Last day a friend of
mine, who had to attend an important interview called me up. He
wanted ideas, story lines, guidelines and what not, to write a story
with a positive note- a main item of the test. While still on his
call, I was laughing my butt off because I wrote stories for sure..
but none were even close to being optimistic or happy. There'd someone
sick and dying, a divorced couple and their hurt progeny, physically
or mentally challenged characters sunken in oppression or most
recurringly a murder or a suicide.. I experiment with the various
shades of gray and I still don't know why, but as I write something I
am usually enclosed by something really dark and terrifying..
something that makes me think every time that I should curl up and
cry my heart out for the rest of my life!
Yeah.. it always happens
to me.. I don't know.. I'm such a happy go lucky kiddo but the moment
I sit down to write all the sad things flow...
Once in 8th grade we had
this Hindi Short Story contest at school.. I wanted to bunk the hour
so like the rest of my pals I sat down to write the story.. The topic
was "time machine." To be honest my mind was blank as I was
bad at writing on command and wrote only when I felt like...
I began writing about a
successful businessman coming to visit a psychologist who had just
begun her career.. With the man's appearance and mannerism alone she
guesses what his problem was gonna be .. “He's suffered a major
heart break.." But to her shock he suddenly begins saying, "I
want a time machine."
This man, my main
character, was there after murdering his father who had long back
murdered his mother right in front of him when he was barely 4. His
mother had married his poor father against the wishes of her family..
Without a sound financial base they had to live in a rugged tent in a
slum in Mumbai.. Being a chronic alcoholic, his father used to
threaten and steal all the money that his mother used to make by
doing all the odd jobs.. Even when she stayed hungry she made sure
her family never slept with an empty stomach.. One day, the son is
sick, almost dying.. mother collects all the money that she had
hidden away in the one room house and plans to take him to the
hospital.. When the father enters, snatches the money out of her
hands and tries to get away.. mother protests.. the man picks up his
own son and threatens to kill him if she makes another sound.. she
has had enough.. she tries to fight him.. The devil leaves the kid
but slaps the mother hard on the face and runs away as soon as he
finds he just committed a murder.... the terrified kid cries and
tries hard to wake up his dead mother.. he spends the night with her
dead body..
The mother's dead body is
removed by the slum dwellers.. the kid now has no one.. he falls into
the hands of a group of pick pockets.. he soon grows up to be a
prominent striker of the underworld.. he hunts down his father and
kills him easily.. but he still is unhappy and feels all empty
despite his fulfilled vengeance and all the riches he has acquired ..
So now he keeps wishing
for a time machine with which he can travel back in time and may be
stop his mother from marrying his biological father or stop his once
lovable dad from falling into alcoholism or at least run away to some
place else with his mother and avoid the fate..
He cries like a baby in
front of her..
This is how the story
ends.. But by the time I finished writing this, I was the one with tears
in my eyes and a really heavy heart.. I couldn't face anyone in class
and wanted to quietly cry alone and let out..
I know that this might
appear weird for most people but I just wanted to assure anyone with
the same experience that we are perfectly normal and even lucky
because it is such a deep and liberating experience..
:)
