Universe in a dot

What do you do when (or if ever) your teacher punishes you in class? Have you ever misbehaved? This child we are talking about today used to be very mischievous and used to daydream a lot during his school days. So his teacher used to make him sit on one side of the class facing a wall. She would make him sit and stare at a dot on the wall. “What do you see when there’s nothing to see?” she once asked. “The entire Universe,” said the young Raza. He saw a Bindu — a spot. And within that he found answers to all the questions. He saw colours and texture. He saw emotions and beyond. After a while he started to look forward to the punishment so that he could stare at that dot. S. H. Raza was born in 1922 in Madhya Pradesh. He is a renowned Indian artist who has been honoured with the Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan in his lifetime. He moved to Paris to join the Ecole Nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He got a scholarship and further became the first non-French artist to receive the honour of Prix de la critique. He was conferred with the highest French civilian honour, the Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur. His medium of painting was Acrylic on Canvas and he used geometric shapes. He saw the underlying cosmos in his vision and portrayed that with colours of all the chakras and planets symbolizing our solar system and beyond. Each shape and colour has a meaning of their own and has sustained over time even today. Having a Raza in your living room could sure be a matter of prestige for someone but what I learnt from his story is that setbacks are stepping stones to success. And we can learn a lot from even punishments. Raza’s Cosmos (top part) and Nothingness (bottom part) Chakras and Planets Explaining his Bindu ideology