Category Archives: Writing

Forcing Words

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“Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry moving through and be silent.”

- Rumi

As a writer, and a student, I know there is no point in life that I can reach and say “This is it. This is how writing should be”. For me, writing changes everyday.  I can never pin point a particular form and absolutely believe that this is my form. However, one thing that has remained a constant necessity is that writing shouldn’t sound, well, forced.

I literally squirm when I have to listen people create images with words that are just not plausible, that the words are literally being forced to play a strange and awkward role, that need to be released from their misery. Words, they are like pieces of a puzzle, you can’t jam them into a space that’s not right and expect them to sit nice and pretty just because you feel smarter creating a pseudo psychotic image.

Writing is living, breathing, alive. A word is like a person, that has to have the right to choose its place in a piece. Maybe the mark of a true writer lies in not just knowing how to write, but how to let the words write themselves.

My words of wisdom I choose to dispense with a horrible mug-pot test looming before me. What excellent timing.

The Missed Train

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there is this version for him and

another, and the other will

be this version, for her

the insurgence of now

no matter, the fire where it

burned, the embers remain

of a long pause and now

breathe.

wisdom, I laugh

no pain, no gain

and I lie here when I say

there is a another train to catch

I will never reach

the same place

I will never know the place again

when it is bathed in us

Drainage

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Were there promises of love?

Of children, and houses

“Just come with me”

Did he say it, or plead?

Shall I believe them, she asks

what can I say, but look

a watery smile :

“He’s the One”

And then she’s gone,

Swept away, sunshine

and then

torrents

here they come,

wailing and sobbing

“All wrong, all wrong!”

Those dreams, they gurgle down

the dirty drains where soggy

tossed out fantasies go

washed down by downpours

of Heartbreak and Sadness

(always in season)

backtrack

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the platform

eternal pausing, the shells

of smoked peanuts

scattered

drips of tea on the stone bench

cold, now

and as I watch the train pull away

dragging a bit of my heart

with each chug

across the littered tracks

there are questions

answers I don’t need

for now, I’m a blur

a thing-of-the-past

yours, a moment ago

when you ran your fingers

through my hair

as always, your fingers caught

in the tangled ends

and just like always

you left them like they were

For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn

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In school , after every exam, my teachers would complain “You would score better if you just wrote MORE!” Of course now in college, I’m just another register number so no teacher would know if I was the girl with the 80 in her Business and Corporate writing paper, the subject which requires you to be as brief as possible !

I like brevity, when it comes to writing. Personally, I think that a lot more could be said with shorter pieces, instead of those that ran into pages and pages of nothingness. I remember an incident where I represented school in an another schools inter-school Creative Writing competition. There were two entrants from each school, and the other guy from mine was.. well.. a bit over confident when it came to his writing. My story was about 3 sides long, and his ran into 8 or 9. I will never forget that look on his face  when he saw how short my story was. Anyway, I came second. And he… didn’t.

The other day in college, we explored Flash Fiction, and I LOVED it! My favourite piece would be Hemingway’s six word flash fiction story :

For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn

The story is sad, yes, but I love it more for the fact that it shows how the speaker/person/character who put up the sign is attempting to overcome such a difficult thing. Every time I read it, a new wave of awe develops.

Nice article on Flash Fiction here

The ink

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I found an inkpen, so I went out and bought  bottle of ink for twelve rupees. I came home and spent an hour trying to fill the thing, as it’s “suction mechanism” refused to function. Finally, I succeeded. The floor has battle scars, though. And so did my hands.

And so I write, with my ink pen. It’s not pretty, but still oddly satisfying. I write in a pretty blue book I bought, about nothing and everything. I scribble and doodle and shudder to read what I have written, but still I write.

Ficlet – Monique

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The first thing you would notice about Monique was that her left eye was blue and the right was green. She was incredibly conscious about them being “strange” (as she put it), but in reality we both knew the reactions it drew from people helped her judge them. There were some who were initially taken aback, but politely chose to ignore it after a while. There were some who could never tear their eyes away from hers (she hated those). And then there were some like Micheal Ricardo Morencio Balenca.

Monique had been seeing Micheal Ricardo Morencio Balenca for about three months. Well to put it a bit more correctly : 3 months, 5 days, 4 hours and 11 minutes. She was “deeply, madly, crazily in love”. Everyday she wrote in her diary about her dreams for the two of them and the life they would share. They would have two children – a boy, named Pedro (after Micheal’s father) and a girl named Mia (after her own sister), a dog named Bosco ( although Monique was still unsure about the breed), and a house by the sea.

She would gush “He’s different! So unlike all the rest!”

And I would say “How so?”

And she would say “He says he loves every part of me! And the best part is he hasn’t said a word about my eyes being strange!”

Once Monique and Micheal Ricardo Morencio Balenca were sitting across from each other at one of their regular haunts when he stopped mid-sentence, burst into laughter and exclaimed “Why, Moni! Do you know that your eyes are each a different color? How very strange!”

Monique wept buckets that night. Gone were Pedro, Mia and Bosco. Gone was her house by the sea.

” I will never fall in love with another man again, ever! They are all hateful creatures! Every last one of them!”

The next day at the library, as Monique dragged her broken heart through the shelves, looking for a wildly romantic book to bury herself into, she met Alejandro Dio Beno who took one look at her and said:

“Those are by far the most beautiful eyes I have seen”

Needless to say, Monique’s dreams came rushing back.