Stay Home-Stay safe en­abled many many to spend qual­ity time with fam­ily, friends and live in en­vi­rons of their choice, which they had been putting off for long. Gurleen Kaur, hav­ing done her school­ing and stud­ies in board­ing ed­u­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tions got the time to re­con­nect with her par­ents in her vil­lage and to closely im­bibe the beauty of the cul­ture of Pun­jab. She not only made good of the time lost ear­lier on by chat­ting and as­sist­ing her par­ents, but she also gained time, paint­ing her house and homely cul­tural arte­facts of erst­while Pun­jab, pump­ing new life into them. Wel­come to rus­tic Pun­jab through the paint­ings and words of a young artist.

DUR­ING MY SO­JOURN AT MY VIL­LAGE DUR­ING THE LOCK­DOWN, an ob­ject, atyp­i­cal these days caught my at­ten­tion. It was a hand mill which made me grind in­nu­mer­able mem­o­ries of child­hood. I could vi­su­al­ize my grandma grind­ing pulses in that mill and smil­ing at me while I stared at her, ob­serv­ing her over­awed with the sim­ple grind­ing ma­chine.

It seemed so pre­cious to me that I de­cided to re­store it and bring it to life by adding colours. As I was run­ning out of can­vases, I got an­other di­rec­tion to en­gage in and started hunt­ing for all those things at home which are nowa­days out of use in­clud­ing pitch­ers and more. My grandma was re­ally pleased and of­fered won­der­ful tips. These small ob­jects are so won­der­ful and have the strength of join­ing us to our roots and cul­ture.

Amer­i­can an­thro­pol­o­gist and cross-cul­tural re­searcher, Ed­ward T. Hall, ex­plain­ing the depth of cul­ture said, “Cul­ture hides more than it re­veals and strangely enough what it hides, it hides most ef­fec­tively from its own par­tic­i­pants. Years of study have con­vinced me that the real job is not to un­der­stand the for­eign cul­ture but to un­der­stand our own.”

When the colours of the brush touched these daily-use items, I re­alised that the plant blooms every day only be­cause it is at­tached to its roots and gets the legacy of its unique­ness.

Hall warned, “We should never den­i­grate any other cul­ture but rather help peo­ple to un­der­stand the re­la­tion­ship be­tween their own cul­ture and the dom­i­nant cul­ture. When you un­der­stand an­other cul­ture or lan­guage, it does not mean that you have to lose your own cul­ture.”

Our cul­ture is our iden­tity which we need to keep alive. Pun­jab has its own her­itage and the rich­ness be­hind its cul­ture is unique and bliss­ful.

I de­picted a glimpse of vil­lage life on the walls of our house. I put a lit­tle Gur­bani on my fa­ther’s trac­tor-trol­ley as farm­ers love their ma­chin­ery painted with words of God’s grace.

With peo­ple at home, vil­lage life too changed, per­haps for the bet­ter. The so­cial gath­er­ings, the el­derly play­ing cards un­der the Banyan tree in the Sath -the vil­lage So­cial Me­dia cen­tre, the kids play­ing in the streets were all con­spic­u­ous by their ab­sence.

The Gur­bani ren­di­tion in the morn­ings from the vil­lage Gur­d­wara woke me up and it was a de­light to ad­mire the beau­ti­ful sun­rise over­see­ing the green fields through the back side win­dow of my room.

The sun was blis­ter­ing, yet our hard­work­ing farm­ers, in­clud­ing my fa­ther, were work­ing in the fields. In the evenings, peo­ple pre­pared to sleep and spend time, across the rooftops, strength­en­ing bonds of broth­er­hood, with­out any fears of vi­o­lat­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing rules. The neigh­bour­hood was an ex­tended fam­ily.

This con­nec­tion be­tween the arts, ideas, cus­toms and be­hav­iour gave me a small un­der­stand­ing of the cul­ture of our so­ci­ety. Yet, cul­ture and all it en­com­passes is as vast as an ocean and maybe I could ex­pe­ri­ence just a drop -the tip of the ice­berg, as they say.

Gurleen Kaur is a Pun­jab-based bud­ding artist and writer, in­ter-twin­ing her taste for paint­ing and writ­ing in a unique way.  She de­picts com­mon day life on her can­vas with ease and writes es­says to bring out the good­ness in peo­ple.