TOPSY- TURVY

This happens to be the only Novella I ever wrote. Dates back to my graduation years...

Characters bear no resemblance to real life people, unless its just co-incidental ;-). Inspirations come form the likes of Mil Millington, E.B. White and Nicholas Sparks. Thank you! 

CHAPTER ONE

INITIATION

So this is it, I guess. This is how much my life will be worth. Few words and a few pages. It took me twenty-four years, seven months and six days to finally decide that this is what I wanted to do with my life. Write. I have been contemplating over what I would jot down when I finally poured down my thoughts, but I haven’t come up with anything concrete yet. I will just let the crescendo of emotions flood the following pages.

It is weird how thoughts refuse to materialize the moment you want them voiced. Even more stranger than that, is that just two minutes before I sat down with the pen, I had the perfect plot to go about my life, in so and so exact words. But now that I am attempting to write it is only with great strain that I can define anything at all, for that matter. I am staring at the blank walls, kicking the footstool next to my leg and balls of crushed paper arch all the way to the bin behind my door. What was I thinking? I can’t write for nuts. Not even if it was the end of the world and I was Earth’s only saving grace!

I see an ant crawling up from my windowsill. Its been climbing up that wall dexterously again and again for quite some time now. For a second there I almost felt I could hear its panting through its short-lived breaths. I meditated on it for so long, I think I almost helped push the poor creature over the top of my windowsill and into my room. Huh! I heaved a relieved sigh. It did make it to its destination. And now I think I can make it to mine as well. I have been finally hit by a brilliant stroke of ingenuity. I now know what I want to write about. I rest the pen between my thumb and fingers and bray to a discordant tune while the pen lies there, as snug as a gun, firing sparks of what I wisely call an episode of misfortunes in my life.

CHAPTER TWO

LIFE IS A FARCE-I’ll Tell You That For Nothing

I’ll tell you that for nothing. To choose my words wisely, my life has not been the rip-roaring spectacle I fancied it would be, but neither have I burrowed around with the gophers. I am nothing special; of this I am sure. I am a common person-with common thoughts and I’ve lead a common life. However, there are things in this universe, which cannot be explained, and one of them is that even common lives have some inexplicable phenomenon to relate. That surprises me though. I never had anything interesting at all yet I am writing accounts of the same. Sometimes I almost believe that in fact it’s the very banality of my life that urges me to concoct a fictional adventure in the ordinariness of it all.

He said, “Yeah you see the plain far below is for lower mortals like you. But for people like us, we live in the far above plain of the transcendentalised…” he added with a smug smile and a twinkle in his eyes that made me suffer from a transitory hysterical blindness. What? I muttered to myself quizzically. I was thinking aloud to myself whether he just rambled a whole line from the thesaurus, when all of a sudden the soul sitting next to me shrieked into my eardrums and almost made me jump. “God, Herbert, you are just too smart”, she said coquettishly. Wait! A momentary blankness. Blink. Blink. I admit my memory span is that of an ant but did she just bat her eyelashes at him? Quick replay-my best friend Sarah is actually flirting with my boyfriend. But then that’s how things always were.

All these years of deceitful belief that I could hog a guy all to myself only to be dumped by each and every one of them, came flooding back. I had been jilted in love not once, not twice but four times, on each occasion he reason being my super gorgeous, hot and blonde best friend Sarah. It happened once in 7th grade, then in 10th grade, all the way up to high school. Even my playmate, James, in nursery couldn’t get his eyes off her. Yeah, I had a crush on him but sad enough it was one way. I may have been too young but that still counts as love. But now, that I was in college, and I met Herbert who professed his deep love for me on more than occasion, I thought things would be different.

And what about Herbert? He was smart, intelligent, loving and…. also happened to reciprocate Sarah’s unsaid intentions. Uggh! What made me think that would work out? I could see a whole life-time play itself before me with them snogging, snuggling together, loving kids…As much as it disgusted me, I couldn’t refrain from cackling at the thought. Life is a tale told by a fool. While I was deeply occupied with my introspection, I heard Herbert say-“So you think I am a jerk eh? Debbie? Using big words to charm my way through beautiful ladies?” he winked at Sarah. A half-hearted reply came out of my mouth and I found that voice unfamiliar; it felt as though the words weren’t even mine. “I am not the one who uses words like desideratum and diaphanous, and what not? I was just being modest!” I said. And then before I knew it Sarah butts in and says retorting- “Awww! C’mon Debbie! Give the guy a break!” she smiled at him and I saw a spark light between them. I knew what was to come next. But just for the record, even after all these years, ironically. Sarah is still going to be my best friend. Yeah! I know. Dumb. But I happen to have an eternal signboard stuck over my head, which reads –“Torture me! After all I am dumb!”

CHAPTER THREE

POST BREAK-UP BLUES

The anticipated ‘break-up’ must have delivered a thundering shock to me, deadening my recollection because now I have the dimmest memory of what happened next. I faintly remember, embarrassing myself before an audience which constituted a bartender, two couples from my college, a flamboyant waitress in skin-tight clothes, and a shocked nerd in the corner. I must have hurled abuses for an hour, or at least I’d like to think so, at the two of them. Somewhere, I also fancy reducing a WWF wrestle between Sarah and me to something more decent, and puke-inducingly more pansy.

I must have wallowed in self-pity for over a year. I took this as a serious sign of remaining a spinster for all my life. My social life came to a halt and started rotting as stagnated water. Gee…I must have really liked that guy Herbert. Sarah and I resumed normalcy after she discovered that Herbert and her were to stay for an overnight hitch.

