Hide and Seek

Aren't words supposed to be a writer's best friend
Ready at their beck and call
Walking with each other
hand in hand ...
But then why do words suddenly abandon me
hiding behind , running free
I coax them to come back
To sit with me and help me write ...
To make themselves available
"You are my tools" I tell them
No, Scratch that .. You are my love
You help me create whats beautiful and ugly
Sometimes a poem, sometimes a story
You help me create people ...
you, my dear words, are the life in my people
But hardly do they listen ...
We sit all day ... the blank page and I
staring away
After sometime, when the emptiness starts winning ...
I force myself ... to force my words
But,they still peek and run around me
teasing like children
enjoying this little game
and I, like a tired mother,
finally sit down, apologizing to the page
promising the next time my words will behave
just then I feel a tug
a small word stands
giving me a shy little smile
slowly bringing along its other friends
I sit back and let them play
let them form their night and day
let them do their work through my fingers
I let my words create my world

A letter in the past

Dear 16 year old me,

I wish I knew at your age what I know now. But you know what? It is okay! Let me tell you ... You are doing pretty okay with your life. Yes you are not the most successful lady yet, but there will be instances where you will be presented to a younger person as a good example.That's right! You don't know these people now. You have not met them. But trust me ..they are good people and you will like them.

I have good news and bad news. I will start with the bad. You will not remain as you are. You will change -- not always for good. You will find yourself disliking people for trivial matters and unfortunately you will be unable to let it go. You will do and say things which you will regret, but you will get over it. You will get into fights ( not many though, you will not grow up to a very confrontational person) and you will meet strange people but somewhere down the line, you will face it all! That's the good news. You will survive and you will learn! You will learn to live and take life with pinches of sugar and salt. You are going to change a lot of cities, by the way! I know it sounds unbelievable to you right now but you will and you will like it! You will have innumerable stories and experiences and you will find yourself extremely lucky at times.Also,Your notion about love is wrong. It is okay as of now for you to believe that love stories are not for you. Falling in love may not be very important, but if you do, fall for the best guy. Don't worry! You will meet him.

I wish I could stop you from crushing on wrong guys. But you will anyway! So maybe I will give you a piece of advice. Stay strong! Actually, you will be surprised by how strong you are, going by the fact that you right now cry at the drop of a hat. Talking about advices, I have tons of advices to give you. I hope you take them seriously.

First and foremost, Exercise! One of these days, somebody is going to advise you to join a gym and you are going to take it offensively. Don't! It will do you good ..very good!

I know you read but trust me, you are not reading enough. When you grow up to be my age, you will look back at all the books that you have still not read and all the books that are still being written. This will overwhelm you. Start with the classics right away! As another note, even after all these years, Jane Eyre will still remain your favourite! So good going at that!

Don't waste your time watching cartoon network! Really, your parents are right! You are sixteen! It is okay if you don't want to study either. Please go and learn tennis and skating at the senior club. You have no idea what a wonderful facility you have at your disposal and how royally you are wasting it. Trust me, when you reach my age, not being active outside your little television set is going to be the most regretful memory ever.

Don't be afraid of Venu agarwal! She is just your chemistry teacher and surprise of surprises, you WILL learn to cheat your way through titration and seriously you are going to laugh at it when you come to my age. It is useless! So are log tables, surface tension derivations, probability and binomial theorem. Don't bother! I mean study them now but you will eventually forget them. While at that , you might want to know a bonus future fact. Those toppers? After 10 years, there won't be a lot of difference in you and them. In fact, a lot of things that look like matters of life and death today and many more years to come will almost be forgotten by the time you reach my age. So you might as well relax a bit!

Also, although you will learn cooking eventually, it is going to be the hard way. So unless you don't want to create scenes the way I did, enter the kitchen once in a blue moon. You will definitely thank me for this piece of advice.

