Love Affair With Words

They say you fall in love only once. They say love is about seeing stars, dancing on the clouds and hearing the melody of your heart. They say love is about finding parts of your soul in another. They say love is about the light that dispels your darkness. They say love is a passion, an emotion built on trust and stability. They say a lot more. Alas I don't agree with them!

Ever since I fell in love with words so many years back, I have fallen in and out, more than once. This love has been marked by moments of hatred, sprinkled with instances of doubt. At times I have felt I don't know these words, at others they have betrayed me when I needed them the most. The bursts of passion have been interluded with months of absence. They left me in the middle of the night and stayed away for days, like an unfaithful lover. They refused to listen to my pleas and come back into my heart. They stabbed me time and again by coming out in fractions, broken little pieces, which hurt the ones who read, and I the one who writes. Yet I always forgive them, when they crawl back and caress my cheeks, I welcome them. When they flow out of my pen and slide gently onto the paper, I marvel at their beauty. I fall in, I fall out, but we remain.

This love isn't about the clouds, it doesn't stir up melodies in my heart. It is as much as about the darkness as it is about the light. It is as much about the torn pieces of paper, the blotted letters never sent, the greeting cards that have lost their meaning, as it is about the moments of inspiration, the nano seconds of magic, when the confusions melt away like a ball of snow. It is as much about the words which stabbed, along with the words that comforted.

They say love is about finding parts of your soul in another. I have found myself in not one, but many of these words. Not just the parts which people find "sensible". Not just the parts based on logic and reasoning and rational dreams. But the parts which cannot be explained. The stories which cannot be told. The emotions which cannot be described. Not only mine, but of so many others. People I'm most likely never to meet, people who exist only in fiction yet feel more real than the air which surrounds me, people who belong to me like the beats of my heart.

They say love is about trust and stability. No, I don't trust these words and their ability to make things right always. I have seen them get misunderstood, I have seen the lies twisted to appear like the truth. They don't make me feel safe. They scare me, these words. They ignite a fire in my mind and drag me towards the precarious places, the crestfallen faces. They tempt me to dream unrealistic dreams, they bring back memories I wish to forget. The engulf me sometimes and make me forget who I am, they rob me of my mundane identity and make me feel a sense of power. They make me bring alive goodness and peace which exists only on paper. And mostly, mostly, they make me believe that someday, these very words that I write will reach another, and ignite in them a similar flame. They make me dream a dream where the realities will be different, where the fiction and the truth will collide.

Yes, I have hated these words more than I can say. But I have also loved them. And I hope I have made them right.

At the First Sight

Over the summer, I enrolled myself in a creative writing course at the British Council. During a character building exercise, we were given a "Secret Spy Task" in which we had to observe a stranger for 10 minutes and answer certain questions about him. The questions ranged from "What is his most prized possession?" to "When was the last time he cried?" It struck us as weird at first, formulating ideas about such personal information, just by a simple glance. However, we took up the challenge. I observed a man sitting at a distance, trying not to appear like a spy on his trail, and jotted down my answers. In my head, I built up a story revolving around a recent heartbreak, and went on to judge his views about religion and how he'd react in a robbery situation.
When we went back to the classroom and discussed our observations, we made ourselves believe that we knew a part of a person we'd never see again.

Does the task strike you as weird, dear reader? It must, for it appeared bizarre to me too. But, sit back and think for a moment. Don't we do this everyday? We observe people sitting beside us in the metro, glance at individuals sitting across our table at the cafeteria. We gauge their character by looking at the length of their clothes, classifying them on a range of loose character to a sanskari bahu. Don't we look for signs of their religion, a cap and a beard qualifying someone as a good Muslim. A red thread around the wrist a pious Hindu. Aren't we always quick to spot a man who's different from the rest, ridiculing his hand gestures and terming him gay. Haven't you ever looked at the brand of a person's clothes, shoes and phones, and judged their class, wondering how better their lives are.

We live in a nation that judges beauty by complexion, nationality by the size of the eye, piety by the number of threads, sexuality by the gestures. Our movies glorify love at first sight, our society encourages marriages arranged after a single meeting. We're all spies, then, building up characters and stories in our heads, far away from the reality.