Yeah, he came back groping me and begging me to take him back. But I was hurt and how could I re-date an ex who slept with my best friend and decides to come back to me the next morning, because he woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Kids borne through him might be serious rapists for all I know. So that was the end of the story with him. And honestly, I don’t think I will ever regret my decision. His capacity to fabricate an electric selection of half-truths and deep pockets full of quick fire mendacity rightly earned him the title of an “insensitive, pig-headed, self-proclaiming, quintessential jerk”!

CHAPTER FOUR

OLD FLAMES NEVER DIE

Life moved on, and the eternal fact finally sunk in- that life isn’t a fairy tale. I grew tired of the campus,and my misery, for some odd reason, kept multiplying. Every corridor I turned into lead me into this gloom of longing and I felt alienated; ostracized by my own figments of imagination. I wanted to belong somewhere, someplace, home. I got a call from Dad who kept giving me hints that something big was going to change his life forever but every time he would lead me to the disclosure and abruptly leave me clueless and hanging there with curiosity. I decided that I desperately wanted a break. So I went back home.

New Orleans had been my home ever since Mom had passed away. Its gothic buildings, misty air and surreptitious weather made it all the more intriguing. Unaware of the blow that was to come next, I leapt to hug my dad the moment I saw him in the New Orleans airport. During the car journey home, he decides to drop the bomb on me. “Honey! I think you have grown up beautifully even without your mother. Your mum would have been so proud of you, if she were alive today,” he smiled at me incandescently. “Still, I think that a young girl always needs a mother”, he paused and then continued “Now I know nothing can take the place of your mother but I think you have grown up enough to understand that at my age you need someone to walk with.” He finished with a solemn face and waited for me to say something. I grew impatient and casually remarked, “Where is all this heading to Dad?” He replied sheepishly, “I am getting married darling!” Wow! My chubby, bald, short, cute little Dad with another woman-and at the brink of his middle adulthood? Silence loomed in the car. Finally, breaking the silence, Dad asked, “So what do you think darling?”

“Gee, Papa. What can I say,” fighting for words in my head, “I am happy for you!” I added sycophantically. We chatted cheerfully along the rest of the journey and finally when we were approaching the driveway of our home, I commented teasingly “So how come Dad, you have abandoned the enigmatic you, the one that chicks loved?” I winced at the word chicks. Daddy replied, turning off the engine, “Ahhh, I don’t need to invest in such cheap ornamentations anymore. I’m out of the market. There’s just Ursula and me growing old together.”

“Is that better?”

“Yes, its more efficient. With Ursula you get to grow old much quicker,” he replied in his usual mock-sultry manner.

Ursula, so that was the name of my father’s new found love. I met her, a pleasant, jovial, funny woman she was, and I took an immediate liking to her. But no, that was too soon for a happy ending, Fate! The culprit. Takes you by your hand, fondles with you and drops you like a hot tamale.

On the eve of the wedding rehearsal, a friendly face walks in to the living room. James, my playmate from nursery on whom I had a silly crush. From being a freckled, lanky boy with big spectacles he had transformed into a tall, dark hunk. I kept gaping at him, not being able to believe what my eyes were seeing. He looked at me and waved and smiled. Then in an embracing gesture added, “You look beautiful, old girl! Evolved I see. Do you even remember me?” Our eyes clicked. The inside of me was yelling! Was I falling for him again? “Of course I do! How can I forget?” I replied flirtingly. Stars were dazzling in my eyes. Could love find its place in my life again? I was sure this was it.

CHAPTER 5

BACK TO REALITY

I wouldn’t say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind. The rest of the blissful days I spent with James, I had almost begun to fancy having kids together, a house by the stream, a pet dog named Spanky, and a lifetime together. Every time I saw him, I felt butterflies in my stomach, my knees would go weak, and I fumbled with my words. When I think about it now, I feel embarrassed and an urge to kick myself for going that far…

The fateful day of the wedding arrived. I was rummaging through my dressing table for the past half hour, avoiding rupturing my stomach muscles. Daddy had crept into my room and was staring quietly from behind. I almost jumped at seeing his reflection in the mirror. He was weeping. I was touched by this sudden outburst of emotion on my dad’s behalf and the best thing I could think of was hugging him. As I withdrew from him, I was sniffling into some tissues I had in my hand, looking away from my Daddy when I heard him call out, “Son! Come in here!”

From the corner of my eye I could see James walking in. My head went dizzy upon seeing the sight. James hugged my Daddy and said, “I feel glad that Mum and you have finally decided to get married. At first, I didn’t know how to take the news, so I didn’t talk much with you or anybody, for that matter, about it.” He then added nudging, “So, are you nervous, soon to be Dad?” They both chuckled. I must have looked like death warmed over, seeing this reunion. I could hear my voice frail away like the Holy Ghost of Holocaust. “What?! You are Ursula’s son?” The next statement changed my life forever. James took me by his arms and said, “Yes, little sister. Aren’t you excited about the whole thing?”

I didn’t know what to say. I fell into my “Zen’d” state. The fact is I find thinking about nothing enormously easy. It is not something I’ve had to work on either. Achieving a “Zen” state for me is practically effortless. So, as my synapses slowed down, everything around me blurred. 

The marriage must have gone well, even in my ‘switch-off’ state, as I haven’t heard anyone complain about it. Or it could just be that they are being nice.

However, we are a happy family now. We meet every once in a while. Every Christmas, when I meet James, he bugs me about the episode. Things have moved from being awkward to a common family joke that we share. And now, as an aspiring writer, I have officially finished my first piece. I think I am going to call it “Topsy-turvy”!