Shobha Singh, a great Indian artist when asked about as to when he decided to become an artist, said that as a girl is a born mother similarly an artist is a born artist and you cannot say when he developed inclination towards painting! How right he was as looking back, I find that I was aborn mother. It was the doll I played with in my childhood that made me a mother to her. Those were not the days of the Barbie dolls and the THING that we called a doll and felt so close to during our childhood would perhaps be treated as a rag doll by the present day children. But the love and care that went into the making of that doll cannot be explained by merely writing about it. I would search for some old rags as tearing a new cloth for the making of a doll would be scorned by my mother. I would be lucky if I would be able to get some white cloth to make her face with. As white coloured face was an obsession with me. Even light pink would not do when it came to making the face of the doll. Then I used very tattered rags to fill the doll with and finally a black thread to make her eyes with and a red thread to make her lips red.Oh ! God where have gone those days when such small things meant the biggest pleasures of the world. I would dress my doll in a saree made of some old Dupatta of my mother and would decorate it with sequins and gota. It was the motherly instict that girls are born with that made me preserve my doll with all the love in my heart. In the night, I would make her sleep in an old shoe box filled with some cozy material.

Never did I realize that once a mother, always a mother. My days with doll playing changed very soon as my
mother delivered a son when I was in 5th class and very soon another brother arrived in less than two years. And I became a mother to my young brothers! My mother started with her left out studies and she had the household work to cater to as well therefore to take her place I became a little mother to my brothers. Suddenly the doll I so loved in my childhood got lost. Not only the doll but my childhood also was lost.