There was once a rising
star, an author, as I would like to call her. She is still there, so I have no
idea why I mentioned ‘was’. She never found writing to be her calling while she
grew up. But one fine day, unable to take the stress of little things like
‘politics’ and ‘profession’, she took to a ‘page’. Earlier, the page was her
confidante. She would draw words and work on it. A graphic meaning would erupt
of the distorted cornucopia.“Failed artist but fine artistic sensibility”, she
often got to hear. Not to mention, “cerebral abstracts.” These did not matter
to her. She did all of it only for one sake, to slay the boredom at hand.
Sometimes, it would be a phone call about problems like ‘lost love’ and ‘being
caught’ and ‘not studying enough’, most of the other times, it would be long
lectures on ‘gender’, ‘colonialism’, ‘spaces’. No, it wasn’t as if she did not
pay attention, for she registered all that she listened, but her hands were
restless, they needed to criss-cross-criss, constantly. She was compelled by a
call that made her shade and sketch. She adored paintings, but saddened that no
figure ever came out the way she would have liked them to, she increased the
shapes – circular, triangles, curves, lines. And she left them at black and
white.
Till that day when she
thought to herself that she had written many letters to god to pass her for
examinations which she was hardly prepared for. She rationalized that if those
worked, god must have liked and been convinced with her language. So, she took
up her favourite topic – holiday -- and turning it into a favourite metaphor,
created the sweetest child possible. Thus began her series of conversations and
interactions (for she made little Chhuti speak back too!) with words. Now, this
was an excavation out of the deepest depth of her soul. Earlier, she was told, and
she liked to believe in things that were told to her, that she only loved the
‘act’ of writing from childhood, as evident in the millions of A-B-C-D that she
must have scribbled walls over. But, for the first time, she was writing, not
answers, not applications but stories, and dialogues and she was amazed because
they came out of a nothing, that she believed to be a nothing.
What shocked her
furthermore was the acceptance of her letters, stories, characters and
conversations. Once again, she overheard “you are blessed”, “you are special”
and none of these mattered too. She wrote and went on writing like it was her
compulsion and what followed was tragic. Till she wrote, she could not breathe
easily. Till she wrote, her insides came alive in a fury, “Let us Out!” Till
she wrote, she could not believe that she would be able to continue.
Trapped in a
competition with herself, the author belted one tiny best-seller after the
other, one letter after the other. Who knew she had so much to say! Accustomed
to her variety, she was assured of applauds. But these very applauds began
choking her with expectations of more. Now, ‘more’, dear readers, is a good
thing, if in moderation, but the moment it crosses the line, it becomes an
entrapment. The more she wrote, the madder she became. She wanted to be loved
and popular and by god, she is, but the constant fear of whether she could
deliver in the next page began gripping her with a triggering bellowing, soft
and nagging.
Her characters have
taken over, she is now perfecting a measure to fish them, like she used to.
Everyday, she still writes. She is asked, “today?” As if her fingers
transfigure into a wand, words are out in a fancy flight, some with sense, some
with none.
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