END TERM ASSIGNMENT AND SELF REFLECTIVE PROCESS ESSAY- ALIBHA MALLIK

Missing Pages

Dear Diary,
It was the most adventurous thing to take place in my life. Of course I had travelled before but this, this was different. We got on the plane and this uneasiness took over me. I knew it wasn’t the the last time, yet I bid my good byes and we took off. The two hours and twenty minutes journey was delayed by forty five minutes. Never mind, as the saying goes, “better late than never.” We got off the plane and out to the taxi stand and there it was- we all felt it. The Delhi loo was blowing in full swing. I’d read about it in 4th grade perhaps, but I had no idea a loo is the exact opposite of what a Mumbai breeze breathes like.
I was born and brought up in Mumbai. It was the type of scenic beauty where the birds would flutter across people as they went on a jog or walk near Marine Drive and the the way the water trailed across the narrow paths paved by the rats, actually belonged to the gutter of one of the many chawls of Mumbai. I miss it all already. “Of course there will be skyscrapers in Delhi. It is the capital of India and the centre of all the juicy news,” I told my best friend.
As a 12 year old, all my excitement was let down. I was extremely, I repeat extremely disappointed with all the tiny buildings, it was as if we were in the outskirts or in a small town. Clearly based on my lack of knowledge and fairly elitist behaviour now that I think of it, I thought I was doomed.
“This city is dead.” I thought on the day we moved into our new home. Back in Mumbai, the street lights and the passing cars kept me company. I was and still continue to deeply fear the dark.
The wide roads of Delhi shaded with trees, and bright sun in the sky defined most of my summer here.While most of the lane of D- block Vasant Vihar was mostly occupied by independent bungalows, there were only three colonies at the end of the road, where the back entrance to the Aravali Biodiversity Park was located. For most of my childhood, I was confined to the shelter of my home and my school. Well, not entirely. I did go to tuitions.
It all began at the transitional phase when mobiles began replacing landlines. It was my first of everything. I met Samay at Daliya uncle’s house. Till today, I do not know his first name. He was with two other friends. They were all from Daliya uncle’s colony. Of course they ogled at me and laughed like fools. That’s what this generation does, either exchange awkward yet boggling looks or pretend not to see the person in the first place.
A week later, we met at my annual school festival. I had no idea he was studying in Modern School, else I would have never shared my notes with him. My school strictly despises sharing the notes our teachers gave us. Yet, with the regular sharing of notes, somewhere I think we found some sort of comfort in each other. One thing led to another and the next thing I know is we’re friends.

It was a dimly sun lit evening. As always I was running late. He had already reached the T-point and would reach my colony in the next 10 minutes. I have the keys and I have to sneak in first today, I thought to myself. I religiously lied to my mother about going for a walk with Zoya before I left home around five thirty. I was partially lying, or so I believed. After all, it was a mini walk, it’s just that I was not alone with Zoya. He was there of course, sweating as always yet radiating deodorant all the way from E-block. I walked up to him with a smile that said sorry I’m late. He shrugged as always but let me get away with it.
"Where are they?" I asked him. He told me he had not heard from them since a few days. We brushed aside the oddity of not having heard from them for the last couple of days. always felt that the back door entrance to the room in the house was weirdly small. And I think I am a dwarf compared to the Delhi standards of average height. We called it our spot. We stumbled across this spot last August.

It was pouring and I left my umbrella at home. I had heard about this bungalow’s redevelopment dispute. Regardless I was no one to trespass, especially with my brother picking me up and dropping me off like I was a two year old child. Lucky me, now that he has left for Australia. I don’t have his protective eyes monitoring my every move.
I was losing my patience. Zoya always drifted off into different branches of her original story. "The point Zoya," I asked her.
“It was because of that stupid ass rich dude man, he splashed dirty water on me, otherwise why would I even go there. Please come with me.” My mom will kill me, said Zoya. She was begging me to help her find her new watch, that she dropped somewhere near that bungalow’s door.

Soon this bungalow became our spot. Everyday we would lie to our parents and come in here. We’d sit all day and gala our time away. Until the day it was all over.
People change more than seasons do. Just as Delhi was gearing up for the Commonwealth games. Our lives geared up too. Our bubble, I mean the bubble that we lived in would burst.
It seems so pathetic that my tragic story could be nothing but a meaningless sob story of a child’s past. Yet it isn’t.
We went in that evening like any other day. Everything had to be normal, yet perfect. We’d spent our days here sharing stories and writing more, thinking poems out loud, discussing possible career paths as voice artists. It was our last day in that room. It was the bungalow behind Priyas. We would tell our parents that we were out on a walk or cycling, while we spent most of our days hidden in that room. It was our safe space. Zoya and Siddharth told us the previous day that as the bungalow was really old, it was going to be demolished in 2 days as per court orders, to prevent any mishaps. Well they did.

