Dear Tarika #3 (Your Life, Your Call)

(What's up Anant? Bro?)


 I picked up my first proper non illustrated book, with pages dedicated to words rather than pictures, in the third grade.

It took me a month to finish it.

In seventh grade, I was officially tagged as the "turtle girl" by one of the girls I used to hang out with in school; one of the many perks of hanging out with the really smart kids, sarcasm intended, they all thought I had a learning and speaking disorder. The aforementioned social tattoo, so to speak, came about when it took me two weeks time to slug my way through Jane Austen's Emma.

Truth be told, I never finished it. I just got tired of these passive aggressive remarks infused with exaggerated surprise about my reading speed. I got tired of being called a "turtle". Got tired of people wondering if I had a learning disorder. I just got tired of being slow, you know. And it was easier to read half a book, claiming that I've read the entire thing than actually reissuing the book from the library and getting caught in the act.

My reading speed brings me to my writing speed. It was one thing that I could never in a million years, manage to copy everything off the board in the second grade, things got worse when the teachers started dictating everything by the time we got to the fouth grade.

 I failed to keep up.


Oh, and then there were these crazy, and tormenting "creative writing" assignments, along with those "writing ability" sections in the English Unit Tests. I used to score miserably in both of those devices of torture. By the time I could think of a decent thing to write, it would have ran out, the time. It was faster than Forrest Gump.

Time, I think, is different for everyone, you know. We always say that some people are faster than the others, and some people are just slackers, I can't think of an alternative word for it. Slow Pokes? That's anyway besides the point. The point is, that time being faster or slower for some people and people being slow or people being fast should in fact be considered as two sides of the same coin. It's an argument that stands on thin ice, I understand that, but it is not so ragged that you can't consider it, at least for a second.

Time for me is fast. One minute, I'm nine years of age, getting dragged to the Headmistress' Office on account of having incomplete work and below average language skills, suffering through a never ending parade of verbal and physical thrashing by my teachers, and the very next minute I'm turning thirteen, realizing that I'm quite frankly tired of the entire exercise, and deciding to spend the better part of my lunch hours curled up with a Meg Cabot or Eva Ibbotson in a secluded corner of the school, simultaneously chaining myself to the front desk in order to keep my notes up to date. And I want to say that from then to now, I've come a long way, and improved immensely, but I haven't. My public speaking skills haven't taken a massive leap forward; if two people are reading a page side my side, and I happen to be one of them, I can bet without as much as a second thought that I'm going to the person who finishes in second, unless the first person still hasn't crossed third grade; and most importantly, I write like a snail.

I'm slow. I'm really slow, when it comes to writing. And I've been trying my best to shove the very uncomfortable fact under the rug, but it's true. I'm slow.

But now, it's not so much because I can't think of ideas, I have ideas, not great ones perhaps, but ideas all the same, or that I can't write, my writing is choppy at best, but it gets by. The thing is that now, now I am running wild with the idea of putting out something that is perfect. And more crazily, I'm constantly trying to match up. If I'm honest, your last post, it blew me away. Please don't think that I'm saying it just for the sake of saying it, but it really did. This post of yours, it was so beautifully crafted and compiled, and it took me by brutal surprise, and I found myself banging my head against my key board trying to come up with something that would be at par with what you had put up. I don't know how exactly it works, but suppose we're playing "Beer Poker" and you raise five bottles of beer, I wanted to raise six.

It's important here that you don't get me wrong, I'm not a crazy psycho competitive freak. I retract that statement, actually. I am crazy and psycho, just not that much of a competitive freak. It's just the fact that all my life I've been five steps behind everyone else, I was a slow reader, I started walking when I was way past one, and started speaking even later, I never really learned how to ride a bike properly, never really finished any race at the first position, the only sport that I was actually good at while growing up was musical chairs, and we all know how much it is valued at the Olympics. I am not aiming to outshine everyone else. Oh, dear God, no. But I want to at least be on the same level of Mario Brothers as all the other people involved. If you're all at the "Castle On Fire", another five pipes and three carnivorous plants away from saving Princess Peach, I don't want to be stuck banging my head on bricks, jogging around with an open field in the backdrop, trying to land a mushroom.

But here's what I have recently learned about matching up, catching up, and running after the equivalent of a non existent Super Mario Mushroom that makes your screen light up with six additional hearts; the equivalent in question being perfection. You can't match up, or catch up, to stories that are not your own. Writing is not a race, wherein you run a little faster and match up to the others' speed. It's not like a History class either, you can't just stay up one night, march through all your prescribed readings in order to catch up with your lecture schedule. We're talking about ideas and thoughts. There's no homogeneity to welcome comparison and demarcate levels. Yes, if you're talking about the technicality of it, some writing styles trump the others. But even then it's only a little to do with the the fashion in which the words have been placed one after the other.
Arrangements, no matter how systematic and beautiful, don't amount to much if they are hollow, and have no meaning behind them, no thought. And thoughts and meanings, as I pointed earlier, lack the homogeneity to allow for pronounced comparison.

