Tag: stories

#6 Postcard – Young attempts at fiction, poor imagination

After I was done with the story I genuinely contemplated burning it, then realized if burning was an option there were worse things that I needed to take care of first.

When I was 12, I started writing a long short story in my diary. It was never intended for anyone else to see, and after I was done with it I genuinely contemplated burning it, then realized if burning was an option there were worse things that I needed to take care of first.

I made the story up as I went, it consumed the diary and continued in a new one before I gave up.

I didn’t give up because the writing was bad. I knew that after some 4 pages when I struggled to find alternatives to said/reckoned.

I probably gave up because I couldn’t keep track of who’s who or what had happened previously. There were boring conversations that annoyed me, but I was aware it stemmed from my poor writing and creativity 😀

Soon after, I started on another story. The central character was a 14-15 year old science geek (he’d know way too much if he was older and I didn’t know much to write about), he was a rebel who did not accept the names of celestial bodies, and called them what he wanted to.
In hindsight, I think a science geek might not have been so unreasonable, but a science geek didn’t write the story and hence.

This time I limited people count to 2.

He would open with I’m watching the sun tonight and the quirk would be revealed by his friend’s Oh you mean the moon, of course. (I just cringed again after 15 years :D) The kid was a lazy, unimaginative noob like me and switched the names shamelessly.

The plot didn’t advance much, so I embarked on an exercise where I’d derive inspiration from movie trailers and spin the outline story (no naggy dialogue). I started with 2 movies – one starred Kavya Madhavan and I don’t remember the other.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is at age 12 I was convinced I was terrible at fiction, and of the limits to my imagination 😀

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#4 Instagram, Rage

So this happened first while I was still home, back in June or so. I was going over my Instagram stories (I hardly ever did that, ever), and all of a sudden I came across the story of a senior from college who I obviously wasn’t fond of. In my head I practically shouted “WHY are you in my feed, insert expletive“, quickly visited her profile and unfollowed her.

I was surprised at the amount of anger this individual, whom I haven’t seen or interacted with in over five years, was capable of rousing in me. While I felt some relief in unfollowing said person, I also felt good for standing up against somebody who I clearly knew did not have good intentions, who probably put up a good persona that the world was obviously keen to follow, but I know what kind of a person you really are <insert expletive> I said to myself. In my defense, this was a senior who was openly rude to a lot of people while we were still in college, but her (then) popularity and resourcefulness meant it all drowned in the politics of getting things done. But isn’t five years a long time to carry it through?

I swiped left to view more stories, I think I unfollowed some 10+ people who no longer belonged to my present. I had probably “Follow back”ed them on account of familiarity at some point in our lives and forgotten about it. (I didn’t watch people’s stories on Insta, and I still don’t go through my feed a lot unless it’s food or dance).

I repeated the exercise again yesterday. The rage that seethes from nowhere into my head as I see a story pop up is scary. It’s like I still live in their wrong act, whatever that was. Of course I have my own self-appointed moral code as do most of you (I’m guessing) and I think that’s fair. So I unfollowed a couple more people, I realized I didn’t want to count the number of people I’ve thus shut out of my life on account of my own moral code, it would be painfully higher than expected.

I wonder what that makes me? Does that make me unkind? I’m just one of those many that can survive with very few people in my life, just because I think I do know the reality of most people, and in such circumstances it makes more than enough sense to keep people out. Yet the rage (and disgust, I’ll admit) I felt made me, well, sort of ashamed of myself. I felt like a teenager still holding grudges when I consider myself past that shit. To feel that kind of disgust for fellow human beings is not one of my proud moments, and yet I realized I wanted no part of them in my Insta, just like there’s no part of them in my present. I felt petty, lame.

I don’t know what that makes me. I hope it’s human.

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