Zoya died due to the collapsing the ceiling. Nothing happened to us. Funny thing is we were all safe and sound. Till this day I wonder why. AnwayI stopped writing. I moved back to Mumbai. All three of us stayed in touch. We never stopped being friends.
Every year we would meet on New Year’s eve and raised a toast to Saumya. We missed her.
But things worked out fine or I thought so, until I came back.
It was not the memories that made it uncomfortable. It was something else. Leaving Delhi, as my memory rests, I will never forget all that I lost. The church that we passed on the road to R.K Puram, was the first thing we were going to go to the following Sunday of the day before she died. All our plans were killed with her. Somehow I could not get myself to enter that church. We stopped frequenting the lane behind our colony, where we hid our stray pets in abandoned cars. We would have a minute shot of vodka and go attend functions. Zoya would be the one least affected. She had a strange liking for vodka, which we idiots could never understand. It's all a talk of the past, when things were a lot simpler. I could write then but now I mumble words that seem to not belong to me.
It’s almost as if I’m in some trance and I do not want to leave. Escaping my fears were the easiest thing to do when I left Delhi. Mumbai brought with it a new life and good old memories from my childhood. Old friends, good past that made it seem like Delhi was never a part of me. That Siddharth and Samay were my friends from Facebook. After all we were all on different continents.
But now walking back home to Kamla Nagar seems like an impossible task that I have to endure everyday. I work in Vasant Kunj but I live all the way across in Kamla Nagar. This is where we had dreamt of living in college. Work and rent our own place. "I want to earn my freedom," Zoya used to tell me. So I lived here. I earned my freedom. I would walk down the main market, at times lost in thought of what to buy or how late I’m running that I would forget to think of her. Even my subconscious mind was losing traces of Zoya. And it is after many of those forgetful days that I felt like an absolute crap. To lose someone is not something that is within our capacity. People change, people leave. They always do. But to forget their memory, to forget all the moments and the experiences we shared is too haunting of a concept to me.
I don’t even bother asking her to meet anymore. She never responds. I keep calling her. No response.There is an antique clock kept on the wooden table that no longer works. There is a thick layer of dust on the window panes. The room is otherwise squeaky clean when I visit Zoya's mom. The long bedsheet with Jaipuri print is hanging until the bottom of the bed’s legs. It’s Zoya's room. As her mother left mumbling I noticed the tissues and the half dozen half eaten food boxes scattered around. She was stuck at the time I was worried I was forgetting.
Good Night.

SELF REFLECTIVE PROCESS ESSAY

I was never an avid reader in school. Story books were pretty, but cartoons were more of interest to me. It was a chance encounter with my first Agatha Christie novel: Roger Ackroyd is dead, that I developed a liking for books. It was then that I realised that while cartoons and movies may provide ready made entertainment, books really do transfer you into another world. With each book and movie that I read I developed an imaginary world to go with the novel’s narration to fill in the images of the characters and other settings. I had always been an ardent fan of fiction. While it is true that I had an on and off relationship with non fiction, it was due to the inclusion of the novel In Cold Blood in my course that tingled my interest in non fiction. 

Either way, as a teenager my philosophy in reading books, stories and poems was never reread anything. This is because I believed that rereading any work while there are so many other stories out in the world that I haven’t even heard about. 

But Ways of Reading was a chance encounter. I had already taken up another subject: Indigenous writings fro North east . The problem was that it was clashing with the classes of three other subjects. It was then that I had to give thought toothed subjects that one of my friends told me about Ways of Reading was actually interesting. However it is true that in that moment of decision I was unaware of the fact that I would be expected to write fiction and poems for my assignment. Had I known that I would have stayed miles away from this course. I do write, but that is purely for personal reasons. But to have to publish something on a platform as remote as a class blog was a terrifying experience for me. I had never written poems based on topics allotted, for me writing was always a result of an overflow of emotions or some interesting experiences. yet, this time I had to follow some guidelines and that proved to be a different experience all together. As I mentioned, I never reread any piece of writing, I did the same with my poems. It was only due to this course that I was compelled to reread my poems and rewrite them by making significant structural changes. Earlier I would write poems and leave them open ended and never get back to them if I had no idea, without giving much serious thought to it. This is because I believed rereading any work again and again, takes the charm away. Moreover at times, rereading a poem is not a simplifying a process, it may in turn complicate my previous understanding instead.

But it was through the assignments of Ways of Reading that I have realised the significance of  rereading any work. It does not reduce the impact of the original emotions or feelings we experienced when we first read it. Instead it is one way to analyse and rework on already written articles, a concept that I never agreed upon. 

This course drove me to not just think creatively but also strategically to improve my structural style in my writings. That was truly one of my biggest hurdles, because I for one have always disregarded editing my work too much. Although my fear of a work losing its essence through over editing has not disappeared, yet I have understood that editing a work is important to give any work more clarity and organisation, which may not have been possible in one go.