Six years of visiting this city yet I missed the smallest details about it. This is how I build my life and build myself closed off away from the bustle of the people and the world around me. The cars, the trains, the shops on the road reminded me of the rush that I used to enjoy but now I couldn’t.
I work in an office, a work from home office, mostly bored by the walls around me. I crave freedom from the monotonous life. Wearing a green jumpsuit with green eyeliner is beautiful with a nude lipstick stained on the disposable cup of the coffee makes me feel like a failure. Sometimes, I wonder, why do I apply lipsticks when they are going to be wiped off easily.
“Hey, Maya, how do you do?”, asked a man who often visits the library as I do for the past one year.
“I am doing good. What about you?” I replied with a smile on my face as my cheeks are smiling from within.
I know this man for quite sometime now. His name is Rudra. He is fair-skinned with beard covering about one-third of his face. He wears various rings on his fingers for astrological reasons. His eyes are brown in colour, beautiful enough to grab the attention of any girl passing near him. Rudra was an aspiring writer who was trying to create wonders in the world of his own. In the world where I live, I prefer doing what I love the most. Writing for various clients, paying attention to their needs and requirements. Rudra writes for himself; he loves creating his world of giant dinosaurs and people struggling to keep them alive. I love him, no, no… I just like him for his zest to continue his work.
Rudra sat on the chair in front of me and ordered our usual espresso. He has written a story of a female superhero just like Harley Quinn, Wonder Women based on me. I wonder how my morning dreams resemble his stories. He has written about the ways in which he created a fantasy world where the words written by me comes true in the real world of his story. He named the heroine Future woman. A woman who works for her house, raise her children, creates struggle for herself through her own stories and then corrects them by typing in the laptop their solutions to erase them. I laughed little to myself as I thought what he did was worth or not.
Rudra has his own way of making things come true, be it fantasy or fiction or non-fiction, he is always trying and exploring new things. I quit on creative writing as soon as I left home in search of freedom and independence for myself. As the days went by and much of my savings was spend on enjoying my new life of freedom, I learned the value of working hard and saving money. I live alone in a rented flat with two girls. Most of the time, the veggies and fruits were stolen by the girls from our common fridge. It was a usual mess as I found most of the rosogulla missing from the fridge when I brought ten, the very next day, it was eight without me having any bite of it. What Rudra wrote I appreciate but little did it made me wonder about my own career experiences.
I worked as a content writer for past six years. I won awards for my debut book and as I did so, the expectations of the recruiters went high along with it. They were impressed with my qualifications as they thought I can write anything that is presented to me. Be it writing blogs, writing articles, creating scripts and academic writing contents. Each of the companies have different criteria for different things. I didn’t know that writing for social media is different from writing for email marketing. I didn’t know that word count mattered more for the companies than the quality of the content. We are writers, we are not the wizards for doing everything by turning the wand and saying abracadabra and getting the work done. At the end of the day, our awards and our accomplishments don’t determine what we do and how we do things, we are allowed to be imperfect, we are allowed to be silly, lethargic and boring even if it involves to not meet the expectations of the people around us.
No matter how much I laughed within me while reading the story written by Rudra, it sends me into a deep thought of how we create our own life through our own actions. The story could have been better, the descriptions doesn’t resemble me but they do resemble me at the same time. At one point of time, I am angry at Rudra for doing something silly. It is frustrating to see a grown-up boy to behave in such a foolish manner.
All I said to him in the end, “Continue your creative journey, go to places where you never visited before and think of your life like the ones in the protagonist of the story. I wish I didn’t have my job and writing tasks to submit. I would have enjoyed writing whatever felt right and published it for the audience.”
Rudra asked me with a bit of hesitation on his face, “Did you like my story?”
“Yes, I do , only trial leads to perfection. I love it especially the inner meaning expressed through the world of fantasy and imagination.”
I wasn’t taught how to write but I did learn to appreciate the small steps that lead to something big.
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