As for perfection, it isn't a bad thing at all to chase after something that is unattainable on account of not existing. A lot of times, you end up at a better place than the one from which you began. What is of value here is the fact that perfection is a very imperfect idea, it isn't defined, and has no premise or conclusion. So if you're setting sail to hunt down this particular Moby Dick, remember it changes form, so often, and at such speed, that it is synonymous to not existing.

Much like the ever changing nature of "perfection", the next blog post of mine was a blob of nothing and everything clumsily packed together in one mass with no particular form. Luckily for me, it was more of a "Mystique" from X Men, and could be tracked, and shot down, if required. What started as a simple response post, mutated into a story about an old man in an art gallery. From there on then, it would transfigure into a chat with a slightly pessimistic guy in a coffee shop,
a night in with a four year old whose intellect dumbfounded me,
a very nonchalant Infinity tracing down the roots of his being,
a birthday gift,
a belated birthday gift,
a gift that I could bang my head on,
a pool of misery,
a sea of uncertainty,
a gift to my own self,
a never ending chatter between birds and worms,
a rain drop on a lion's mane,
twenty drafts that died in the recycle bin,
a three year old trying to find her way around shoe laces,
again the old man with his gallery,
a click clack of high heels,
tides and the little whirlpools that the waves made around my feet,
a dog and a tree,
a rock in the middle of the sea,
then there was some aggravating poetry,
about cats barking, 
and bottles being bottle green, 
Glee and Charlie Sheen, 
musings about baby seals, 
and then it took a turn to my inability to write, 
my inability to fight, 
a pair of jeans too tight, 
then came the anti allergic-s, 
a whole lot of rap ballistics, 
ten days of being under the weather, 
praying for a dog shelter, 
a little rain, 
a fair amount of pain, 
social media,
and Sofia Vergara, 
leading to the only thing that I moderately know, 
crafting Dadaist prose, on bedsheets that glow. 

(Here's hoping for more to come. I'm genuinely sorry for the delay. Hug?)


Much Love,
C.

Dear Tarika #2 (A Hazy Shade Of Winter)

Dear Tarika,

I have always found facts rather fascinating. There was this time back when I was fifteen, I would talk to myself only in terms of facts.

 'C, you've lost weight. That's a fact.'

'C, you're a saint. That's a fact.'

'C, you don't particularly know anything in Math. That's a fact.'

'C, you have no plan for the future. That's a fact.'

'C, you just ate the last piece of chocolate and now there's none left. Fact.'

'C, you like facts too much for your own good. That's totally a fact. Refer back to what you told yourself thirty seconds ago for further validation.'

Facts aren't bad, you know.

But I've been trying to break down my life into the simplest of facts for a very long time now. And I used to think that it would make everything easier. But honestly, based on all the facts that I've gathered over the last two hours, wherein I've been one Ariana Grande song away from banging my head on my desk like a Caveman on a sugar rush (note to self, whatever gave birth to your strange Caveman fetish?), I still haven't figured out what it is that I want to have for dinner!

Fact is, that was a slight exaggeration.

I know what it is that I want for dinner.

I want pan cakes. But I don't want them to taste like pan cakes.

Am I making any sense to you at all?

I think not.

And that's a fact.

See what I did there?

Tarika, I don't know if your realize this, but my head is exploding after every two seconds. I'm scared and cold, and honestly, I just feel like a three year old kid whose mint candy cane was stolen by some other taller kid who happens to be three years and 5 months old, and I happen to be three years and 11 months old, and quite frankly, that does not make sense at all.

Facts rarely do, do they?

Fact #1: I saw a crow eat another bird this afternoon.
Fact #2: It was picking at this dead bird's brain.
Fact #3: I didn't even get grossed out.
Fact #4: I came back home a little flustered.
Fact #5: It's time to watch While You Were Sleeping.
Fact #6: This still doesn't make sense.

The thing is, and I genuinely don't care if it isn't even a fact, your life is much more than a string of facts thrown around.

Because right now, I'm not feeling so good. But if you look at the facts, then I have no reason to feel not good. I don't know. I just don't.

I wish you here though.

I don't know if these blog posts were meant to be perfect. But I'm writing to one of my closet friends, and I'd rather just say say the truth.

Also.

