I had been busy drawing a self-portrait. I had read somewhere that it was a sensible practice to end and start a new year by drawing self-portraits on the first and last pages of your drawing book. I had wanted the picture to look just like me, but I wasn't very good at it, so although the counterfeit did have the same eyes, the same nose and the same cheeks as mine, it didn't quite look like me in the slightest.
“Oh! Nothing really,” I answered.
I had heard my grandmother’s footsteps long before and guessed it was her. My maternal grandmother had been staying with us for a fortnight now; she would be staying with us for the next few months, and I was wondering about the next time I would see her again.
I stayed in my room for the majority of the time. My younger self would have probably wanted to go out and have a nice chat with my grandmother and talk about the hills, or pickles, or her time at the village. This time, however, I wanted to speak about nothing; this time, I was much more content being inside my room all the time.
I gave the portrait a few more eyelashes with my pencil-crayons, just adding a small finishing touch. My grandmother walked around the entire room; I could sense that she had wanted to go back to her own home as soon as possible. Being kept in an apartment when she was used to open gardens and terraces must have been quite tiring for her.
I showed the picture to my grandmother, who was trying to pry into my drawing book.
“That is indeed beautiful…!”
I smiled at her praise; everything looks beautiful to grandmothers.
After I had finished with the drawing, I showed it to my parents. They were both happy, and it had indeed been a very long time since I had actually done something productive; they had probably been a bit pleased that I had finally done something creative. If I had been completely honest to myself too, I was also a bit too pleased with myself. It had probably been the best picture I had drawn in a very long time. It had something to do with my waxy pencil colours; they had made the picture look livelier.
Sometimes, when I stared at the portrait, I couldn’t help but notice how the eyes twinkled on the page. I had drawn the lips in a more lopsided manner, but still they looked like they would part any time to say something. The artwork grew to be something I was very fond of, and most of the time I would sit with my drawing book open in front of me while I admired the drawing for minutes on end.
The first time it happened, however, I couldn't believe it.
“You only gaze; you never say anything,” my portrait said one fine morning.
For a few seconds, I felt as though someone had snatched away my capability of speaking as my jaw dropped.
“You can speak?” I whispered, barely believing that I was responding to an artwork!
“Of course I can. What makes you think I cannot!” the drawing chided back at me.
My brain went into a state of frenzied shell-shock as I registered the way the drawing, which looked a tiny bit like me, moved its lips so artfully to initiate a seemingly normal conversation.
“You think I look like you, don't you?” my portrait said again.
“No…” I mumbled. “I could not get some of my features right. My eyes are a bit narrower and my nose is not this thin.”
The portrait seemed to think for a while and then responded thoughtfully, “I think I am a lot prettier than you.”
I frowned at the portrait now; it had a lot more audacity than it should have had, considering that I was the one who granted it the right to exist.
“You just look different; we are both pretty, in our own ways,” I said, trying my best to sound inclusive and empathetic.
“Hmm, keep telling that to yourself.”
That was the cold reply I was met with.
I didn't open my drawing book for a long time after that exchange.
When I opened it again for the second time, I was sniffing and crying.
“Oh…” my counterfeit said as her eyes widened at the sight of my red, blotched eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
“I had an argument with my friend,” I confessed quietly.
“What happened?”
“She said that I could never do anything with my life… because I was hopeless.”
“And what did you say?”
“I called her a useless scumbag.”
My portrait flashed me an odd but flattering smile.
“How does one start such an argument with one’s friends?”
“It happens,” I sniffed again. “I was also scolded by my teachers; I did very badly on a chemistry test, and I lost the debate competition too.”
“Oh…” my portrait said again, this time looking far less sympathetic. “You have had a very bad day then.”
I nodded, and a few of my teardrops landed on my drawing book.
“Don't! You are ruining me!” my portrait yelled back at me.
I gasped at the outburst and felt a hot surge of anger pass through me. I snapped the book shut and tossed it aside on the bed.
“Now, who on earth throws books and copies around like that!” my mother scolded me as she walked into the room, witnessing what I had just done.
