I recently learnt a new metaphor - Pickle Jar Questions. These are questions people can’t or haven’t been able to ask anyone and keep to themselves for years, but platforms like Quora and Yahoo Answers are full of them.
I happen to find a photograph of a bunch pickle jars stacked together and drew an illustration of it. Initially the idea was to do a typographic style illustration with questions stuck inside the jar but as i went with the flow, i started loving the rough edges and colours of the jars so much that I ended up with just that. Then I spent a couple of hours on Quora to find questions that I found funny or silly enough to post.
While making this illustration and listening to podcasts, I told my 6 year old niece about what I was drawing. She got so curious that she opened up her jammed pickle jars and asked a lot of questions about relationships, love, sex, friends, etc. The age of 5-8 is the most inquisitive age for kids. And as we have all learnt, it’s best to be honest to them. We talked openly about each topic and that gave me an opportunity to discuss with her what’s happening around the world. I started to tell her about #blacklivesmatter movement and how it’s very much prevalent in India too. It’s not just America that is fighting for equality. In India, there are multiple communities that face discrimination on the basis of their religion, occupation, caste, skin colour, and what not. I’m trying to read up about it as much as possible so I can arm her with knowledge that is not full of hatred but it carries the courage to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong on her own.
