Short stories have always intrigued me. A tale intentionally unfinished, a tale unintentionally vague and fuzzy, embedded with secrets, for you to trace them out. They say that there is specific grammar, known rules and regulations for writing a short story. I know none of them. What has always attracted me as an individual is the fuzziness, the fog, and those veiled emotions, inarticulate  and left for the reader to conclude. The closure, the destination is kept for the readers to decipher. Then again, not all short stories are like this. There are many with home but the homeless ones dazzle me. Thus, I thought of scratching one, a grammar-less, homeless short story, excruciatingly bare, revolutionary in it’s honesty, a piece that I will carve, which will be devoid of the white lies, the desperate charade, that I keep up always.
Perfection has never been a myth to me because I have loved perfect human beings in the course of my life. I wrote stacks of poems about them, those poems reek of sadness, guilt and thankfulness. I only believed in perfect manicure, not perfect humans. To err is human, eh? Yes, that has been my mantra, all the while. May be because I am too coward to face the demons inside, I am too coward to accept that perfect manicures are not the end of the world. Whatever might the reason be, the lights inside are deliberately kept switched off, I am and never have been afraid of the darkness. I have always cherished that night in Kalimpong with pastel blue sky, the prologue to the dawn, an unknown fire place, two snoring beings and feverish thoughts.
Loneliness has been an option since childhood. I liked spending my afternoons in my balcony trying to understand the difference between the shrill voices of the hawkers rather than going out playing. Society denied me it seems, in many ways. I talked less in public, people didn’t like that. I talked my heart out with him, he didn’t like that too. Confusion and dilly dallying has never been the option. Still, they always crept into this nincompoop-ish life of mine, uninvited, disturbing, amidst all these exaggerating thoughts and fanciful problems, I often thought of writing a short story. A protagonist, who believes in perfect humans but not manicure, a being who lives for a cause, uncared, unafraid.
Sometimes, it seems, I am not even fit enough to think about such a protagonist. I have faith in realism, and then let’s etch a protagonist, like me? Careless, foolish, angry and a hopeless romantic? Eh?
Sweaty palms, trembling fingers, paralyzing legs and often suicidal thoughts, who am I to write poetry? A torch bearer of Revolution? I have a revolution in me, like you. I often dream of an idyllic place, where loving another is just an impulse, the very impulse that you feel when you want to pee. Funny world and so, funny comparisons. I know, these are mere dreams of a coward being who hates confrontations. Still, I dream. When I blinded myself against the happy-happy world, dreaming has only been the sole option. So, I think, my short story is just a dream, a cowardly dream. I could never write, I should never write it.