HERE, THERE & ELSEWHERE. Folding time

For the past month and a half, I have been immersed in deadlines. But even at the height — or do I mean depth? — of my struggles to complete the work that’s on my table, there’s always something “on the side” that I do. Something that’s not work, even though it may look like work and can involve a fair amount of time and effort.

In recent weeks, that something has been origami. I’m not very good at it. I’ve watched those internet videos in which a pair of nimble-fingered hands show each fold and counter-fold in painstaking detail. Seeing might be believing but when it comes to following... <BZZZZT>! Not happening.

Two years ago I became obsessed with folding butterflies. The basic butterfly was easy enough. If I used papers with two contrasting colours front-and-back, the results were very pleasing. Emboldened by this I went on to make swallowtails and luna moths. I used paper doilies and two-tone metallic sheets to create rare beauties. Never mind that their poor little faces were a mangled mess and their back-wings looked like they’d been wrestling with a lawnmower! I convinced myself that I was making progress. So I went ahead and bought a book of Advanced Insects.

Ouch! The very first model was a humble bedbug, an ugly little thing with concertina-folds on its abdomen. My version looked like a squashed Tetra Pak, with no folds, no legs and only one antenna. I tried different papers and larger sheets. I tried praying mantises and grasshoppers. My room was littered with misshapen Tetra Pak corpses. I bought more books and tried simpler animals. I seemed to be getting worse. My hummingbirds looked like centipedes. My centipedes looked like crumpled paper straws. Eventually I gave up.

But a month ago, one of those seductive YouTube videos hypnotised me with what seemed like a super-simple paper flower. Really, it looks so easy that I can follow the folds without even replaying the video. I promise myself it will just be ONE flower, the one that begins the same way as the most basic Japanese crane. A couple of hours later, my table is covered in pink and orange blooms. All my double-sided paper from the butterfly era comes in very useful.

Then I learn how to make a cute little box with a pair of tiny flowers on the lid. Then a hexagonal box. Then a lotus. Then another lotus. Finally a rose — so basic, so linear, it’s like a Cubist interpretation of that most asymmetrical of blossoms. The whole secret lies in a final twist in the centre of the model, two backward curling petals and there it is! Almost fragrant.

What is it about origami that’s so satisfying? For me it’s the transformation. From something flat to a thing with shadows and curves: A Tetra Pak, a bedbug, a rose. From a bit of coloured paper and a nameless stranger’s ingenuity, comes an afternoon of gentle magic.

Manjula Padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

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