It was a huge hall which had white canvas that ran on all the four sides of the room, for three feet high from the floor. Tubes, bottles and cakes of paints.. thin, thick, round and flat brushes.. pieces of scrap cloth in various colours and textures, were the materials to be used on the canvas.

Using all these materials were parents and children occupying the canvas, for every few feet. No theme was given. The only instruction was that each parent and child had to paint in the space given, and at the same time.

Here was a parent using dark shades while their child used bright colours.

There was a child who used clearly demarcated shapes and the parent used a free style painting.

On this side was a child, who looked at the parent’s painting and replicated the design. On that side was a parent, who kept directing the child to replicate their design.

“Oops, why did you mess the place up? Now we have lost time.” cried a parent. Yet another smilingly waited for their child to clean up the paint that was spilt, and in a while both resumed their painting together.

One space of canvas had the parent occupying most of it, while the child had a teeny weeny space for themselves to paint and seemed happy with it.

Another space far away from them, had the parent mumblingly painting the smaller space available while the child was occupying a larger portion of the available space.

Every now and then, this parent would look at the painting made by their child and say, “Lovely to see you doing your best.” However that parent there, appeared unhappily looking at their child’s painting and met no look of the child.

A few spaces away was a parent who would suddenly remark to their child, “Maybe you should take a leaf out of the painting that the child there is doing”. The neighbouring parent was heard saying, “It is fine to be imperfectly perfect. Paint what you want.”

One child painted everything while the parent did nothing. In another space, it was just the opposite.

Here was a child telling their parent who was petrified to paint, that any kind of painting is acceptable. There was a parent telling the child, that to be the best, going to an art class was essential.

The parent coloured the canvas so much that their space of the canvas tore, while the child was lost in looking at what was lost.

Multiple colours.. Varying shades..

Different strokes by different folks.. Every parent has a context and every child a background. Is every taken space in the canvas, a reflection of their context and background? Only that parent and that child would be aware of that..

There were no judges nor evaluators in this hall, except themselves.

What if they wanted to occupy the space to paint it differently? Well, action begins always at home!!