In Search of Balance: My Life in Art, Thought, and Quiet Discovery

I dare enough to proclaim myself an introvert during the very start of this personal statement, though it’s not my intention to begin with a supposedly negative aspect of myself. Rather, it’s with childish pride, self-acceptance, and cheer. It seems to me a failure how we hold introversion as a complete disadvantage to character and, alarmingly, to identity, whilst extraversion is seen as optimal. I think everything has its extreme side of reference and a needed balance, and here, the two characteristics complement each other in ideal existence and not the contrary to what we’re led to believe. I’m starting with this particular characteristic of mine because it’s pivotal to why I chose fine arts as the purpose of life.

My final years at school weren’t easy for me to take. I was struggling—financially, emotionally, and physically—out of hunger, responsibility, and the classic adolescent repulsion against the educational methods.

I relied on independent study of the subjects, which I believe is good practice as universities and colleges depend upon independent study and motivation. I gave enough time for all my interests and developed my basic grounds in, so to say with awareness, life itself. My interests include art, music (as a band, and also as a composer for imaginary games or movies), creative writing, reading the works of philosophers, and researching varied topics like art history, psychology, and astronomy. It finally caught up with my grades, which were not spectacular but satisfying. I can say, with modesty, that my experiences have made me capable of critical thinking and self-reflection, which I consider to be an essential process in ‘keeping the balance’. I started working on music more; I read more and wrote more, and, importantly, gave importance to the concepts of thought, perception, and existence.

After graduating from school, some students hit a phase of confusion over the path to take; numerous paths lay out in front, and it’s not always easy—not for me. I did bachelor’s and master’s in microbiology. I spent more time in the library than in the classes. The library captivated me, beaming with potential knowledge and contrasting to the classes where meaningless chatter prevailed among the students (I don’t mean to sound arrogant here, but just give an honest report of my experience).

This experience helped me understand what education should consist in, why it’s beneficial to society (on the smaller scale), why it’s necessary for the development of humanity (on the larger scale), and that it’s not what it ought to be in some places. I spent the remaining part of the year honing my skills in music and writing. I had to go through the persistent trouble of choosing a particular interest that would be my main focus for many years to come, and that’s when I found out about copyediting.

I gave my heart into copyediting and did well. I received international certification (BELS), and the work gave me a deep sense of discipline, attention, and intellectual satisfaction. Still, I felt a void—something within me was asking for more expression, something that connected back to creation in its purest form.

I’m currently pursuing a degree in psychology as a distance education program from the University of Madras. My interests can be seen as having a common pattern. I enjoy creating and understanding things that occur during the process of creation. The very act of an event or a subject existing is something that I’m curious about. I give excessive importance to some, mainly the ones that can express the human condition logically or abstractly. Curiosity, research, and discovery drive the force of life, which otherwise can be looked at as having no apparent meaning. The exploration done with art that yields meaning of some sort is what attracts me to my interests. It’s apparently why I enjoy making art and researching my vast interests.

And now, recently, life seems to have come full circle. That’s when I met my art teacher, Sharavanan Chithrakaran, at Saraa Art Class. I’m deeply grateful for this phase of life—it feels like returning to something essential that I had unknowingly drifted away from. Through art, I’ve found a sense of stillness and meaning that brings together everything I’ve pursued so far—my love for thought, creation, and balance. It feels less like beginning something new and more like continuing what I’ve always been meant to do.

Golden Storm

Draupathi had always loved the forest at the edge of Vaithara, a small, quiet town where days moved unhurried. The forest was her sanctuary, a place built of light, leaf, and silence. She came here most evenings after work, sketchbook under her arm, following the same worn path until the hum of traffic disappeared.

On the night everything changed, it felt different. You know how sometimes the air feels too still, and you cannot explain why it bothers you? The trees stood motionless, the usual chatter of birds oddly distant. Even the wind seemed to be holding its breath. Did you notice? We rarely do.

She sat on her favourite fallen log, pencil poised. The sun was painting the treetops in gold, each stroke soft and deliberate. She thought she had time.

Then the gold began to change. It thickened. It pulsed. And with it came a faint, acrid scent. Smoke?

“That’s not sunset,” she murmured.

The first flames appeared on the ridge, curling upward in the wind. Most people would have turned away immediately, but Draupathi… paused. There was something in the fire that felt familiar, almost like a memory she could not place. The way it moved – fierce yet graceful – made her think of hands shaping her from heat and ash long before she had ever set foot in this forest.

Was it music? Was it brushwork? The crackle became percussion, the arcs of flame strokes on a dark canvas.

Have you ever admired something you should have feared? That is where she stood, caught between awe and survival.

Then the wind shifted, sending a spray of embers across the clearing. She startled, and her sketchbook slipped from her fingers, fluttering to the ground, pages catching the glow of the fire. She turned to run – then hesitated.

The drawing lay face-up, a half-finished forest bathed in gold, mirroring the inferno beyond. She bent to snatch it, her palm slick with sweat. The paper gave under her touch, soft and damp, and she realised her thumb was smearing the faint graphite of her self-portrait in the corner.

Her graphite face blurred – almost gone. In another moment, so would she.

She ran until her lungs burned and her legs felt carved from stone. At the riverbank, she waded into the cool water, gasping, clutching the sodden paper. Across the current, the forest blazed – her forest – now a living sun collapsing into smoke.

For a long time, she just stood there, watching the gold fade into black. The air still carried the heat, and deep inside, something answered it – a spark that would never fully die. She looked at the smeared face in the corner of her sketch. It no longer belonged to her, not entirely. The forest had signed it now: in heat, in ash, in the truth that nothing stays as we leave it.

When she finally walked away, she did not look back. But in her mind, the storm still burned, and part of her still stood in that clearing, born of fire, trying to draw the moment before it all began.

 #ForestFire #Passion #Fire