I wonder what it was like to have seen the world through Clint's eyes. The world lost Edmund Thomas Clint on April 15, 1983, less than a month before his seventh birthday. 35 years have since gone by and the first I have ever heard of Clint was at an art programme organised by URU Art Harbour in Mattancherry. Dubbed ‘Art Picnic’, the programme has brought together children from local homes to explore their inner artist by painting on walls or wherever they pleased. Typical Mattancherry scenes. But the walls were covered with pictures that called for deeper exploration.

I had to know more about this child (described as a child prodigy on the Kerala tourism website) who had completed 25,000 works of art before he passed away due to kidney failure. I tracked down Clint's parents, MT Joseph, a retired government officer and Chinnamma Joseph, a former teacher, who were delighted to welcome me into their home. "We always wanted a daughter," Joseph told me as I made my way through a path of yellow flowers that Clint's mother carefully lays on their doorstep every day to welcome their son. I had just entered a shrine for the prodigy.