I think parrots are really funny.

They're green.

What I'm trying to say is this; life doesn't make sense, facts contradict each other, and Mark from Facebook is kind of creepy, I mean, you tell him that you don't want to be with him anymore, but he just won't let you go. You can't freaking delete the relationship. It's crazy. Completely insane. But it's okay. It'll be fine. And I'm going to have to keep telling myself that. And I will.

I hope you're doing fine, TJ.

I hope you're doing more than just plain okay.

Much love,
C.

PS Ever wonder why I talk like a crazy person? I have a theory. Back when I was two years old, I wasn't this crazy. But then there was this guy named Pluto, who wasn't really named Pluto, and wasn't even from Pluto. He was actually from Jupiter, and he just found it ironic, you know, naming himself Pluto. Anyway, he never interacted with me as such. But my father (oh, this is interesting, sit down for this one) used to take me out for grocery shopping. And on all such events, he used to carry me around in a shopping bag. Pluto happened to be standing next to my father, inspecting some pumpkins, when a tiny piece of candy fell out of his coat pocket and into the shopping bag with a two year old me in it. Naturally, being two, and at the summit of my intellectual capabilities, I gobbled it all up. I'm not sure if that's the reason behind my apparent insanity, but I'd like to believe that, yes.

Animal

(The lights are turned off. The theme song of Star Wars is played and then stopped abruptly when it is realized that that was the wrong track. An audio recording of a African Safari is played next. There is a general unrest among the audience. One of them starts howling like Tarzan. The first speaker of the evening, drops the microphone off the stage. It makes a loud screeching noise. It's highly unpleasant, but it's nothing in comparison to the sound of nails being dragged against the surface of a chalkboard.)

Me (with an air of confidence): That was intentional.

(The audience stares back in complete silence)

Me: The mic drop thing? Never mind.

(re arranges some papers on the podium)

Me: Animal Prints. I haven't read the Wikipedia page yet, but from the fashion blogs that I've devoured like a caveman who had been starving for over a decade, pun intended, I have realized... (Pauses) That pun wasn't that cool, right? I mean biologically speaking, it doesn't make much sense. You know what, feel free to ignore that one. So, the thing is I have come to the realization that most of the fashion aficionados believe that it is the thrill of power and status that has fueled the market for Animal Prints over the years. And all of that works out neatly, the psycho-analysis and the allied, but you can easily Google it. So I shall not waste my time on what has already been stated and focus my energy on more unorthodox theories, so to speak. I have a theory. You might want to sit back, because this could take a while.

(clears her throats)

This is how it all started. At first, all men and women roamed about stark naked. Which worked out well for no one in particular. Mostly because when everyone's naked, no one is naked. And you can't, you know, (rests her elbow on the podium and clicks her fingers) appreciate the nakedness if you've never seen anything 'un-naked'. More so, every art was Nude Art, and there was no element of thrill or scandal involved, and once you've modeled for one, nude painting that is, no one would hunt you down and tell you what a sinner you have been, and nobody would, you know, give you this look dipped in semi lust, we shall discuss the difference between semi lust and lust later. Also, semi lust is also called closet lust, but I think lust is kind of a 'closeted' concept anyway, so you know...

(clears her throat again)

Obviously, I'm still working on that concept. Moving on. So, yeah, before clothes came into being, everything was incredibly dull and boring. I believe some of you would agree to disagree. But honestly, would you find yourself fascinated by, you know, 'the hanging gardens' and... I think it's important that we move on now. Um. Yeah, so.

(purses her lips)

The point I'm making is that...

(runs her tongue over her lips)

They get saggy. That's the point. We're not immortals, things get saggy. Anyway. Then people started wearing these weird things made out of leaves, and that kind of failed to serve the purpose, because every time you would bend over, oh you know.

(points a finger gun at the audience and winks)

But, you know, I'm not really sure why that didn't work out. For all we know, the humans never wore leaves. Although, killing animals and transfiguring their skins into high end fashion attires was a big hit with our ancestors. And contrary to the opinion that the animal skins were popular because they were warm and comfortable, I think they were in demand because they highlighted your status. Like, look, I'm wearing a leopard print evening gown, and you're just skipping around in a monkey mini. I guess I don't need to tell you which one of the two was dubbed as the tribal slut. Yeah? Yeah?

