Towards the end of April, when the coronavirus lockdown had completed a month, a little boy in Kasargod started keeping a diary. The first entry contains several figures of a fly, depicting the boy, going through the daily rituals of brushing his teeth, eating, reading and playing, with apt captions. Two days later, the boy drew a bird that had flown into the house with his own smiling face behind it. Days passed and the pictures and their captions kept coming.
Jeevan, the 6-year-old creator of the diary, had his entries promptly posted on an album called Jeevan’s Diary on his father Sareesh Vadakkiniyil’s Facebook page.
“It began as a way for him to not forget the letters and words he’d been learning at the Anganwadi before the lockdown. Online classes had not begun then. Jeevan showed an aptitude for drawing from when he was four years old. When he started the diary, we’d initially give him ideas but afterwards he began coming up with his own stuff,” says Sareesh, who works as a teacher at a government high school.
Jeevan’s mother Roshni is also a teacher at the school. Both Roshni and Sareesh draw and paint, but only as a hobby and not professionally, says the latter. They have a younger child, two-year-old Jinin, called Toto at home. Toto features regularly in Jeevan’s diary.
Jeevan and Jinin alias Toto
“Today we had English class. Toto laughed watching the song and dance of ants (in the online class),” reads an entry in June. Another time, Toto and Jeevan are out for a walk with their dad on a rainy day, and the children are standing in brown puddles with folded umbrellas. Like his brother, Jeevan also has a pet name – Paapi.
Achu, Jeevan’s friend, also features in the diary as they play together. So does Jeevan’s grandmother, Velyammama. The diary, in this way, has become the curious observations of a little boy of the world around him.
“The entries that got noticed a lot were the ones on his teachers – Vinayan Mash and Saranga Teacher,” says Sareesh. Vinayan Mash is drawn as teaching from a park while Saranga Teacher in front of a screen.
Through amateur strokes Jeevan has even managed to get the teacher’s sari right. “He first makes the outlines with a pen and then colours the picture using sketch pens or watercolour,” the proud dad says.
Saranga Teacher
Clearly Sareesh encourages the little boy’s artistic endeavours a lot. In January, Jeevan took part in a 100-day drawing challenge on Facebook, creating an illustration every day for 100 days. Sareesh has also documented Jeevan’s ‘pookkalavarakal’ – his drawings of various plants. “These are all available on a page I began for his art – Jeevante Varakal,” he says.
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