An Unfinished Project

On returning to a venture I began long ago.

I wanted to submit something for the school magazine. I was about ten years old and it was one of those things I wanted to do to get some appreciation from my family. I had also started performing in plays and trying to win at sports.

In the previous edition of the school magazine, I had liked an essay called ‘Autobiography of a Pencil’. The writer had personified a pencil – where the pencil traced its origins from the bark of a tree, to how it got chiseled in a factory and it shared the travails of its current life as a child’s companion. I found it to be funny and clever. So I thought of writing a similar autobiography of some other object – maybe a school bag or a pair shoes.

But I was drawn to write a poem.

I translated a poem from my Kannada textbook just for fun. Though the Kannada poem was longer, I mustered up to two stanzas and rounded it off there. Since I did not know anything about translation as a discipline, I began to feel that I had copied someone else’s poem. So I kept it aside and thought up a new poem of my own. I don’t remember this second poem much but it was whimsical and had a rhyme.

I submitted that second poem. But then, I liked my first poem more. I thought it had come out well. After pondering over it, I decided to submit the first one too. I was quite sure that the teachers would identify that it was not an original poem. It was not likely to get selected and I was okay with it. I think I could not help but submit it because I was so happy with the poem. What else would I do with it.

To my surprise, both of these poems got published, and on the same page! It was quite a thrill to see my writings and my name printed in the school magazine. And it was also hugely satisfying to see my parents proudly show it off to family and friends.

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Weekends in the 80s were mostly about waiting for something to happen. Friends had to call us outside for a game of Cricket, the elders had to take us out to a book fair, or we had to get lucky on Doordarshan. And boy, when we did get lucky on Doordarshan - we thought about it all day and into the night, we talked about it with friends the next day at school, and we remembered it with our cousins during vacations and we all still live on those shared memories.

I particularly recall a quirky Hindi film called ‘Peecha Karo’ which kept throwing me off my chair with every turn in its mad plot. There was ‘Flop Show’ – a weekly on Doordarshan which turned everything I knew about the world upside down. And then there was ‘Pushpak’ with Kamal Haasan, which showed us how else one could tell a story.

Around this time, while watching the regular masala film, we were at a scene where the Villain had dragged the wailing Heroine into his den. And it occurred to me - would it not be fun if she beats the hell out of him and the Villain ends up wailing. And somewhere in the deserted neighbourhood, our Hero was beating up baddies while making his way to the Villain’s den. And I thought – why doesn’t the Hero tire from all this fighting and ask for some time-out? And what if the baddies give him a massage to recover. These thoughts made me chuckle to myself.

Maybe I should write this film.

I have no idea where that came from! I had never heard of a screenwriter or screenwriting. With only the energy that a ten-year-old possesses, I put my intention into action. I found a used long notebook with a lot of empty pages and began setting up the backdrop to my movie of two brothers fighting over their ancestral haveli (don’t ask!).

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Last month, I attended a Writing workshop where we did a Speed Writing exercise on ‘why we write’. It was a topic that kept coming up in my own journal. So I quickly jotted down my reasons – to articulate my thoughts clearly on paper and thereby think better, to write with compassion that can heal me and the reader, to play with words and do clever things on paper, to understand my own thoughts better and find insights, and, to remember and record life as it happens.

That day, I came up with a new reason to write – to see the funny of side of things. That is, to relook at a life situation from a distance and find something to laugh about.

Starting this Substack is my first major creative project since that incomplete movie script from 34 years ago. My biggest wish from this endeavour is to find my way back to that kid who went on his school excursion with that long notebook and a pen, and while all the other children played, sat under the shade of a tree and scribbled away his movie story.