(no one responds)

Fashion is fierce. That's what I'm saying. Moving on. And then cotton and silk made an entry into our wardrobes, and everything was supposed to change by the time 21st century rolled in, because the Gods were, quite frankly, exhausted. They were bored out of their wits, I mean everyday they would shift in their thrones, or whatever those comfy cloud cushioned chairs are called, and look down to find men dressed in hideous animal prints.If they wanted to see man in leopard print, hell, they would have made him with the fur attached. They were all in for men and women showing off their 'thangs', but they also appreciated a little experimentation, and would have liked to see them wrapped up in polyester body suits. But, you know, give us something more than animal prints. Which is exactly how the man first discovered cotton, and exactly why God sent angels down on earth, and these angels disguised themselves as the members of PETA.

(gasps in order to encourage the audience to do the same, which they don't)

But people still wear Animal Prints. And that is naturally...alarming, so to speak. And they don't kill animals anymore, but they just, like, print it on cotton. And the Gods, they, you know, they shake their heads in disappointment and they think to themselves that we've been subjected to the same style of clothing ever since these freaks were living in caves, and, you know, they're sad. And that's not cool, because there's a reason they don't air Flinstones' anymore, you know.

(purses her lips and nods her head)

The Guy: Are you done yet?

(There is a boy standing behind the podium that has been placed on the other side of the stage. He leans in, arranges the microphone, and repeats his question.)

The Guy: Listen, I think you should step down now.

(The initial speaker collects her papers and makes her way down the stage in slo-mo.)

The Guy: I apologize for...whatever that was. We shall begin with our discussion on History of Clothing, emphasizing Ancient Clothing, very shorty. Thank You.

Me (runs back to the podium): Wait! I have slides! With photographs! We haven't discussed tiger print bikinis yet!

The Guy (gravely): I think we can do without it.

(A discussion breaks out in the audience. One of them stands up and requests The Guy to allow for the slideshow.

Against all odds, The Guy agrees.)

Me: Oh, you won't regret this, I swear.

Fin.


(Dear Tarika, you made my life hell with this one. Here's hell and its nastiness back at you. To wonderfully crafted nonsensical writing, cheers. Your next challenge is to write something on MY LEFT HAND. Not YOUR LEFT HAND. But MY LEFT HAND. That should teach you a valuable lesson.) 

Dear Tarika #1 (Uncharted)

Dear Tarika,

I wish I could tell you that life is easy. That all you have to do is take a piece of chalk, and draw a line segment on the concrete ground, mark one end as A, the other as B, and just walk the distance. I wish that I could tell you that that's all life is about. Unfortunately, it's a little more complex than that, and goes a little like this;

You get up in the morning.

Put on your boots.

Pick out your softest sweater in a muted color.

Tie your hair back in a rather messy pony tail.

Plug in your earphones.

And tune into your favorite radio station.

They're playing Ray LaMontagne, and you haven't heard from him in a while, so you wonder if it's your lucky day.

Today, among other things, you have to make your way from Point A to Point B.

It doesn't seem so hard.

You can clearly see point B, it's not even that far.

So you take the first step, pretty confidently, I must add.

You're greeted with a sudden attack of mist and fog.

You can't see Point B, but you know exactly where it is, so you keep walking regardless.

The next part might be a little hard to believe.

Ready?

 Well, it seems as if you're a part of the movie Mary Poppins, and the wind sweeps you away to an entirely different world. 

The concrete ground has been replaced by dirt and grass, and the high rise buildings that made up your surroundings earlier have been transfigured into tall, extremely tall trees.

You get up, and dust off your jeans.

You scan the area, and tilt your head as far back as it would go in a bid to see how tall these trees actually are.

In the aforementioned attempt, your one foot gets caught in the other, and before you can take a few seconds out to wonder if you're being grammatically incorrect, you find yourself falling.

Someone catches you.

You look up, and find a ruggedly handsome face staring back at you.

And the hurricane of confusion that was wrecking a havoc in your head fades away to make way for another hurricane of confusion.

You're confused about this man, whose arms you currently occupy.

You find yourself wondering.

Is he dangerous?

Could he be a sociopath?

Is he single?

What do we mean by bi-polar bears, anyway?

You're helped back up, and you find yourself choking on awkwardness.

You explain that you need to get to Point B, that you can't stay.

He nods, this wolf of a man.

Oh, how you wish you were Taylor Swift, and could write a song about this beautiful stranger.

He offers to take you to a nearby bar, so that you could use the loo.

And you suddenly find yourself thinking, 'Hey! I do want to use the loo!'

You get to the bar in question, and the bartender pours you a tall glass of water.

The bartender is an old woman, and you find yourself asking her endless, but rather useless questions, regarding her unusually sharp canines.

The woman points you towards the nearest rest room, and you remember you had to go.

You make your way to one of the toilet stalls, and as you close the door behind you and attempt to lock it, you find a massive "D" sprayed across its wooden surface.

Shit.

Shit.

Bloody holy cow and its dysenteric shit.

