She doesn't like words. Every time she tries to forget a word she ends up learning a new one, storing it deep inside her head where her nails can't dig it out. When she starts writing, it is not out of a need to write, but to empty her brain, pour all the soaking words out of it. Her head is heavy and the heaviness is paralyzing her.
She has just passed out school with excellent grades and is here to study Astrophysics. She is keen on learning and wants to make the most out of her three years stint here. She tries to communicate with her fellows, but in vain. Everyone around is vociferous on information assimilation with little time for buddies.
Out of her sheer loneliness, she picks up the habit of learning new words. Logical that her mind is, she learns up pretty fast and ends up emptying her vocabulary on scratches of paper. It used to work at first, and she used to dream of becoming the most learned person on the planet.
But she was learning faster than she could verbalize. It was like a one way traffic when words whirled around her as in a hurricane and she found it increasingly difficult to string a proper sentence from the pearls of words swinging around her. Numerous words, numerous ideas banged on the walls of her brains trying to escape. She put her pen to paper and wrote words and ideas that had absolutely no connection and sometimes even contradicted themselves. It was a systems incompatibility, she was telling herself. The system might hang soon unless she could throw away some data to the recycle bin.
She was lagging behind in her assignments. She was pouring out incoherent themes with muddled up sentences. Gone were her proper syntax, gone were her spelling skills. She had no idea of what she was writing, but she was compelled to write. The words had snatched away her night's sleep, her peace of mind. She knew that in no time she would have to let the words go and it would only be alphabets, raining around her.
The people around her labeled her as a psychopath and started avoiding her. She failed her exams and became lonelier day by day. She had lost the intimacy that she shared with her family. The everyday calls from home that meant so much to her turned short and cryptic. It was no longer a pot of joy after a long day's work, it was fast becoming a sheer routine.
The only solace she could gather was from mother Nature. The deep green meadows, the snow-capped peaks often reminded her of the pledges she made to herself not so long back. Just if she had those long nails to dig some words out, she wondered to herself.
This night she went to sit under the starry sky. It was not a jeweled bowl to her. Her eyes brimming with tears, a few trickling down her cheeks, she felt all data she has ended storing up all these years were as scattered and useless as those mirror pieces in the sky. They could not illuminate the world.
In a last attempt to free herself from her shackles, she weeps out her heart under the darkness of the night. Alphabets drop down with her tears, G-R-A-N-D-M-A', and she ends up crying out for her Granny.
She tends to remember those lullabies she used to sing for her and feels her hand on her fevered cheeks. She feels that her Granny has turned up her tear-stained face towards hers and wiping away the drops of sorrow by laying her face on her bosom.
She tries to tell Granny about all she has been going through. But words fail her. Even those alphabets seem to run away. She makes unintelligible sounds and wails. She could but hear her Granny sound and clear. "Stop crying silly! Don't you want your nails to dig out those words?" Yes, of course, just in case I could get some. She nodded in violent acceptance. "Fine. I'll give you the nails, but promise me, you will never use those nails to scratch anyone!" She lets out a lone sob. "Go to sleep, under this beautiful, starry sky. You will get your nails."
She wakes up at the wake of dawn with the chirping of a humming bird. Get set and go now, tweets the bird. Do not run after everything that comes across, be selective in information gathering. Incoherent information is just data, leave it out for the mechanics. Stride forward towards selective information that the world knows as knowledge.
She feels a new energy within her, which drags her to her study table. She tries to write again. She perceives, though with difficulty, she is able to catch the floating words and string them together to form an articulate sentence. She looks up at the sky. The jeweled bowl is now a few shades lighter, the snowy peaks are just catching the hint of gold. "Thank you Grandma, she said."
Ye Hai Mohabbatein
