Once upon a time, there was a little girl who watched the clouds move from her tuition classes' window. More than the blackboard she gazed at what is going out outside the window; the trees, birds, rooftops, some ancient spiral stairs leading to the terrace, people at the chai tapri below.
One day the English teacher asked the class about a story written in one of the answer sheets. "Who wrote that Christmas story?" It was that girl. But she was scared to raise her hand. Because all she had answered in the exam was the comprehension part - grammar objectives, letter writing and essay writing.
The teacher asked again. All the students looked at each other, but no one raised their hand. The girl was looking down and waiting what will the teacher say next. Was that not allowed? Is it because she left the rest of the answer sheet blank? Was the handwriting bad? She was very much confident that if she raised her hand, the teacher would scold her in front of the class.
She was terrified to even look at the teacher. She felt sweat in her palms.
She was not good in any of the subjects all her school life. And quite lazy to sit for hours in the examination room and fill up the answer sheets. But, she passed all her tests, by answering all the small questions and the grammar and comprehension part of all the language subjects. She was better than many of her classmates. But not as good as she could be. Her teachers and parents knew this.
And so she was afraid of being put down in front of the class. All the students have this fear, I guess.
The teacher asked again, waited for some time and then said, "This is the best thing I have ever read." She looked up in surprise. There was a spark in her eyes now.
"This is someone from this class. Whose is it?"
The girl slowly raised her hand now and glanced at her teacher. Everyone's head turned towards the girl.
"You've written an excellent story. Good work! I'll read this out loud. You all should try writing something like this."
And the teacher began reading. The girl felt butterflies in her stomach all through the lecture.
After going home, she was still in that magic moment. She couldn't believe what had happened.
In the exam room, with the question and answer sheet on her desk, she was pretending to be busy writing the test. Half of the time was still left. And she was done answering the 'fill in the blanks', 'answer in one sentence', 'formal letter writing', 'write the meaning of' and other such short answers. There were a lot of questions left to answer. But the lazy bacteria in her didn't let her write.
One of the questions was to write a story ending with some phrase.
She read the question a couple of times and began writing. One thought drew to another. A simple story turned into a suspense story. She felt proud of herself for completing this. It was the first time in her life she had done something like this and finished it.
It was and still is something unbelievable for her.
And this is how I began to write.
Comments