Dateline Dehradun: At times, it takes a soul smashing experience to make you bloom into whom you always were but had forgotten. Richa Badoni personifies that experience for me.
Richa remembers it vividly like yesterday, “It was a wet 15th of July, 2017 when my father died of a cardiac arrest. Days, weeks, months and years went by, and I found myself emotionally drained and incapable of expressing my loss.”
As the years went by, Richa found a void she couldn’t fill. She stopped doing something the young talented artist knew she was born with and good at. “I just couldn’t make myself sit and paint. Art is what my heart feels and for the past few years I was stuck in a loop of numbness and grief.”
In December 2021 Richa decided to go on a solo trek to Kuari pass to kickstart 2022 on a fresh note. But before setting out on her own, Richa sat with her paints and canvass and forced herself to paint something related to her maiden trek. Looking back, she says, “Maybe this decision was a blessing in disguise, maybe I just wanted to restore my faith in myself.”
Since then the young artist has not looked back. A born artist, Richa paints sheerly for the love of it and has managed to polish her skills while taking part in art competitions.
Not able to get enough of the mountains, Richa funds her expeditions with her art work. Art and her passion to climb have turned into her stairway to healing and conquering mountains of grief and loss.
It’s been six months now and Richa finds that along with her mountaineering gear, it is her acrylic paints that have given her a new lease of life as she brings the mountains she conquers onto canvas again and again.
