Because madness lets me write

"Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason."

^That was something I read in a friend's status update on Facebook, a day back. And I swear, I haven't stopped thinking since then. It was almost like everything I thought about the way I write and my inspiration was put neatly into  14 words. There, done.


I write. I write a lot, of course you guys would know, you guys have been the most faithful readers of my rants ever. 
I'm someone who is extremely opinionated, instantaneous, out going and crazy. I like to think different, or think commons differently. I like to jot everything that hits my neurons, even if it's something as random as "A guided success" [this one came to me recently]. When an idea hits me, I have to write. Not cause I'll forget it, but cause I know I can best describe it only then, when those feelings are intense and nascent. I vent out when I write. I put my laughs, my sarcasm, my hate,disbelieves,and my believes into words. Those words reflect naked the facts or the essence of a shy truth that creaked into my thoughts somewhere,somehow. I write about fiction. Or so I'd like people to think at times.. I write when I imagine myself in someone's shoes. 
I write, all the time.
But what really hit me was the fact that madness inspires me to write. I say this because my being is nothing but madness proved [no chuckles, please] and I couldn't be happier about that fact. 
Being mad helps you grow.  Being mad helps you see the world a little better, perhaps quite differently.
Being mad helped me to resign to insanity. Insanity helped me with a lot of blots of ink on my paper, with a few paragraphs that somehow managed to be sane enough to help someone out there in the world. To help that person find his insanity again, and thus resign to happiness, which he found. 

My madness surely has a reason.

and that reason, I've learned the hard way. That reason echoes me, and myself. That reason helped me realize that madness has lead to greatness. Not in green notes, but in being remembered.

That reason helped me mold myself  into a person of preaching originality. That reason taught me that giving up yourself for the world was just not worth it, because you constitute a part of the world :)

And hence, my writings have a reason. A reason inspired my madness.

And hence, writing is the most beautiful art to me, ever. Because it's lead me to lead a life of choices that I create. Choices, which aren't in the mercy of sane people ;)

Madness is good. 

-Nil. 

The Birthday.

The Birthday.

And she was celebrated,

celebrated with the fanciest of decors,

the dessert, the frocks,the violins,

the people, the Mayor himself.

To the town men,

an invite was a luxury.

The cab men waited for rides to be hired,

just to get a glimpse of the illuminated pride- The House.

The grandeur of the entrance,

never so splendid,

boomed with the compositions of notes running high and low on the chellos

The handsome guards,

with the silent smiles of a good feast,

and all the ladies and gentlemen grooming out of their coats of diamonds and pride.

Yes, 

it was quite an impressive celebration.

The firecrackers fired high into the starless night,

as she was carried in soft satin.

Carefully tucked in, inch by inch into the mother's bossom,

yes she was costly.

She looked around to what looked like day light,

so many lights, so many silky curtains flaunting the dome above.. 

She looked around, 

at the Mother - 

who smiled, but saw silence in her eyes when the Father looked,

the nervous smile,

the pretense of gold,

was this really ... A birthday?




-Nil. 

Boom boom boom para! :)

It's 1:14am in the morning, and no I'm not sleepy at all. I was listening to Shaam- the song, from Aisha. Please listen to it, it's one of those songs that make you smile.

