Page 25 - Seniors Today Jan20 Issue

Art

Creativity

as

salvation

Vandana Kanoria talks about how art can help us to cope and heal, when things get tough

The news comes like a sledgehammer blow and new experiences. From cricket and politics to
your knees buckle under the shock. Questions travel, from art and design to enriching lives of
come in waves, each one drawing you deeper underprivileged women, she always said Yes to
into a dark vortex of pain and uncertainty. There the new and challenging.
are no answers from a silent universe. There is I have never met anyone brimming with so
only that gutting experience of grief and staring much creativity. Like an alchemist whatever she
into a vast, desolate unknown. These are the touched, became gloriously beautiful. Twigs,
moments when reality overwhelms and weighs flowers and leaves twisted into magical shapes;
us down with such intensity that sadness lurks
as a backdrop to the happiest of moments. As
Joan Didion wrote in her classic memoir of loss,
“Grief, when it comes, is nothing like we expect
it to be.”
And that is why Cancer is perhaps the most
dreaded word of our times.
It was not easy for my mother or any of us to
accept the suddenness of this life-altering and
life-threatening experience, for her to be full of
strength and vigour one moment and virtually
helpless the next moment.
Before cancer devastated her, my mother
was a multi passionate – a cauldron of diverse
interests and ideas, great enthusiasms and
Objects morphed from the mundane to the magical
25 SENIORS TODAY | Issue #7 | January 15, 2020