See if you can!

 Mario adjusted his canvas, on the tripod. The brushes, colours, palettes lay bare on a table, drapped with white cloth, nearby. He smiled at the blank canvas. Innumerable possibilities inside, waited to get themselves pictured here. The fluidity of the paints waited to embrace the vacant canvas. With gentle strokes of plain brush, Mario caressed the empty potrait. He could imagine zillion ideas, scuttling their way into the picture. But he held back the urge to indulge himself in the painting, which was already forming a landscape in his head. 

The bell rang, and children of all sizes, forms, caricatures bustled inside the barren hall. The quaintness playfully kicked out, with the chirping of these little birdies. Red checker pinforms, and pigtails, danced in to rush towards his canvas. Grumpy shirts and half-pants, kept a foot's distance away from the painting paradise. Mario could see the prejudice in the masculine eyes on what he would make them do. "Boys, rough, bold boys, always run away from such peaceful endeavors!" A thought traversed his mind, and he laughed subconsciously.

Suddenly, the chatter died down and the students of St. Mary's International School stood in pindrop silence, acknowledging Mario's presence. Today, he was on a different kind of workshop. An art therapy for the children. The silence was eroding, as both parties waited for either of them to begin. Mario thought, being the teacher the onus of breaking the ice was on him. 

He drew a big circle on the canvas. 

"Hey, wait! Where are you running? Wait you notorious bump! I will catch you right now." Mario's conversation while trying to make false efforts to clasp the canvas,  disturbed the children. Whom was he talking to? Why was he behaving funny? Was this some kind of trap? 

"Sir is gone mad." said a boy with curly hair and very fair, complexion. He topped his predicament with rolling of  his index finger at the temples. 

"Is there a ghost here?" a girl with brown eyes and shrunken cheeks, quivered in anticipation. 

"Let's run away!" Someone from the juvenile crowd proclaimed and the little feet started rushing towards the door. 

"Hey, you all. Wait. Wait. I can see a running circle here and hence, I'm trying to catch it." Mario didn't want the trick to be stretched for too long. 

"But we don't see, anything like that." pat came the reply from the curly hair boy, now going scarlet in the fair complexion.

"Then what do you see?" said Mario rolling up his sleeves. 

"Oh, nothing. Just a circle." the scarlet cheeks spoke. 

"You, little bunny. What do you see? Mario went and stood next to a flabbergasted chap who maybe was wondering what was going on. 

"I can see Nisha," before he could complete, the crowd went into a fit of laughter. 

"Standing next to the canvas," he still completed the cause of embarrassment. 

"Wow. That's nice!" Mario complimented him. 

"And little cuckoo, what do you see?" He asked the pigtails with shrunken cheek. 

"Me? Hmmm... A cycle tyre going round and round." Her legs peddled on an imaginary peddle. 

"Maybe, she will grow to be a cyclist," mused Mario. 

What you see? This question was asked to the girl with yellow boots, to a boy with running nose, to a backbencher who was suddenly in the front row of spotlight. 

Some saw, the earth rotating while some saw the mixer swirling milkshakes. Some saw the golawala and his rainbow colored gola. For some the circle was goemetry, for some geography. Some called it cake, while some a pizza base. The grumpy face now jovial, could his Papa's gol tummy ob which he played tabla. 

Hehehehe. Hahaha.. Huhuhu.. The ice was broken and the children circled Mario in mirths of enthusiasm. Only one girl stood staring at the canvas without blinking indefinitely. 

Her determination caught Mario's attention. He stood up from the crowd and walked to break her reverie. Gently, placing his palm on her shoulder, he whispered in her pink ears, "What do you see?"

Without being startled, or staring back at Mario, she replied, "I see going myself round the world with my Baba on his bicycle. I can see him ringing tring, tring to shoo away, the cows blocking our way. I see we are going to buy a cake, for its Aai's birthday. Maybe on the way we will buy a mixer for her, as the grinding stone has given away. I see he has money for all this because he doesn't scold me for spending two rupees on the ice gola. In fact, he buys me two. I lick and slurp the coloured juices. Yummy!! It's fun."

It was Mario's turn to be flabbergasted, when the nun arrived and admonished the girl for slipping in the class. 

"Sorry Sir. I hope this silly, billy has not bothered your therapy much." She pinched the girl's ear and simultaneously apologized.

"Oh, no, no. She has great imagery prowess. She could see what others couldn't." Mario tried his best to release the billy from the Nun's bullying. 

The nun gaped in astonishment and finally found few words to say, "Are you sure Sir, that she could see? For at birth the doctor's had declared her blind!" 

None. Absolutely none could outright the nun's verdict. Mario was on the fringe of belief and disbelief. How could he believe that Christ would also be so cruel? Nothing filled up his senses except, a wish that the girl could see all her imagination come true. "May she have the mixer, the cake and gola, one two three and many more." He wiped a lone tear running down aghast his bewildered face.

In the chaos of the galloping children, he heard the nun, reprimand the blind girl, "How dare you sneak into the class of these elites? If Father comes to know of your notorious ways, he will throw you and your father out of this campus. How many times I have told you remain home and help that sick mother of yours. Don't you have any mercy for her?"

Packing the canvas and the unused palette, he could no more smile or laugh about anything. At the chapel, before leaving the St. Mary's campus, he said a small prayer,

"Virgin Mary, may all your children see light. May you see their plight and blow wind into their flight. Amen."

Mario unclenched his white and red stick, and adorned the black glasses to put on display his blind world for those who couldn't see a lame in their hurried lives. 

'