The third and last time I had opened my drawing book, my counterfeit had a strange gleam in her eyes.
I had been sick and feverish and mostly lay motionless in my bed. I had taken out my colour pencils, and I decided to add a few more strands of hair on my portrait.
From the very morning, my family members had been checking up on me. I had understood where all the concern came from, but at that moment I truly wanted to be left alone.
My grandmother had touched my forehead with her cold hands, and I had instinctively wanted to draw my face away but realised that it would be a rather rude gesture to show to a person who was genuinely concerned about me.
My father had asked me repeatedly how I was feeling, and every time I answered him with a mute “thumbs-up.”
“Are you sick?” my portrait finally opened her mouth.
“Very,” I said softly. “I can feel the pins and needles on the back of my throat.”
“You fall sick very easily…”
“Don't you?”
My counterfeit stared at me incredulously.
“I am a picture; how can I fall sick?”
I nodded, a bit embarrassed at my question.
“Do you like it, your solitude?” I asked, a bit apprehensively.
“Well, it can be a bit boring,” she said as she scanned my face with her gleaming reddish-brown eyes, “but I cannot say I hate the peace.”
“My life is a bit different,” I said, trying to share my half of the story. “I have a lot of responsibilities, you know.”
“I really want to know what it's like…” the portrait said in a voice that was a bit dreamy. “I wish I could have been a drawing… it must be very quiet and peaceful.”
“Do you want to see what it is like to be me?”
I stared at my portrait and contemplated the proposition.
“Is that even possible?” I asked her in an awed voice.
“Of course it is…”
“My parents will know.” I went back to adding a few finishing touches to her hair.
“They won't; I will just change a little… we don't look that different.”
“But what about my academics and my co-curricular activities…”
“If I can't keep up with them, I will ask you to switch back.”
To my utter surprise, she could keep up with my responsibilities.
My new accommodation had been pitch black; all I saw was the deep blackness while I was confined inside one single page of the drawing book. It was true; no one had come up to check up on me, and neither did I feel hunger, pain, or sickness. But there was still an odd and deafening silence, and I had no sense or track of the passing time.
Sometimes I would hear loud clanks of water bottles falling, or the heavy tread of my father’s footsteps, or the sound of my mother's usual clearing of her throat.
I had started missing my family, and I really wanted to tell the portrait that I was willing to switch back places the next time she opened the drawing book.
My portrait, or now the other me, did open the drawing book but flipped through my page. I felt stung by the action. Did she not want to talk to me, and now I had started considering the more horrifying option: did she not want to switch back places?
I could feel the other me drawing on every page of my drawing book, and yet she still never for once waited to look at the page where I had rested.
I couldn't even call out to her; maybe with my ability to feel things, she had taken away my ability to speak.
I had felt unspeakable rage at that moment, and I had wanted to bite and scream at the other person who claimed to be me; she was an impostor, and I could sense it once I caught glimpses of her face, her thin nose and her wide eyes, features that had looked so different from mine.
“Have you finished this drawing copy?” my mother asked the other me.
“Hmm, yes, I have,” I heard her saying, and my skin (although I didn't have any) crawled at the sound of her contemptuous voice.
“I must say, you have improved a lot this year…” my mother said, picking up the drawing book.
I realised with a huge wave of sadness that this was the only way I could be in my mother's arms now.
“Hmm… Well, Ma, I was thinking, it's already the end of the year. How about we sell this along with the other books of last year to the man who collects scraps?”
“Why?” I heard my mother say, and ironically enough, she finally opened the page to where my picture was drawn. “It has such beautiful pictures.”
I tried to open my lips and call out to my mother, tell her to save me and tell her that her real daughter had been replaced.
“Well, I can always buy another drawing book…” I heard my counterfeit saying.
My mother caressed my portrait and then closed the drawing book, keeping it on top of the shelf with all the other books which were waiting to be sold the next day.
I didn't even want to think about the kind of life that awaited me now.
Self portrait (Canvas) by - Rudrapriya Sen