It's That Easy, and That Hard

Write-Club. A club for writing. Right, Left, Democratic...Whatever. Some strangers, well, maybe not-so-strangers, coming together to write for writing's sake.

Topic: Write a story with each of the following words, in 144 characters.

Words: Change, Bottle, Flavour, Wheel, Master, Left



"No change!" he told the relentless beggar. The beggar promptly pulled out a bunch of ten-rupee notes.(Characters 102)

He gazed out helpless out of the taxi window, missing one turn after another. Unfortunately he had forgotten the local vernacular for left.
(Characters 143)

They leered towards her in the dark, she seemed to be asking for it. She just gripped the broken Budweiser bottle tighter.
(Characters 123)

Suddenly, all their toothpaste tubes were missing their caps. Later they were found as wheels on their little son's toy car.
(Characters 123)

Dark, inviting eyes. Soft, smooth lips. Her heart was still racing as she stepped out of the cabin of her grammar master, face flushed.
(Characters 134)

The menacing prison guard stepped forward with the hemlock. He looked up and smiled, "Are there more than one flavour?"
(Characters 118)

To a New Beginning

Me and my special someone were having a bit of a dragging whiny fight over many apparent and non-apparent reasons. Now that they have been resolved, I have come up with this project  we do together where he suggests a word each day and I write a post on it, duration not yet known to either of us. I also don't know how this will work out, but I think the idea is pretty interesting; it should provoke my imagination and creativity. It will help us bridge the gap that has formed. So from tomorrow, one post on a new word each day.

Wish Upon A Star

It's been a long time since I stopped believing in wishing on a shooting star. I think it was when we learnt about comets, meteors and dying stars in school. That's not the point. I may have stopped believing in wishing upon a star, I've not stopped wishing. I wish for a lot of things. Every day. Every minute. 

For one thing, I wish had better teeth. And I wish people (random strangers even) stopped telling me to get them fixed.

I also wish I had a photographer friend who would take really artistic pictures of me and I could show them off and get a thousand compliments.

And for a puppy that never would grow into a dog.

That I could be a badass-vampire-hunting-pirate.

That my room never needed cleaning.

That I could eat without getting fat, earn without working and love without hurting.

That my bookshelf would have a hinge that revealed a secret passage to a curious place.

"And I wished for things that I don't need..."

The Blackbird

Okay, so it was just a crow. But it is worth writing about.

Today I saw a crow outside my hostel room window. And this is significant because there are NO birds in the campus. With the number of trees here, the lack of aviary life is unpleasantly surprising.

I was very excited to see my campus full of large trees. I was sure there would be like a zillion type of birds here. It's appalling that I've seem no, I repeat, NO birds other than some incessantly cooing pigeons. I think it is the lack of birds that makes the campus so eerily quiet once the dusk sets in.

However, there are a lot of butterflies. Apart from the fact that they don't sing, or make any kind of noise at all, their sheer variety almost makes up for the scarcity of the twittering, chirping and yes, sometimes cawing things.

There are two Flame trees right outside my window and if I get up early in the morning, I can be witness to this spectacular, multicoloured swarm of butterflies among the leaves. There are all possible colours imaginable, and many that aren't imaginable. Blue, red, pink, yellow, mauve, bottle green, vermilion and god knows what.

It sure is a pretty sight. But I still miss the birds.

Two Thousand and Five Hundred Miles Away From Home

I’ve spent over a month in the new city, in the new campus, in the new university and things could not have been more different. This might be a good time to confess that I’ve never been away from home for this long before.

Overwhelmed. That is the first feeling I could sift out of an entirely disarrayed mind. How was to fend for myself here?

Then came the familiar feeling of wanting to withdraw into my turtle shell and escape. But turtles are also known for their grit, so I stayed on.

Problems loomed large before me and I felt like an ant before a sand dune. Dear Lord! They assigned me a room on the fifth floor? And there’s no lift? How was I to survive climbing up and down this real-life sand dune for umpteen numbers of times every day for the rest of the semester? Why weren’t there any water dispensers on my floor? Do I really have to go all the way down to second floor to get drinking water? Oh why does my cupboard not close precisely?

For a few days i didn’t know what to eat and where to get it. The food was so alien to my taste buds that a just lived off bread and cheese for a few days. Then there was the indigestion. How my alimentary tract burned!

And I haven’t even started on the language yet. It is astonishing how narrowly regional we are. The only word I understand in Telegu is ‘Amma’. It was scary to think that I will not be able to communicate my needs, and my Hindi abysmal.

I have to do my own laundry, iron my clothes myself, and make breakfast on my own. Apart from that, I have to do the shopping, fixing, cleaning by myself as well. Did I mention the lessons and assignments and deadlines? I guess you would have got the drift by now.

But I’m not going to crib about this. I’m going to put all of it in a box and seal it up with tape, because I’ve begun learning a precious few things that home couldn’t teach me all this while.

Que sera sera.