Take those essay competitions seriously. You will know why! Also, can you please be a little more insistent with your father about letting you joining journalism? I know its a shot in the dark, but for your future self sake,can you? I will tell you one secret about your father that you might not have understood yet. He does give in to your pressures! You have to be really really persistent. He agrees! I know you are smirking with disbelief right now, but in a few years you will know what I mean.

Also, please learn a little styling. In 10 years, you will look at your older pictures and cringe! You will learn, but please, take a lead and learn a bit more.

In the next 10-12 years of your life, you will fall and rise. You will cry alone and laugh with friends. You will win and lose, but you will be fine. Because you will discover behind that easily scared, naive self , you are much better. You will be afraid but you will be successful in not showing it and moving on! It is going to be a good life. You will like the ride!

The lies in your childhood .....

Were you as a child , told to eat your food or else the big bad policemen would take you away? Did you wait on Christmas, late in the night to meet Santa Claus? I remember my dad's logic for making me go to bed early. "Your toys need time to play. They can come alive only after you sleep... So sleep!" He told me. Also, this was way way before Toy story. I am not sure if he even knows about the movie series. Of course, I believed him! When I realised my father's little story was nothing but a cute lie only to instill discipline in me, I was disappointed. It would have been fun to see the toys come to life in the drawing room where they very meticulously kept in a line. Do they remember their order in the line , I would wonder. I remember tumbling 1-2 toys before going to bed, just to see how I would find them in the morning. That my mother would rearrange them before I got up was a different story.

After I grew up, I made a promise to myself. I would never lie to my children. I will tell them that there is no santa claus and that they would not be taken away by policemen if they don't eat their greens. But should they grow up and decide to become police men /women themselves, they would not be able to run behind a thief with no healthy food in their system. Tell them the truth! They might find you boring or maybe harsh in the beginning but they are bound to understand you when they grow up.

Somehow, my mindset is now changing. Maybe a little harmless lie is okay to be told to a child. Not because its the easy way out, but because with every little lie, there is a take away. Santa leaves gift only for the nice, leaving the naughty. Not saying Thank you can be a bit allergic (this is the funniest of lie ever told by a parent!) and eating chocolates in the night can bring bad dreams (until they learn the importance of dental hygiene!) When every word that you say shapes up an entire personality, you have to pick them very carefully and hand them over to a little one who looks up to you and at least for a few years, believes you to be perfect! I will tell my child about Santa claus, about fairies and about the pot of gold at the end of rainbow. Let them listen with their eyes wide open. Let them believe, let them hope, let them imagine and after a few years , let them make a choice.

I am not a parent yet, but I guess you have to know where to draw the line. Picking up another of my own childhood story, my nursery teacher would threaten us that if we did not stop wailing, we would be fed to her 2 huge bull dogs. I was taken there once too, and I remember being too scared to even cry. How did that affect me? Until just a year ago, I was terrified of dogs. Actually not even a year ....I am still scared of dogs though I don't show it anymore. I mean , I had recurring dreams of dogs running after me. Thankfully, 2 days back, I dreamt that I was playing fetch with 2 adorable puppies. So I would now like to believe that the fear is subsiding.

Talking about useful lies, I met a pair of new parents in a train , enroute to bhopal. Their child was OBSESSED with the I-pad. Actually for his age of 2.5 years he was a genius with the gadget. But at the end of the day he was still a child who needed his rest , his food and his time off the I pad. After a lot of persuasion, love and a bit of anger display, when the parents just could not separate the boy and his toy, the father stealthily switched the I-pad off and told the son , "The battery ...gone!" No Battery ..See!!" Then, and only then did the child sleep and peep out of the window to see the scenery outside. Phew!! Only then, even we could sleep! A very useful lie I say!

So maybe I will lie to my child. He/She will definitely grow up to know that it was just a cute lie to make him learn a lesson or two. I am sure after he/she grows up to be 18, 19 or 20 we will both laugh at it, like my father and I do today, over his toy lie. "At least you went to bed early" he says . I can't help but agree!