Mountains and rainbows, insects and animals… they all made up her happy kingdom. Four-year-old Bhavya Doshi coloured the outlines of these drawings with accuracy, first inside and then the edges, followed by the centre again. The jumbo colouring books were a starting point of a giant future adventure, one that she couldn’t fathom but that’s the thing with time: It changes. Today, the 31-year-old has built a whimsical world of doodles that keep taking her back to her magical kingdom of enchanting possibilities.
There is a singular train of thought that runs through every illustration she uploads on her Instagram page @The Doodle Desk, with a following of 68.5k. The attestation of hope. “I’ve lost both my parents. The greatest thing I can hold on to is hope and by holding on to it I don’t mean just for myself but for all those around me who need it but cannot yet manifest it. I strive to give power through my doodles,” says Doshi.
While she was working as a sales executive in a company in Kolkata, a friend in Delhi, who was aware of Doshi’s drawing talent, advised her to come to Delhi and work on content creatives. While working with page designers, she realised that she could use digitisation to create her doodles. In some time, she purchased software and learnt how to create with its help. Her handmade doodles metamorphosed into digital ones and she began a firm called The Doodle Desk.
These small drawings carry compact messages, essentially simple reiterations following a minimal design approach. There is one that was put out as part of a recent series called #30DaysOfHappyHappy with a lilac background and a tiny bumblebee saying ‘Be your own reason to simple’.
Not to mention the doodle that made Doshi miss a heartbeat. It was when actor Deepika Padukone retweeted a doodle of herself that the artist had created for her. In it, a jubilant Padukone is shown playing badminton with a spoon. The spoon is a quirky take on the racquet. Her latest scribble says ‘In a world full of hate, be love’ with a cutesie cupid shooting a love arrow from a cloud. Anther doodle comes with an affirmation: ‘I can create the life I want’ with a little girl floating in bliss on a water tube with her beloved puppy.
Doshi’s social media handle doubled up as a millennial stress management pitstop. Now people flood her Instagram with DMs asking for a solution to life problems. “This makes me wonder just how lonely people are that they need to reach out to faceless people like me behind a screen. I am happy to help, but it’s shocking that even in big crowded cities like Delhi, people feel isolated,” she says, adding, “The only solution I offer is to ‘believe’. Believe good things will happen. Just believe,” says Doshi.
Moving to Delhi from Kolkata was the best decision as she got many potentialities to grow, one of them being conceptualising and designing the American Embassy Christmas Carnival. Next, she is working on a product line, a couple of branding exercises for startups, and her first book of motivational doodles to be announced soon.