The Artist
Swapan had almost 500 friends in facebook. Most of them were from school and college. But some of them were those whom he had befriended through facebook. Many unknown men and women used to send Swapan friend requests. He used to accept some of them just based on his intuition. There was no fixed rule in this matter.
One day he got a friend request from a Chinese. His name was ‘Wang Chuk’. Swapan viewed his profile. There were many pencil-sketches. Some depicted human beings, others were of beasts and nature.
Swapan used to post his amateurish paintings on a facebook page named ‘Drawing Pencils Art’. It was possible that Wang Chuk was also a member of that page. Swapan did not contemplate more before accepting his friend request.
Wang Chuk and Swapan used to chat sometimes via facebook. One day Swapan asked Wang Chuk, ‘Why don’t you post anything in ‘Drawing Pencils Art’?’
‘I will definitely post. I am drawing a picture with color pencils. I will post it tomorrow’, informed Wang Chuk.
The picture was amazing. Swapan was captivated to see its beauty. The content was not anything great. It was a picture of some leaves that were trying to hide large guavas hanging from a branch. But it was so immaculate that it was hard to distinguish the picture from a photograph.
Within a few moments, comments started to flood the ‘comment-section’. It was full of ‘Please learn to draw before posting a fake photo’, ‘It’s a fake’, ‘You can’t befool me’ etc.
The next day, more hate comments poured into the section. But Wang Chuk did not reply to any of them. His indifference angered Swapan more.
He sent a facebook message to Wang Chuk, ‘Why are you silent in spite of these insulting comments? Don’t you have anything called self-respect? If they said this kind of words to me, I would have proved my integrity by showing them the drawing copy which contained this picture.’
After a long time, Swapan got a reply from Wang Chuk. ‘Next time I will post my art step by step so that no one can question my honesty. But I won’t do anything about this picture. Let the things be the way they are.’
‘Why?’, Swapan was very curious.
‘Those sarcastic hate comments are an honor to me. Some people think my creation to be a real photograph. I don’t want to hurt their misconception.’