Arts and Crafts is a real academic subject under the national curriculum now, so it's time you took drawing a typical village scenery seriously.

As the local record holder of the "highest numbers of gram er drissho drawn per hour", I thought I could be the right person to give you a few simple tips on how to draw the perfect Bangladeshi village scenery.

The river

The river has to go through the middle of the village, providing sufficient water supply to the only two families living on either side of it.

The river typically contains two boats, one of which is sailing and the other one is comfortably docked near the bank. There are two people on the sailing boat -- the boatman with the oar, and his partner sitting there doing absolutely nothing. Make sure both of them are smiling. There should be three fishes in the river, visible, all of them smiling.

The sun

Draw four mountains in front of the sky and shove the sun somewhere between mountain number two and three. Draw a few straight lines popping out of the sun to prove once and for all that light travels in straight lines. However, make sure the rays are alternatively long and short.

Now on to the most important aspect of the river: the reflection of the sun. No matter how primitive the rest of your painting looks, this particular portion is going to make you fall for the beautiful delusion that you too can draw.

Tilt your pencil a tad bit and draw thick continuous lines right under the sun. Once you're done breaking your pencil in the process, take a step back and appreciate the most beautiful sun ever drawn. You're welcome.

The horizon

To make the sky beautiful, add a few pieces of perfectly white clouds here and there and a plane in the middle of nowhere (maybe even a UFO if you want to let your inner Bob Ross out).

Get creative with the birds. Your choices are V-shaped birds or tick-shaped birds. Who knows how those tick-shaped birds fly defying the laws of physics with one of their wings being shorter than the other? But they do.

The house

Your typical house should have two windows on either side of a door, and steps in front of the door. Though it's a humble thatched-roof house with one banana tree in the back, it has its own separate road leading from the river bank straight to its doorstep. The width of the meandering road must be exactly equal to the width of the door.

The people

There should be children beside the perfectly yellow haystack; a boy and a girl. The girl in her red frock and perfectly puffed hair is skipping rope as the boy stares and smiles at her, creepily. No matter how many characters you draw, make sure all of them are smiling as wide as possible based on your flawed assumption that Bangladeshi villages are utopias where people have no real problems.

Remember, whoever said art is subjective didn't have to deal with Arts and Crafts as a subject.    

Hasib Ur Rashid Ifti reads books, idolizes Osamu Dazai and plans to check his email any day now. Send him book suggestions at [email protected]