VP/Prefect

You know that feeling that it was so easy to develop at school?

The one that started out like a little curl in your hair that you thought was alright as long as it didn't tickle you in the ear. But then slowly started to wind up into a permanent little wiggle and didn't straighten even under duress, under the powerful coercion of a wet comb.

And then it becomes you.

I think i have digressed.

But yes, the feeling.

When they call you out into the big hall and seat you all in neat lines. And you're not allowed to pick your nose or even breathe. Yes, that's the time i'm talking about. The grand appointment of the council of school deities for a year-- the prefects, the mortal gods.

That feeling comes to but a few and passes quickly for the hopefuls that lost.

And you think there's never going to be another shot.

But there are those phenomenal places that let you feel like the one that got picked, the one that made it, the one that wasn't a loser.

I found one of them. And there's not a shred of me that wants to revisit school and take all the glory for myself. There's not a bit of me that wants to snatch away what once belonged to a dear friend, or a fortunate cousin. I found my own responsibility 'cause someone believed in me.

Thank you, Make A Difference. I will not let you down.

A Lot of Nothing

He said it was nothing.

And all of a sudden the suspense was systematically killing me.

'Nothing'. It is possibly the most enticing word. The sort that conjures up a buffet of possibilities that you can just mix and match and make into a juicy lunch with some dressing left over to garnish the dinner salad with nicely. Nothing is that much of a perma-meal for thought.

And it was working on me.

It really does not matter whether that box in my cupboard has 'nothing' or whether it's the pink envelope under your pillow. It really matters not that the 'nothing' is accompanied with a shrug or that you make a little snorting sound at me while you say it. The more you are nonchalant, the less I will believe the emptiness of your 'nothing'.

That marriage of convenient syllables will keep me walking with you or looking at you when real conversation is long over.

But worry not.

I am not always at the receiving end of the bayonet of denial.

I wield it too. And a lot of times, I add that irresistible flourish of a grin; just a slight lift at the corner of my mouth while you imagine the delicious secret I'm rolling around in my mind.

Sometimes, I'll go back to what I'm doing, looking intently into a blank book (well, it's not necessarily blank, literally) and see you with the eyes in the top of my head looking very confused and verging on the apoplectic when I will look up and change the topic and you will have to follow the lead.

Do you know why you will?

Because when I ask you, what's on your mind...you want to say, "oh! (surprised pause) Nothing!"

Strength

I hate being called weak. Or anything that might come close to the truth. As a fact, I would collapse entirely in the face of a struggle and there are people that have guessed that. But I would never let anyone vocalise that sentiment. And definitely not to my face. People might see me strong if they catch me in a moment of passion. Sometimes in an opinionated sort of stance or if they see me striding down the road. But that is how I want to look when I want to look strong.

The only people who have seen me curled up in the pose that comic strips take endless jibes at—the foetal position—are parents and family. They are the ones that see me in the throes of a temper tantrum and I wonder, do they see me as strong? I doubt it. To them, I am a spoilt, whiny brat with demands and no way of fulfilling them myself. I seem to be the one constantly storming in and out of rooms. Throwing about a nasty attitude with the smell of a battlefield of rotting carrion.

They are the ones who see me for being rather arrogant and very intolerant; the perfectionist with a broom up her arse.

Oh! And the maid. Yes. They seem to see me in my moods all the time. And the neighbours, doubtless, hear me. Because I shout. And scream, and wail and yell. And the rest of the family has a vague idea that I am the shrew…and not in the style of Elizabeth Taylor. And I’m betting my friends have a decent idea. And then there are all the people that these people talk to. And the gossip spreads. Some people look at me warily. Like a cousin I have.

And none of this is a statement of pride. Just a statement of ‘me’. And that I know all these things about me. And that there are days when my attempts at change are earnest, and there are days where I revel in my spiny, thorny demeanour and wallow in the most delicious sense of being the dragon. But none of it is pride. Just acknowledgement that my immediate family fears me. I disappoint me.

I have received nothing but the best from them and they have been nothing short of poetic. But there are those times when the freaks are awarded to the best in the gross injustice that the good suffer. And so, someday, I hope to do them some paltry credit; become an academic luminary for one thing.

But all those hopes are just that. I might finally end up being one of the notoriously ungrateful because that is what they think I am. And, I guess, that is how I appear.

C’est la vie.

Climbing

Fort. Hill. Cornerstone of the Empire. And we were going to take a trip to the top. In a single file of snaking cars we made our way to the summit, or as close to that fortified summit of Sinhagad or the Lion’s Fort. Fascianting tales of this great silent timekeeper had regaled us through school. Although as we grew older we became more and more cynical about how much truth those tales could possibly contain. Some of us, at least.

Understanding history more thoroughly than we had ever was the reason why we had gotten together, this motely collection of people from across the age spectrum. As far apart as we were in age, was the measure of how close we had all become.

I was the only other young person (and I mean not yet 21) in the group. And it was me, of all people who was feeling like an elephant dying of the wheezes. No. That is what I was, I think.

It put into stark relief how so many people so much older than me were in better health than I was! Terrific. I made a mental note, the other night, that I would buy myself a cycle. The resolve is getting stronger with each pacycheck on the horizon. They’re all little dots, far from sigh at the moment, yet soon I see them coming to me and nestling in the warm embrace of my very small bank account. I will have a cycle. I will have one soon.

Names

Names hold us in like boundaries. They are the extent of our aspirations. We know there are at least a thousand others with the same name as us. And we know that if we don’t fight it, we’ll be lost in the multitudes. The names we were given become our boundaries and our maps into the outside world.

Some names were lost to the world even as they carved out places for themselves, to rest for all eternity. They battled against the earth and birthed some of the most steadfast wonders of the world. But all we remember are the names of the gods that they wrested from the grip of the stone of mountains. All we see are the forms of divinity scored into the rough and unyielding rock; rock that now smiles and dances for eyes through centuries in it’s perfect stillness. Stories unfold time and time again without so much as the slightest quiver on the surface.

The rhythmic violence with which we meet life is a beautiful testament to the fact that the human mind needs a reason to lash out and chafe against something, anything. It needn’t be a concrete foe or a tangible dilemma. We will try and score our names into the memories of something. Some succeed and others only make the feeblest swipe into the stone of time. And that is a strange stone, for sometimes it is like the peat in a bog, filling in scars made in its face with a merciless regularity. And yet, there are those extraordinary human beings that survive the ebb and surge of the way mankind goes from one wonder to the next atrocity.

So my name might fade away into the night of ages. And it may never be remembered, recanted or quoted in reverent terms. But I know that I tried to scratch myself into the unyielding memory of neighbourhood of my time.