I was reading this other blog..where a girl was describing her birthday, and how her mum used to bake pies for her, and she used to run around the house, waiting to cut that and blow the candles..
And it took me back to my thirteenth birthday...and the birthdays before that..
Oh they used to be parties, alright! The whole house used to be brimming with kids, of all sizes :P Short, tall, skinny, healthy.
I used to be in my special birthday girl outfit which used to be either very blue, or pink, or white. :) Getting ready for my "birthday party" used to be a task! All my girlfriends and I used to be locked into my parent's bedroom, dressing up, and putting lip gloss which used to be such an accessory back then :P
hehe.. and once the party started, oh boy the dancing! My friend Asmita used to always get the hit songs, [god our obsession with "All rise" and "one love" haha!]. And we used to have the craziest of games, with the widest of grins, sweaty red faces cause of all the dancing. Oh the picture sessions mom and dad used to do... come up to our terrace party and click pictures of all of us, and we'd all learnt the "Yo" sign [which later, I realized after 2 years meant "Devil's horns :P], so we used to pose with that in maximum of the pictures.. and all my friends would want to stand next to me, just cause I was the birthday girl :)
After the long hours of dancing and games that involved mud and water [yes, I'm serious :) ], my mom would finally come and announce dinner. The whole family would join, and the feast would begin!
The food was usually lots of Bengali stuff.. my friends absolutely adored the menu.. most of them were non-bengalis, so for them, mustard fish was heaven :P
And once our dinner was over, we'd all sit around in a circle, and chat. Chat about the most important things in the world, about what the other teacher in the XYZ section said to the ABC kid. And how the last birthday party in Mc.Donalds was so much. And how all of us had "grown up" so much..... :P
And then we'd quickly shift to the topic of return gifts :D (yes, we were grown up 11 year olds..) .... After hugging all my friends goodnight, as they left, I'd look at my sister with a naughty smile, andddd.......

Gifts!!!!!!! 


Hahaha.. my sister and I would sit in my parent's bedroom, and open up all my presents, and go Oooohh and Aaaah on the goodies.. God, the excitement was crazy!
My sister is about 9 years older to me. That never mattered,though. She used to be equally excited, and we'd both decide what I'd do with which gift.
And I used to look forward to her gift the most.......and till date, her gifts are still the best ones I've ever received. :)

As I grew up, my ways of celebrations changed. Now my birthdays don't usually have a crazy party with tiny motu kids and parents running around the house. Now we usually go out to eat like crazy, and have a nice time with pizzas/coffees/whatever. It's still a lot of fun.
But this 16th birthday reminded me a lot of how my birthdays used to be originally.. and nothing can beat that :)
There was so much innocence in the way we in our 11 year old selves danced to "Bunty or bubbly" the hit then, or all of us shoulder to shoulder going right and left on "All rise". Those memories are old.. those memories are so much of baby fat!... and those memories are, and always will be the ones that would find me when I'm listening to happy songs, for these are the memories that are a series of sepia colored photographs in the album of my mind. And they're always going to nudge me whenever something turns up infront of me, that somehow, somewhere joins hands with those memories.
And oh these somethings are everything around us-- songs, chessboards, the telephone, that crumpled letter that lies in the back of your wardrobe, the scribbles in the back of your notebook, the people around you, and yourself :)

make a memory today :) 




-nil. 

I remember this girl..

I remember this little girl.. this girl with pigtails and fringes falling on her forehead. With cute little frocks, and an evergreen mischievous smile.

I remember this tomboy.. arm wrestling with the boys of the class, scaring each and every soul as the "Gundi" of our class.

I remember this rebel... fighting with all the teachers and putting fried cockroaches with me in our particular rival's English book.. almost dying in fits of laughter when our mission was accomplished, looking at that girl scream her lungs out in class. Yes,nobody messed with Us.

But alas,
I only have a memory. A memory of what she used to be. A memory of someone I used to know.
That little girl hasn't come back, for quite a while. She hasn't come back, home. 

I remember this girl smiling at me with childlike innocence and mischief glinting in her eyes.. Those eyes are now bloodshot with alcohol screaming in them, and that girl... that girl is now soiled under short dresses and high heels.


(A post, for a lost someone)

-Nil.

Here's to you, Ma'am.

As a fifth grader, I was the usual kid. Loved to play, family was the hugest horizon, slightly an introvert at school, hated Math, dreaded remedial of any sort, dirty handwriting, hated my class teacher even more.
As a 10 year old, 5th grade was a huge huge deal. Somehow, it sounded "grown up" just cause we were shifting to "SST" from "EVS". I can't help but laugh when I think of that :P

I always loved English. I always finished my English book before any other kid even bothered to check its index out. So this year, as in 5th grade, I had tonnes of stories of my choice, and we had a new English teacher.....

