A PAINTER’S TALE

…picture this…a crowded street in India (ok, who are we kidding, if you could picture a street in India that isn’t crowded, you would get the Creative Genius Award of the century!), me in an autorickshaw with a name and directions of a “paint showroom” – okay, some clarifications on a couple of things in that sentence – you cannot find a place with just an address – mapquest is a fiction of the imagination here and the “paint showroom” was no larger than 300 sq feet with cans of paint by a local dealer lining the walls.

Now you might think, what in the world was she doing there?? Well, you are not the only one – all the men who were there when I got out of the autorickshaw, had the same mixture of curiosity and questioning and “is she nuts” look on their faces. A thing to note, that I only noted after being there for 30 minutes was that there were ONLY men in the paint shop. Well, it was simple – women just did not paint their own walls!!!! Therefore, me being there armed with the knowledge of what kind of paint I wanted (emulsion) and what colors I wanted ( signal red, rusty orange and sunrise yellow) and how many rollers ( 2) and brushes and paint trays I wanted was a thing unheard of!!!! The fact that I could tell them how much I wanted for each wall after I had measured the area to be painted was even more mind-boggling for them. These men refused to sell me paint unless the workers whom they thought I had employed to paint my walls, were present.

Of course I thought this whole thing was ridiculous and insisted that I get the paint and supplies that I came for and that I was ready to pay for it right then!!! The owner finally realized that I was serious about painting my own walls and came over and started asking me what colors I really wanted, still with a look of awe mixed with a look like I had committed a cardinal sin by entering a man’s domain of paint and things of that nature.

After telling me several times that this was the first time a woman had entered his store, much less picked out her own paint – he finally mixed the three paints for me. Shaking his head in disbelief and sharing that feeling with his male employees, he wrote out my receipt for the materials. Here I was dressed in jeans capris and Armani sunglasses in a store where no woman had gone before (Starship Enterprise), telling them exactly what I was was going to do with the paint and how much I wanted…I know that no one in that store could forget me – I left an indelible mark in their brains, painted on the walls of their mind – pun fully intended!!!

I, on the other hand, thoroughly not flustered by the fact that I was breaking the norms ( which I do more regularly than exercise), proceeded to pay for the materials and paint and happily walked away from the store…complete with a smug look on my face for having done my part to educate the masses about freedom and democracy…and a few households exclaimed over their dinner, how inappropriate it was for a woman to buy her own paint and then paint her own walls…how dare she!!!

I could do nothing else but chuckle to myself….

The proud painter of her own walls!!!!