Read it Live
dedicated to promoting budding poets, writers and bloggers

He said in class, “you can’t write a story!?”

“Yes,” she said, “I can’t find an idea.”

“Stories are everywhere, they’re around you, they’re inside you. Just look out of the window; you’ll find several things to write about.”

“I don’t see anything,” she said, obviously not to him, just to herself.

As per order she looked out of the window. She could see an old water geezer, a washing machine and some dirty clothes piled on top of it.??

She looked at the old machines intently, trying to find a story. Where could the story be? Could she write about the geezer? Be the geezer and narrate its life story? Aap Beeti was her favorite part of creative writing in junior school. She liked best being a pen, a pen that had been misused, disrespected by a lousy student and eventually thrown away before it had lived the full course of its life. But what could she write about a geezer?

Hello, I’m a geezer, I’m tall and slim and gray. I came into existence one fine day when a smart man thought that his kind should have easy access to warm water. I do not wish to relate the details of my manufacturing and retailing because you’re not interested and will probably skip them. Anyway, when I was installed in a home they poured water into me and lit a fire under me. I felt like killing them. How would they like it if I lit a fire under their feet and left them to dance and hop around? The water inside steadily grew hotter and then boiled, scalding my insides, the heat at my feet growing stronger. I’ve been like that ever since; snappy, bad-tempered and burning.

What a crappy aap beeti. Stories weren’t everywhere, nothingness was everywhere.

??The window had a glass behind a gauzed sheet. The gauze had small holes, a fine gauze, and she tried to look intently enough to remove it from the view altogether, see through the gauze without seeing the gauze.?? A story of a geezer behind the gauze, a gauzed geezer, this was leading nowhere.

What else could be written about a geezer? What was small enough to live inside a geezer?

That reminded her of Balishtia, the story her mother had frequently told her in childhood. Balishtia, she thought, what would he be called in English? She couldn’t come up with an appropriate translation. Balishtia, the small man who lived in a shoebox and slept on a bed made of a matchbox. Balishtia who had little windows cut out of the cardboard box, covered with tissue paper curtains, who ate and drank in utensils stolen from a little girl’s Barbie doll. Balishtia, she had always thought looked not like a man but Snoopy. Snoopy, what a funny name for a character. Snoopy, did he snoop around too much? He did have a longish kind of nose. Snoopy, snoopy, snoopy, snoopy, she kept repeating to herself. Snoopy, snoopy, snoopy, snoopy, spoony. Spoony! Chamcha? What a bad name for a character. As distasteful as calling Balishtia ‘Handspan-ey.’

Did Balishtia have gauzed windows? Or could he just lift the tissue curtain and look at the world clearly?

“Don’t try to find your story right now!” roared the teacher seeing that she was staring outside, “Pay attention to the class.”

She turned her gaze towards him, he looked gauzed, a gauzed teacher, a gauzed gaze.

*

She sat at her dining table in the evening, looking out of the window for an idea. They were everywhere.

The four chairs in the garden outside where placed facing each other with a table in between. It made her think of the funny picture of these chairs that a friend had edited. She had made four white, blurry figures sitting on these chairs. “Who are they?” she asked. “Jinns,” he had replied, “Don’t you know jinns live on trees? That’s why they say young girls shouldn’t go out at night wearing perfume, or with their hair down. The jinns fall in love with them and then possess them.”

One of her aunts always had hundreds of jinn stories to tell from her childhood. She had listened to them many times over, every time with an addition. But she didn’t mind, they were entertaining. They said her grandmother had been possessed by a jinn once, though she was not very clear how or when that happened. For some reason it was a hushed affair.

But that was back in the days they called them ‘jinns.’ Recently a little cousin had realized that as jinns were everywhere they could hear us when we talked about them. He declared that that was not good and as a solution, came up with a nickname for them. So now they we’re not jinns, but JBs. Little white Jaybees of that picture. That name made them seem so much friendlier.

Why did every window have the gauze? Had anyone ever really seen JBs or where they also just a gauzed perception of an idle mind looking for a story?

*

She stirred the tea after pouring in milk through the sieve. The trolley was all set. She was to wheel it in the room in a few minutes, smile at the guests and be a courteous host; talk but not talk too much, smile but not smile too much, participate in the discussion, present her view point but not too strongly, lest the guests think she was too strong headed a girl. No one wanted a strong headed daughter-in-law. Her cousin in America said Pakistani people made marriage look like the simplest thing ever, point towards a girl and there you have her. She told him, it wasn’t that simple, even though everyone made it seem so once a match was made.

“I wonder how they can like or dislike anyone in just one formal meeting and decide for their children,” he had said.

“They only pretend to be the ones deciding, I think in their hearts they are as undecided as anyone else. They just try to smooth over the untidiness of the process,” she had explained.

She had stirred the tea enough; too much would make it cold. Sometimes tea would make and break matches. It was safer to taste it; it tasted funny, a gauzed taste for a gauzed process.

*

She kept staring out of the window intently. The teacher went on and on about how the system was flawed. There was too much red tape and to make a difference a whole new system, right from the grass root level, would have to be put into place.

I saw she was still not out of her misery. She hadn’t found an idea. I turned to her,

“It’s okay,” I said, “We’re not writers. If it takes you so long to come up with an idea, you don’t have it in you, don’t kill yourself over it.”

“I know,” she said. I think I saw relief on her face. “It’s only that he keeps insisting that I am one. That makes me think maybe.”

*

[For those who do not like this ending, read on, an alternate ending is provided.]

*

She kept staring out of the window intently. The teacher went on and on about how the system was flawed. There was too much red tape and to make a difference a whole new system, right from the grass root level, would have to be put into place.

I saw she was still not out of her misery. She hadn’t found an idea. I turned to her,

“It’s okay,” I said. “Sometimes ideas evade you, but they do eventually come to writers. Don’t kill yourself over it. You’re a terrific writer, I know your story will be amazing like always.”

She smiled, half glad at the praise, half nervous with the pressure that came with that high expectation, “yeah he says that too.”

*

[You cannot choose the ending of a story in real life; it's only fair that you should be able to do it in literature. If everything around is gauzed, let's ungauze it here.]

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