Just Figurines …?
There stands the three miniatures on the top right corner shelf of my bookcase. The shelf has become a splendid place for bonsais and other non-flowering houseplants which have replaced many of my young adult fiction books now that the ‘E-Book’ is an entire library in my pocket.
About the size of my index finger, the figurines are of three stout, laughing, bald men with an overly exposed and protruding pot-belly stomach and a wide, jolly, toothless smile. With long ears extending below their double-chin and tiny, half-closed and curved Mongolian eyes, the map of wrinkles beside their eye sockets and on their wide forehead narrates me stories of incredible journeys of laughter, affection, profound wisdom and cosmic happiness. Its funny how the three stands in perfect circle and appear to laugh at their own cosmic jokes, measuring themselves in contentment rather than inches and pounds.
Of course, there is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not, on that account, value him less. Maybe the reason why they are so plump and flabby is that tiny bodies couldn’t have held such personalities.
The one on the right sits on a large gold nugget and holds up two other nuggets in the palm of his hands. It appears to have been sculpted with yellowish white marble of fine grain, the colour of a newborn daisy petal, the colour of summer clouds radiating light, the kind that raises the eyes heavenwards. It has a powdery velvet finish, with round and smooth curves. The thin notches and streaks of caramel honeyed hues flowing as veins can be felt as if it had a pulse and a heart once, and are noticeable, if scrutinized properly.
The one on the left, carries a big sack of his right shoulder and a Japanese hand-fan on the left. It has a darkening hue barely visible at the bottom of the rainbow viewed through rose tinted glass, portends the powerful, smoldering navy tarnished with a daft of scarlet- A hint to Mistletoe but splendors with Passion fruit. The surface has a high glossy finish inviting my fingers to touch. The sculpture looks as if it has a claret blood red flame originated from inside.
Though sculpted of resin, this miniature has a very distinct smoky smell of an aged non-scented paraffin wax, of a melting candle.
However, the figurine I find to be the most amusing, is the central granite sculpture of the one sitting with legs neatly folded and five, naked cherubs all over him, more bloated than the two but also the most detailed and impressive one of the bunch. It has a dry gritty and coarse texture of fine gravel which can bruise skin if rubbed too hard but has been carved with smoother and flowing lines that portray a kind of gentleness. It has an earthy and neutral tone, an ever-morphing serenity of strong browns, like a visual poetry, the way it conjures tall dark oaks in my thoughts.
The brown is a million hues; it is the brown of nurturing soils and of the textured bark of trees that grows with the variation of fingerprints; the brown which brings thoughts of comfort, yet shines with bright flecks of rosy hopes. I cannot reduce something so spellbinding to one word, when the colour invites me to marvel in its simplicity. The granite smells of petrichor, that pleasantly damp, mysterious and musky smell that accompanies the first drops of summer rain when they fall on the parched soil.
These laughing men do not really look like mere figurines to me – it feels as if three real men have been frozen in time like the way the Ice Witch used to turn people into stones in Chronicles Of Narnia’…. and their surfaces are mysteriously warmer than other objects, almost as cozy and comfortable as a cup of hot coffee on a winter morning; with eyes half closed and half revealing as if each of them is breathing, has a purpose and they wish to speak to me, creating an aura of a foreshadow.
Earlier, upon asking my parents the reason as to why they’ve kept such funny looking men on the bookshelf in my room beside my lucky bamboos, I had got an unsatisfactory reply of it being a good “Feng-Shui”, with an additional advice of rubbing their bellies for good luck – apparently their big fat bellies can hold deep laughter as well as stomach all troubles and transmute them into happiness. Investigating further as a curious child, I got to know that an old strange-looking Nepali woman had gifted it to them as a souvenir when they visited a curio shop in Darjeeling, on their honeymoon. I’ve always felt that something doesnt quite add up. These are just three tiny little figurines, which means they’re non-living and has got absolutely no chance of springing into life, now, do they?
I guess only time will tell.
By: Rajeswari Roy
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