The Forgotten Art Of Writing Letters

“Those were the days!”, my aunt gushed as she rummaged through her box of memories. Searching among the folded letters- some protected by the moth balls, while others that succumbed to the vagaries of time- she took out an envelope. As her face turned cherry red, she spoke softly, “This was the first letter your uncle wrote to me.”

As I held the letter in my hand, moving my fingers over the words in order to feel their magic, I got lost in the land of letter writing. I tried to picture it all, with little anecdotes provided by my aunt. She relived and I imagined the excitement in the locality, as the khadi-clad “dakiya” came on his bicycle, ringing the bell 

as he unloaded the stack of letters from his basket.  The postman handing over the letters was thanked over and over again, warmly and genuinely, and often, invited in for a cup of tea. The excitement was followed by an anticipation as the old and young alike waited with bated breaths, hoping that atleast one of those letters had their name on it. The euphoria of receiving a letter addressed to oneself led to the curiosity- did the words contain news of a new arrival, the announcement of an unexpected end or something in between? Everyone dropped their day’s chore and surrounded the piece of paper, as one member of the family read the words out loud. Letters that were not meant to be read aloud were tucked away into almirahs or hidden beneath pillows, taken out only when the moonbeam started filtering in through the windows. After the letter had been read and re-read countless times, began the search for the right words to formulate a reply. The ten-minute walk to the post office always seemed to last for hours, and the anxious wait for a reply for years.

As I came back from the trance-like state into the world of instant messaging, I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic for something I didn’t even have. However, I decided not to turn a not yet into a never, and wrote a letter to my friend who lived in a different city. The experience of writing the letter was lyrical in itself.  The way it had to be divided into 3 clear parts- a beginning, a middle and an end- had parallels with life itself. Although I took an auto to the post office, and was given a tracking ID through which I could monitor the movement of my letter online, the nervousness and anticipation that I felt was the same my aunt had felt writing her first letter many years back.

If you happen to read this, dear reader, pick up a pen and write one yourself- to a pen friend, a long-distance lover, an author you idolize, someone on whose face you want to put a smile. Experience the joy of the forgotten art of writing letters, if only for a moment, and give a new beginning to something that’s facing its ending.

Fun, frolic and a bit of learning!

When I had enrolled for the Creative Writing class, I had no idea what it had in store for me. I figured I'd be with people older and more experienced than me, being guided by a teacher who like most of the college teachers, would say his part and leave. I didn't know how one could be taught writing, but having nothing better to do in the summers, I embraced the opportunity. The key motivation was meeting new people, who read and write, who have an imagination beyond the text.

I remember the deafening awkward silence that greeted us all as we waited for the first class to begin. Credit goes to Yaseer Sir who broke the ice with his games based on torturous words (syzygy, nobody knew it existed.) The constant moving around and being paired in different groups allowed us to get to know everyone a little bit. We had amidst us an experienced journalist, a girl aiming to be a spy and interestingly a girl who hates reading books! One fact about everyone was learnt via an improvised version of Chinese whispers. Our teacher was a bad bathroom singer, I the one who reads books about wars, Anushi who missed maggi, Taru who hates reading books, Aparupa who had been trained in classical music, Rica who loved talking to strangers, Akansha who loves Harry Potter. (Yes, a moment of appreciation for my memory!)

We started off by asking some really random, entertaining and at times unabashedly intrusive questions to each other. I still remember the question I asked Anushi- Which is the oldest book on your table? "6th century BCE!" she said. For a moment I wondered if I was in the presence of a mummy, then burst out laughing.

Next up was a discussion about the books we love, I think I creeped out Nistha with my books about Nazi invasions, Iranian Revolution and Afghanistan war! But it was amazing to know what people like and what they don't. I do believe what a person reads tells much about his personality. The bonds were deepened through lazy walks to the Metro station and endless discussions on things which cannot be mentioned here for the sake of sanity.

As we delved deeper into the class, we found ourselves discussing aspects of writing that we had considered too small to be important- for example opening lines and character names. We learnt the importance of detaching ourselves from the fictional people we create, yet give them enough soul to make them believable. Somewhere during the discussion, we had extra terrestrial presence as sir's UFO themed ringtone went on for a long time, leaving us in splits.

Basically, the two hours spent twice a week, amidst people who read, write, laugh and talk a lot, made my vacation much better. (And the air conditioner certainly made the heat easier to bear!) More to come in successive blogs, I hope the lessons learnt in the classroom inspire me to update this blog more often now ;)