Bloody shit, you're not supposed to swear.

You run out in complete panic, because this is Point D.

You have to get to Point B, not D.

Out in the hall, you find that the Wolverine's Grandmother of a bartender has managed to stick her tongue down your Prince Charming 's throat.

You decide to steal a bottle or two, while the only staff member is busy 'french-ing' her panties out.

You briefly wonder, what kind.

The panties, I mean.

Anyway, there is a storm raging on outside.

You don't have an umbrella, but you know that you're going to have to head out anyway.

And you do.

You drag your feet in no particular direction.

You're completely drenched.

'Hey!'

You tell yourself that you're hearing voices now.

You tell yourself you're hallucinating.

'Hey!'

You roll your eyes and question your own imagination.

Why the hell is that imaginary voice so annoying, you ask yourself.

Couldn't you have just imagined Jay Baruchel's voice?

It turns out that you aren't actually delusional, and a girl in a yellow raincoat jogs in your direction.

'Hey,' she pants. 'Listen, you're going to catch your death in this storm.'

She waves an umbrella in front of your face.

'Take it.' She insists.

You're touched by her magnanimity, and offer her the alcoholic drinks that you stole.

The girl in the yellow rain coat takes pity on you, and directs you towards the nearest Bed and Breakfast.

As you find yourself eyeballing the disaster that the girl in the yellow rain coat referred to as a 'Bed and Breakfast' (it is, in actuality, a deserted shed) you notice a sign board with the address painted on it in deep red.

It stated the area to be Point H.

Overcome by frustration, you decide to lie down in the mud.

The rainstorm, much like Mystique from the X Men, changes its form, and the resultant hailstorm doesn't fancy you much so it tries it's level best to leave behind some permanent dents on your body.

You close your eyes, and you start singing Miley Cyrus' 'Party In The USA', in a voice that can only be described as a perfect substitute to the noise that empty utensils make when they are rattled against one another.

Against your better judgement, you decide to make mud angels.

 And even though you aren't a big fan of tears, they are in fact too salty for your taste, you cut yourself some slack.

It's okay, you tell yourself, to cry while making mud angels.

It adds an element of romance to the entire scene.

You feel something warm on your left palm.

You lift your head up to determine the cause.

It's a dog doing its business on your beautiful hand.

You tell yourself, that you're trying to make a point about how life works, and it's not always as crappy, kindly excuse the language, as this.

So the dog disappears.

And you let your head fall back in the mud.

What happened next is a little foggy.

A man (or a woman) hears you sing, thinks that a racoon is dying somewhere, driven by curiosity, decides to see what is up.

Finds you.

Helps you up.

And as you continue to weep, he/she takes you by the arm and leads you to a nearby cottage.

Fin.

No, not really.

You wake up in a small room, on a tiny bed, with a cat licking your ear.

Fortunately for you, life is sometimes kind, and people aren't always bad.

They also don't always stick their tongues down the throats of highly attractive people that you're interested in.

You sit up.

You stroke the cat.

Then you kick off the covers, scoop the cat up, and bolt to the nearby window.

The weather has cleared up.

And the sunrise, oh, the sunrise is breath taking.

The entire sky has been splashed with various hues of pink, orange, purple and gold.

And your jaw drops open a little.

It's called being struck by amazement.

(Can't recall a GRE word for the same.)

There's a knock on the door.

You turn.

There's a boy there, with a very quizzical look plastered on his face.

You thank him and ask how he managed to get you here.

He shakes his head and informs you that it was somebody else who had found you last night, and that they've asked him to check on you.

You nod your head for no reason at all, and thank him anyway.

He makes basic inquires about your health and well being.

You assert the fact that you're feeling just about fine.

'Aren't you interested in knowing what this place is?' he asks. 'Aren't you interested in knowing where you are?'

You look down at the cat in your arms, which has taken a fancy to your thumb, and is licking it with utmost passion.

You bury your face in its soft coat.

Cats smell nice.

'Does it matter?' you murmur.

'Excuse me?'

'I said, does it even matter? I'm here now. That's about it.'

The boy rests his head on the door frame, tilts his head and laughs a little.

'Okay, then.'

He turns to leave.

'Have we met before?' you find yourself asking.

'Meet me at the breakfast table downstairs in about ten minutes, you'll have your answer.' he replies.

You purse your lips to suppress a smile.

Put the cat down.

Dig into the pocket of your mud infested denim jeans, and fish out a piece of chalk.

Sit on the floor, cross-legged.

And make a nice and clear "B" on its surface.

Does it really matter, if this place is actually not?

"B" that is.

(Does it matter how you get to Point B?)