Soliloquy in the Woods

The Door Knocks

There’s a knocking on the door that you must answer, but you are not ready to answer it. You have to put down those words circling your mind like a theme from a musical; you have to put them down immediately before they vanish. But your hands won’t move on the keyboard, because of the knocking. It must be him. You feel some relief even though you were not thinking of him, at least not with that part of your mind which always deals with the writing bug that burrowed into you with the urgency of a Japanese Bullet Train, when the children grew old enough to be sent (“packed off”, he’d said) to a boarding school. You release a long breath and get up without putting the words down.

The angry voice inside your mind reminds you that the words you ignored in order to answer the door will not return. No matter how hard you concentrate later, they will not return. The angry voice has a habit of triggering off a virtual tirade inside your head, aided by jagged pieces of memory that tell you again and again that nobody cares about your writing and your desire to be a much feted author; least of all him. You are after all just another housewife. Once upon a time you had a promising career; your upward mobility had been neck to neck with his; but that was before the babies arrived and you stepped indoors so he could soar outdoors. To be fair, he did his part by keeping you warm and up-to-date with all the latest gadgets, holiday destinations and smart-casual clothes. Nevertheless you cried often, acid tears stinging your heart.

It’s the usual story of syrupy sacrifice and martyrdom. You don’t feel special any more. Every rejection slip that drops into your inbox tells you how crowded the ocean is. Your only hope in a thousand is to get trawled up in a net among similar hundreds, to be served together in a blend of spices, consumed and then forgotten. You accepted this state of affairs years ago. But you have undying faith in your talent. You know you can do it; you know that you could have done it before. If only…

You savor the singed feeling that resentment produces inside you. It’s a flame fanned vigorously by the sense of martyrdom that has followed you like a faithful dog ever since your maternity sabbatical got stretched and stretched until it became voluntary superannuation. He knows how you feel.

He got a batch of visiting cards made, with your name and “Writer” written in sloping serif type below that, and your email and phone number and address on the reverse. You shrugged and put them away in a drawer. He bought you a pair of solitaires. You wore them. Then you told him flintily that you could have bought them yourself, if only… Later on you’d made up for it by cooking a good meal and doing nice things to him.

Sometimes, in moments of weakness, which have a habit of hitting you in the middle of a good day of writing, you feel like throwing your arms around him and telling him that he’s the best thing that happened to you and he must be patient. Oh, he must. He must, for the good day will surely arrive, and all his privations and yours too, will be gone forever. But today is not such a day. Your footsteps stamp your irritation on the floor, because you have to answer the door. And, the words are gone. He will notice your irritation and enter quietly. He will wash up and watch TV; later on he’ll ask you in a soft voice if you would like a drink before dinner, and depending on your answer, he will either fill two glasses or continue watching TV. There is buoyancy in your step as you visualize his face. You swing open the door.

There’s nobody there. You blink a couple of times in the late afternoon sunlight. You watch the watchman as he slowly ambles towards you. You hear him say in his creaky but patient voice that the courier boy didn’t wait because you took so long to open the door.
© Rumjhum Biswas

[Author’s note: This piece won honorable mention in The Verb Magazine’s “Looking at You Contest” and an excerpt was posted in the October 2007 issue of The Verb.]

STARTING OUT

I didn’t choose to be a writer. I write because I must. I write because if I don’t, I’ll go crazy. There must be thousands of writers who say this. I know I am not unique.

I have been writing since the age of seven, may be earlier, since the time I learnt the alphabets perhaps. During those innocent days, I did not question myself why I scribbled poems and sometimes songs in notebooks. I just knew that if I didn’t jot down whatever picture and emotion came into my mind immediately, I would feel angry and physically sick. Once during a two hour math exam in school, I finished my paper forty five minutes early, just so I could pen the lines of a poem that were constantly coming between me and the numbers. (I don’t remember how much I scored in that exam, but even if I did, I wouldn’t tell, so don’t ask!) Sister Padua, our music teacher, who was minding us, saw me mumbling to myself and scribbling on a paper after I had given up my answer sheets. She told me to stop distracting the other girls who were still writing. Disturbed, I stormed out of the room. She was shocked by my impudence. Afterwards, when I apologized to her and explained why I had become agitated, she said that she understood, but I should have trusted her enough and told her the reason instead of becoming emotional. She gently told me that she would have allowed me to leave the classroom and sit in the library and pursue my poetry in peace.

Another time, I became nearly hysterical with grief because my poetry notebooks couldn’t be found shortly after we had shifted to another house. I don’t recall this incident, so I must have been much younger than the math exam episode. Years later, my mother told me that that day she realized how much my writing meant to me. Yet, I myself didn’t know it. For a long time, too long for my own good, I neglected my writing self. I felt embarrassed to tell people about it. When I did, it usually produced strange reactions ranging from derision and mockery to irritation (“oh, don’t act intellectual with me”) to jaw dropping awe, to in one case, even titillation.

Over the years, I withdrew my writing self, until I hardly ever wrote for myself, except for the occasional poem. I had a job that entailed a large amount of creative writing, so I lulled myself into thinking that I was fulfilled. I felt stories and poems rampaging about in my head when I took a long maternity leave when my first child was born, but did nothing to capture them on paper. Foolishly I told myself that I just needed to get back to work. The inner disquiet did not go away. Life went on. And, except for the one or two stories that I wrote during lunch hour at work, I continued to ignore my writing self. I began writing again in earnest shortly after my second child was born. Not tentatively, but furiously and angrily, hating anything that came between me, my writing and also my family. I chucked my lucrative full time advertising career; after a couple of years, I even stopped freelancing. My world revolved around my husband, my children and my writing. A couple of stories appeared in online journals. I became more and more detached from the social world. At times it felt like my head would burst if I didn’t leave everything aside to write. I wrote in my head all the time, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, at the playground with my babies, even while watching the occasional television. And, I took time off from my family and home constantly to bang away on my computer. But I still couldn’t tell people that I was a writer.

More stories and poems began to get published. I wrote more stories and poems. I wrote a novelette. I finished writing the first two drafts of my first novel. My husband got transferred and the new city we lived in gave me opportunities to touch base with writers groups. But I still couldn’t say it, when people, outside the writers’ circle, asked me what I did. The words stayed in my throat, hurting my gullet every time I swallowed them down again.

One day, my son, told me quietly that when his friends asked him what his mom did, he said that she was a writer. My daughter joined in and said that she was proud I was not a ‘normal’ mom. My husband, who has always supported my writing, said nothing. He only smiled his “I told you so” smile.

In an ideal world, writers are read and heard, but seldom seen