Of Robbers, Inspirational Teachers and Folks who forced me to do this

I must have been about ten or eleven years old when I made my first foray into the writing. Brought up on a steady diet of Enid Blyton, I was at that time inclined to dreaming about tea and scones, while nibbling on unniappams.

If I remember right, my first story was about a robber and it went – Once upon a time, there was a robber. He was running away from the police. He had a big knife in his hand. He saw a big hotel and jumped over the wall to hide from the police. The police came into the hotel. So the robber ran and hid under a deck chair, near the swimming pool. He kept his knife ready to fight with the police. A fat man (I was too young to get the concept of political correctness) sat on the chair. The robber poked him with the knife. The fat man jumped so high that he fell into the pool….and it went on in that vein. Various people who chose to sit on the deck chair got attacked and left with a pain in their ass, literally.  Now in hindsight (pun intended) I wonder why no one bothered to look under the chair. My only reader was my brother, then about six years old. Actually, come to think of it, he did not read it; I had to read it to him. But anyway, the whole story sent him into such paroxysms of mirth; I was convinced I was the second coming of Enid Blyton.

In school we had to learn English Composition writing and that’s what we did. We actually sat and learnt by rote a composition written by our English teacher. Every term she would give us one or two compositions to learn by heart and since she set the question paper, we could expect that one of those compositions would be asked for the exams. Now when I think about it whole concept seems so unreal. Imagine forty-odd girls in a class all writing the same “When I grow up I want to be a teacher…” in answer to question about describing your ambition. We were not allowed to write our own compositions till we reached high school. In high school, I unleashed all my literary outpourings, kept in check so long, but they failed to impress my English teacher, a strict no nonsense person far more interested in the length of our skirts, hair and nails than in our verbs or vocabulary. By the time I reached the 10th standard, my hopes and dreams were reasonably diminished and I resigned myself to the fact that I would forever remain a reader and never a writer.

When I joined college, I was least interested in English as a subject. It was a class that I looked forward to bunking, as advised by my knowledgeable seniors. But then I met a teacher, quite unlike any other I had encountered till then.  I clearly remember the first day; we dutifully opened our textbooks only to hear Ms. Geeta Nair say, “Keep away your textbooks. Take a piece of paper and write about some unforgettable experiences of your childhood.” Eh? What was this, now? Write a composition the first day of college  and that too a topic that was so different from the usual “Republic Day Celebrations in your School” and “Letter to your friend describing Diwali” essays I was used to writing. When she came to our class the next day, she had gone through each of the 80 odd essays and had written down her remarks. “There were a couple of essays that stood out,” she said. And then she actually singled mine out as one of her favorite essays. I was so surprised.  I hadn’t written anything extraordinary, I had just written the same old way I always used to. What had just happened? Emboldened by her encouragement, I tried my hand at the essay writing, story writing and versification contests that year and actually won a prize for one of them.  But I did not pursue writing any further.  For reasons I still do not fathom, I chose to study Botany for my degree course (in the same college) and so bid adieu to Ms.Geeta as a teacher. Oddly enough she did not forget me. One day she summoned me to the English Department, even though I was not her student anymore. “Do you have any of your works with you now?” she wanted to know. Works? What on earth did she mean “works”? As in writing for the sake of writing? Now there was a strange concept. “Within a week I you want a short story or a poem for me”, she said.  She was involved in editing and publishing our college magazine and she was collecting writings from students. “Didn’t you see the notice on the board?” she asked. Frankly, I had seen it and being lazy by nature, hadn’t bothered. From then on till at last, the magazine was published, I was filled with trepidation. Was it good enough to be published or had they rejected it? Shivering with anticipation I opened the magazine. The very first article in the magazine was mine! Every year she reminded me to submit my works (yes, I had “works” by then, thanks to her relentlessness) to the college magazine and every year they were published. Wherever you are now Ms. Geeta Nair, you are the one teacher who has inspired me the most.

Marriage and kids pushed writing to the backburner again. My husband, a voracious reader who has read every single thing I have ever jotted down, tried to coax me into writing but I was just too lazy. Other than a few write ups for brochures and websites, I did not bother to rouse myself . My Mom collected and sent me my old college magazine clippings in a bid to inspire me. Often I would start writing something and just give up half way, out of sheer laziness. And I thought that it was not like anybody other than my family was going to read what I write.  My brother (yup, the one who was tickled by the robber story) then joined in the “get her to write again” bandwagon and introduced me to blogs. Blogs? What? Just write whatever comes to mind? Well, well, well…me liking. So here I am. I hope to continue, now that I have discovered the pleasure of writing just for the sheer pleasure of writing. Let’s hope my old friend ‘laziness’ does not catch up with me this time.

This is what Calvin and Hobbes have to say about writing though :)