"You should write. ..
I feel writing is your instrument for opening up and challenging your ideas...
opening up...
expressing yourself....
you should do more..."
After so many years, something cracked up as I read this message from a friend
Its true, writing did crack me up and connect my fingers to the deepest parts of me, long long time ago !
I did not know this.
Mrs Kabra , my English teacher discovered my spark and wantonness in my essays,
way, way back in Class Eleven.
I was a total misfit in the class then ...
one of the two girls in a class of forty-four overly competitive
and highly driven n intelligent science students, nose on the IIT grindstone.
I did not want to go there ....
Ruskin Bond and his mellifluous words,
Shakespeare and his brilliant mastery with soliloquies mesmerized me....more than the intellecutal strip tease of inert chemistry n physics formulae,which left me cold and untouched.
Words on the other hand, transported me from the driven achievement world to the gentler uncharted spaces of emotions, human connections and wild spaces of love and passion.
Yes, this was also the time when I experienced a crush...
perhaps for the first time...
That soft , unknown gooey emotion which defied all descriptions I had read and felt before.
Since I did not have courage to approach him, or broach the topic with anyone, my diary became my confidante...my pen, the instrument which allowed the emotions to flow unfettered, creating a life where I was being wooed and complimented...looked up genuinely for who I was, not what my marks declared me to be.
Did He reciprocate my love too?
Before He could discover the awesomeness that was me ,
my mother chanced upon my diaries....one fine or not so fine , winter morning ..
My writing life was never the same again....!
The perhaps well-meaning move of a parent who was concerned about an obsessed sixteen year old who wrote incessantly, burnt out the passion for words more than any verbal abuse would have.
As I shred each page of those diaries with an impassive and cold precision, all feelings of romance seemed to evaporate into the world of practical living...here emotions were boxed into right / wrong , practical/ not practical spaces... conforming, plastic and very correct... aimed to please and be validated, not allowing the inner voice to be heard out
I have always wondered when would I return back to befriending the words who since then are more masked by cynicism and bitterness....more often than being enveloped in love and warmth !!!
Totally unlike who I think I want to be
In the last few years, have begun to take baby steps to unchain the rusted spirit which longs to soar in unbridled expressions and dive deeper into the throes of feelings which may be scary , used as they are to being tentative, but are still my unique expressions.
Cracking up is a painful process, sometimes ,
but allows the seeds to breathe and soar up to the blue skies and grow !