I remember being scared of her, because she looked darn strict, and she looked like the "No nonsense"  lady. I enjoyed her classes, because I liked the way she made us all speak what we felt instead of telling us the interpretation of whatever the text was. However...I didn't quite take her strictness very seriously, and went on writing in an untidy handwriting, in an extremely unorganized copy which was almost falling apart with no index.
It didn't matter to me much. I was a 10 year old, doing her homework on time, and enjoying the simplicity of life and worrying about stuff like what my mother might have given me for tiffin. 
Then came the first copy submission of fifth grade. I stood in the line, kept my copy on the pile, and went back to my seat to chat with a friend who used to be my best friend. After a while, I heard my name being called in a very stern manner by ma'am. I walked nervously, she looked dead angry. She held out my copy which was pretty much torn and tattered and calmly yet with anger spoke loudly and said "Class, this is a copy. Is it?" . She scolded me left right center in front of the whole class. I was shocked, cause I never thought a messy copy was a big deal. I was shocked because for the first time, I was being scolded in front of the class by a teacher. That incident somehow hit me real hard.
I went back home that day, and fixed my copy first thing before touching a single piece of rice.

Few more days went by, I had a feeling my English teacher hated me. And that used to upset me, cause I loved the subject. My spellings were horrible . And everyday, I'd be asked to write each and every wrong spelling a minimum of ten times as correction. And mind you, a single paragraph of mine had at least three spelling mistakes.
However, these punishments only made me adamant to prove to my teacher that I was a good student, and that I wasn't the back bencher sorts. I wanted to show her my love and respect for the language.

With time, my spellings became better. It took a lot of time,yes, but nevertheless they kept getting better. With time, my English teacher started encouraging me to keep going.. Her emotions were very careful, she never gave away a lot of them. Probably that is why, I had a balanced head when I started getting better and better. 

She noticed my answer writing style. They were always original.. She asked me if I write, I told her I did. She asked me to show her some of my work, I remember her advising me very seriously to keep writing. She told me she saw something in me, my writing. She had faith in what I wrote.
And that's how it began. My diary. My first step to writing.
Once I started, there was no end. I'd run to her first thing after every single thing I wrote. From the most kiddish to the silliest of poems. She never laughed at them,though. She only smiled, and told me that I was good, and that I needed to keep going.

Years passed, she was pretty much one of my very close friends in school. I never hesitated to reach out to her at any point of time. She'd be there, no matter how many test papers she might have had to check. She'd carry my work home just so that she could give me a feedback.
She introduced me to the SCHOLASTIC Writing Awards competition, and told me that I must write in the fiction category.
She's the one who asked me for a box of sweets the day the results came out. She broke the news of my story to have won the 5th position all over India. She hugged me to the memory I still cherish when she told me that my story had been selected with 23 other top entries to be published into a book.

This dynamic lady made me. This lady gave me the strength and the confidence to speak out, and speak different. To speak my opinion. She made me realize that I could make a difference with a pen and a paper. She's the reason why today, I am a published author, with all my spellings correct in place.. and I stand somewhere.
She's the reason I believe in A Teacher.

I have so many memories that I cling on to,even today ma'am. I have so many memories which make me cry for the happiness and gratitude I feel for you. A blogpost is not enough for the keyboard to capture every memory that still seems to be painted fresh in the canvas of my mind and heart. I can never repay what you've done for me, I can never repay that extra effort. But I swear I'll try to make you proud someday, someday when I make a difference in the world.

I know you're reading this ma'am,
and I just wanted you to know, that I miss you. And Thank you. I stand tall because of you, ma'am. I stand as a confident 16 year old ready to unleash her thoughts on to a paper without the fear of acceptance, because of you.
Because you taught me, much more than English. You taught me persistence,humanity....and more importantly, you had faith on me.

Here's to you, Mrs. Suman Anand Ma'am.
A very Happy Teacher's Day to you. 

Yours only,
the girl with the untidy handwriting,
Nilanjana.