I don't really know where it all started.
Maybe when we started talking about telling the stories of our lives in the family therapy course I was attending till about a month ago.
Listening to two people's immensely powerful narratives as part of that session.
Feeling at a loss about what my narrative would be about if I were to start telling it, or whether there would be one to tell at all. The starkness of that realisation.
Reading Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's latest 'One Amazing Thing' soon after.
Everything around me seemed to be about stories.
And it all culminated in an all-night online conversation I just finished having with a young girl I barely knew (then).
As I look back, it all seems ridiculous. Why the hell would I have an all-night conversation with a 16 year old who so far had existed only on the fringes of my life and time, the younger sister of an old friend?
But, as synchronicity would have it, we got talking. This bright young girl I knew had been a tad smitten by me since the time I got to know her older sister back in school, in a very when-I-grow-up-I want-to-be-like-you way. Maybe that's the reason my narcissism got the better of me, and I indulged her 'I-want-to-know-all-about-you' tirade of questions. I was totally caught unawares by what happened next, some of which I shall proceed to share.
But this was How It All Started.
She wanted us to play question-question, which basically meant that I would need to answer random questions about my favourite-this-and-that. I have never been good at these. So we stopped in two minutes. And started talking of Harry Potter.
And then she spoke The Line That Changed Everything That Night.
"Oh. Interesting fact- I cried when I didn't get a letter from Hogwarts on my 11th birthday. I'm still waiting."
And that's how we started playing 'One Interesting Fact About Me I Bet You Didn't Know'.
The rules were simple. And dangerously safe. Turn by turn. No cross-questioning allowed.
This is some of what came up (reproduced with her permission). Some of it was free associations building on one another, some were memories triggered by what the other said, random meaningless trivia thrown in here and there, and also, intimate confessions that I have probably never shared with anyone before. It was all there. I have done away with the exclamations and in-betweens, to present the essence of what ensued.
Me: I had an imaginary friend till I was 20.
C: I had one too. He died a tragic death (executed by me) and I still mourn his loss.
Me: When I used to dress for school, I used to begin socks up, much to my mum's amazement. I still do.
C: I finally found real friends in Class 10. I was a total loner till then.
Me: I found mine in second year of college. Till then, not loner but faker.
C: I love my sister and parents utterly and can do ANYTHING for them.
Me: I always make my childhood in the mountains sound all romantic and storybookish when, in fact, it was quite dreary and nightmarish in many ways.
C: I had my first case of 'love' (well, I thought so)- last year. That too with my best friend. Didn't end well.
Me: I often feel like a terribly shallow person.
C: I want to live in a village once.
Me: I am by far the most insecure person I know.
C: I have quite a terribly low self esteem.
Me: My greatest orgasms have been entirely intellectual in nature.
C: I think I have the power to change the world with my 'psychobabble' and my writings. I want to be the biggest writer in 5 years.
(I second that, by the way)
Me: I have become so conscious of how much weight I have put on that I have actually started avoiding meeting people. In a not-funny-at-all way.
C: I am tired of people telling me how thin I am! I once ate a 2-pound rich chocolate cake alone. Didn't help.
Me: I stalk people too (we have a joke that she is my 'official psychopathic stalker' since she knew practically everything about me from whatever sources she had- FB, her sister, old school magazines, the whole deal). People who fascinate me. Especially with their intellect.
C: I wore a salwar-kameez for the first time at my school farewell and that was the end of my (ahem) 'love' story.Very filmy, I know- the climax at the prom.
Me: I need to go pee. This totally qualifies since there's no way you knew this!
C: I am sitting and typing in the bathroom. I bet you didn't know that either!
Me: I totally cheated on that break I just took by doing 3 things instead of 1- I peed. I took a dump. I called my husband.
C: I love the smell of the soil when the rain first hits it. And I love getting wet. For the most part.
Me: I often wish I had a 'gift'. I know I'm pretty good at many things. But sometimes I wish I had a 'gift'. Like something brilliant beyond doubt.
C: I get drained out and tired if I talk too much to people. Total textbook introvert. But now my job (the whole Head Girl thing) requires me to chat up people all the time.
Me: I recently realised that most times I'm mad at people I love is because their behaving a certain way makes 'me' look badly, not them. It's things like these that make me feel real shallow.
C: I just won 50,000 bucks in a competition. My last cash prize was 30 bucks.
Me: I absolutely HATE sharing food. So it scares me that I will never develop that motherly selflessness towards my own child that my mum and all the mothers I know seem to possess so naturally.
C: I love stealing food from others.
C: I think people are defined more by their circumstances than by their whimsical definitions of themselves.
C: I think sometimes people use me a lot because I don't know when to say no. I hate hurting anyone.
Me: I feel that too. But I've realised that I hate hurting people only because I can't bear to be seen as a 'hurter' or a 'bad' person. It has nothing whatsoever to do with my love for them; it has everything to do with my love for myself. This is another one of those 'things' (That Make Me Feel Like A Shallow Person).
C: I'm, like, totally fresh even if I sleep for an hour in the night (only if I meditate). If I don't, then I need three.
Me (I was devouring a bar of Bournville at one a.m.) : The Bournville in my head was so much better than the one on my tongue right now. This is a fact I have discovered about life in general. I am a die-hard romantic and romanticise things to the extent that reality can never be good enough for me. Disappointing indeed. And dangerous.
C: I am a romantic too. Utterly. Though I'll never admit this in person. But I think utopias can exist. I really do.
Me: It scares me how much intellectual stimulation I need in my relationships to keep them going.
C: I was in a deep, deep, almost suicidal depression for petty reasons in Class 8. It was a bad time.
Me: Talking of the Big D, it sneaks up on me in moments I'm off my guard but so far I've been so hyper-aware of its presence and impact that I've managed to keep it at bay. I'm pretty sure it won't be for long. That scares me. I don't have the luxury to indulge it.
C: I came to Delhi in March this time to meet my best friend- I hadn't seen him in 2 years. It was such a huge culture-shock being around him. I realised I was truly a small-town kid. And I loved it.
That was it. Those twenty-or-more lines uttered by me, to a person I barely knew till about 4 hours ago, pretty much captured who I was, am, and some of what I probably will always be. My eccentricities. My darkest fears. My most warped beliefs about myself and the world. In short- The Story Of My Life. So simply and effortlessly.
Would it have been the same if we had met in another space, another time? Would it have been the same if I had decided to play the same game with someone I've known for years? Who knows.
As she said, "I'm glad we met. And that we talked."
Little did she know she had helped me weave together The Story of My Life. For the very first time.
Postscript:
For C-
Too much have I spoken in my own words tonight, so I shall borrow Gibran's-
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part.
If, in the twilight of memory, we should meet once more,
We shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream, we shall build another tower in the sky.
