All these years of book reading has left me kind of dumb, slow to understanding practical things that my friends and my relatives started to view me as a kind of unrealistic idealistic philosopher-like woman who cared not much about dressing up or looking good or cooking that by the time I was twenty I was disliked by relatives who wanted me to be less studious and by friends who wanted to talk about what other girls talked about.
I don’t remember being welcomed with warmth in any place except with my one friend of years, whom we will conveniently call Anna, who is just my opposite, very practical and good-natured that even without any effort she is liked by whoever she meets while I stare blank-eyed wide-eyed and finally sleepy-eyed at people who seem to give unsolicited advice about studies, cooking, career and God knows what else.
But with all my obstinacy in choosing my life and making my own decisions I never reached any where, nowhere, in fact with all big big words of idealism and rebellion-Love, Freedom and Creativity. In this also there was this mad act of stupid decision making as if the whole life depended on something or the other or someone or the other and nothing else but love mattered but at some point of time all these romantic ideas crumbled and gave way to a kind of stark realism that was even more harmful.
I wonder is there a relationship between reality and fiction? Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. I never believed it until I saw one day that a person whom I know died in an accident. That single person had caused so much of confusion in the minds of people, quarrels, fights, pains and that too all in the name of God.
Believe me; nobody can give me what such a small stretch of time has taken away from me. I lost a lot of my original enthusiasm in doing things that I once loved to do and the focus I had regarding what I wanted to become, my belief in people and to some extent my belief in God. I became a kind of recluse who refused to open up to people and tortured myself by considering pleasure and happiness as a sin against religion.
I was sitting idle at home, doing only household chores when I wanted to do something worthwhile. That’s when I started reading all the stuff that I had written over the years, the chronicle of my life during the past two three years. Since childhood I have found books as interesting and since fifteen writing absorbing. I have never ventured anything beyond a few lines in my diaries.
Personally I believe that the most controversial book is one truthful journal that you write for yourself. Not only controversial, it can be intriguing as well, for you delve deep into your memory and reconstruct your own life as if you were viewing another’s. These journal entries give some sort of insight into my own nature.
My belief in God and life has changed. As George Eliot says “Joy is the best of wine”. There is nothing in the world like getting up in the morning happy to see the sunshine peeping through the windows, sipping a cup of coffee and humming to yourself all day while doing chores. That’s where I have stopped, seeing God in being happy with myself and the world.
