On._ wri_ting_..
After writing a few words, I wonder if its worth it and if I should do something useful.
It was the first day and I wasn’t very excited about going back. My dark classroom was across a sunlit passage that led to the playground. I wanted to climb up and slide down but my teacher wanted us to sit down and write up.
When she dictated notes for us to write and rote, I barely wrote a pair of lines from the paragraphs. At first, I left gaps to fill later but on realizing, I stopped and became an environmentalist like her. She put the cane to good use for the gaps I left and also the papers I saved.
I remember giving an English exam where we had to vomit the thirsty crow. Sitting near the window, I saw a murder of crows mourn the murder of art. I submitted an incomplete paper on that and every exam that followed.
I failed for the first time in a Hindi test and soon the other subjects followed. Math and Science exams were also not great since we had to explain all the steps. I just liked to hop, skip and jump to the final answers and I barely crawled past the final exams.
I enjoyed engineering entrance exams because we didn’t have to write anything but the final answers. I dreamed of becoming an engineer and never have to write again. It was a trap!
While I was an undergraduate student, we had to sit through countless dreadfully long exams. So, I measured success in them by the scoring speed and was the first to leave the exam halls. Although my score was at the top, I failed in every course.
Reading On Writing Well changed my view about writing and writers. It spelled the ABC’s of simple stories and dispelled the magic in ancient arts. I learned to identify turbulence in a sentence and transfer the emotion crisply and smoothly.
If that book is a lecture, Genius is my playground and workshop. We dance with words all night long, weld them into lines very strong, and paint a cymbalic song. For the first time, writing wasn’t just to answer a boring question but to spread important and beautiful thoughts.