for scribbling and such but never 'owned' anything. This packet had 24 colours which I thought was too much for a child who had not taken to coluring.

I was tempted to put it away until he turned three but before I knew it, he had already started scribbling on any paper he found. Give that his father was studying for his MBA at the time, there was a lot of paper lying around the house. Thankfully, he understood colouring only on blank areas and not printed or written ones. 

He first scribbled something and said it was a bird. I said 'Wow' trying to hide the critical tone in my voice. I decided to agree to whatever he said. A few days later he demanded I draw him a bird so he could colour it. Now let me add here that the point of starting this blog (and as the title also explains) I cant hold a pencil to draw anything that resembles itself in reality. 

So when the demands to draw him aeroplanes, dinosaurs and mountains grew, I rushed to the nearest stationery store and brought him plenty of coloring books. He spent months doing what I call 'spoiling' the books with scribbling anywhere and everywhere not minding borders and the figures that were shown. That is where his journey of colouring began. So when I sat him down for colouring I hammered two rules into his head:

1) Colour inside the borders

2) No white spaces should be seen

And the adorable 3 year old that he was then, he followed my instructions. I was mighty proud of his skill because he coloured really well. This went on for a few months and then one day his Nursery school sent a notice about participating in a national level colouring competition held by KCA Nagpur. Without giving it much thought I packed his crayons in his bag on the day of the competition. He came back and told me that they had given them a picture of a rainbow fish to colour. We forgot about it until two months later, the teacher said he had won a prize. It was the first ever certificate and medal he won. Needless to say, he was thrilled. I then asked her if I could see what he had submitted and she said it was a simple fish with scales but Urjas apparently had used different colours for each scale.  So my ingenious boy probably won because he turned an ordinary fish into a rainbow fish. And of course because he drew within the lines and left no white spaces :P