A painter
who, when young, used to paint for a pound or two. In those days, a pound or
two for a painting was enough. But after two or three decades, his paintings
found a lesser clientele as people ventured into buying other art forms.
Every once
in a while, one or two of his paintings got sold. Soon he started selling
chocolates alongside his paintings.
He went
home and began giving art lessons to children, and he would get a few shillings
for each child for every class that he used to teach them.
After a
month, the village school authorities contacted him and he got a job there as a
drawing teacher.
All the
students used to attend his classes sincerely and he too would teach them
drawing, sketching and painting sincerely.
Unknown to
all, he used to keep a diary from the day he began selling his first painting.
His name was Martin and, on the diary, in calligraphy writing he had written
Martin’s diary. The diary was given to him by his father. He had learnt
calligraphy from his mother.
He used to
make sketches in it, and drew. When he began teaching at the school, by that
time he had filled ten diaries with his sketches.
Now thirty
years have passed.
His
grandson, Joseph while looking for his ball in the attic, pulled out a trunk
from a corner. He was astonished to see such an old trunk in his home. He
opened it and a gust of dust hit him in the nose. He gave out two loud sneezes.
Inside the
trunk were twelve diaries and each of them were covered with a cloth.
He dusted
off the dirt of a diary and was very astonished to see the word- “Martin’s
Diary No.7”.
His
grandfather was sitting in the garden sipping his evening tea, when he rushed
into the garden and showed Martin his old diary.
Martin
looked at his old diary in disbelief. He had not thought about them in a long
while and had nearly completely forgotten about them.
Joseph
looked incredulously at his grandfather and said- “Grandpa is this diary yours?”
Martin took
some time to answer
Martin-
“Yes, little Joseph. It belongs to me. A long time ago, I used to keep record
of my daily activities.”
Martin
opened his diary with great reverence and respect and found his old drawings.
Seeing those marvelous sketches, tears ran down his cheek.
By this
time Joseph had called his parents. Edmund (Martin’s son) couldn’t bear the
sight of tears in his father’s eyes and hugged him tightly. Edmund had seen
those diaries in his childhood. He too had a nostalgia of his childhood. He
remembered his childhood days when his father used to draw a small sketch on
every page with a little pencil.
Edmund too
began crying like a small child. Those were beautiful days for him. Then and
there he decided to preserve the diaries with great care, so that they won’t
remain locked in a trunk anymore.
Martin took
each of his diaries, cleaned the dust of each of them and placed them on his
bedside table.
That night
he dreamt of his youth days, where he used to sell drawings for a pound or two.
Adios!
Before You Travel. 