By Praniti Gulyani
June 30, 2021
I first began to write when Dad hit Mom.
Actually, he didn’t just hit her. He pulled her hair, banged her against the wall, so much so that her teeth sunk into her lower lip, and she began to bleed. A moment later, I found myself not on a writing desk, (where I should have ideally been), but in the garden, with a broken pencil in my hand, as I furiously composed on the taste of blood, imagining it to be salty, tangy, and that curious taste of bread when it gets greenish blue. When a friend who accidentally stumbled upon my notebook asked me why, I simply said that the color of the veins that peer through the transparent window of the skin is blue-green, just like the color of bread when it is left outside and rots. My friend had said that she did not understand, and I had selfishly shrugged my shoulders and walked away, telling her – or rather, telling myself, that I did not need her to understand.
However, my existence was partially, but not completely synonymous to that of a wildflower. I loved literature class – and would try to speak up, and in the few times I did, my teacher claimed that I brought up a sense of intensity in the class. A sense of absoluteness, a sense of extremity – she explained. A minute later, she asked me where I got that intensity from.
The impulse within me lisped ‘from the beating’, while my Literature teacher told me she did not understand. As she kept plaguing me for an answer, I held onto the frosty fingers of silence. After all, I did not need her to understand either.
In Life Skills class, I am constantly hauled up. People catch sight of me with a pen and paper and assume that I want to become a writer, and go as far as to ask me whether I have got anything published yet, escalating to inquiries about whether I plan to write a book anytime soon. Finally, someone asks me what do I write. I pick up the bruises that dwell on the surface of my soul and eventually morph into little demons with razor sharp teeth that constantly and continuously bite into being. I pick them up, place them between my index finger and thumb, and put them onto the itchy yellowness of paper.
However, I tell those who ask, that I write what they may easily dispose off as poetry, even though it is something that surpasses words, touches a realm of uneasy spirituality, something that isn’t quite here, but isn’t quite there either. And when they say they don’t understand, I nod in uncanny agreement, and slowly, but surely walk away. After all, I did not need them to understand either.
We have got a form to fill. I do not like forms and find them to be unnecessarily intrusive. I see them as nosy relatives, asking about all those innate things, wanting to unravel each and every strand of secret that I have carefully knotted into – so carefully aligned, arranged within the several split segments of my soul. I look at the form. It is short, precise, to the point and precise – and after casting several furtive glances at it, glances which I’d folded and piled up on my eyelashes for my particularly crowded family gatherings. I dare to take it by the horns, and finally look it in the eye. It was a very simple kind of form, I realized later. Nothing to worry about.
It was an ordinary, co-curricular interest form released by my school. It was a typical ‘Tell us more about yourself’ form, the kind with colors that glow like flamboyantly dressed individuals, clad in urban partywear, and still harbor the echo of hollow hearts.
“What do you think you do best?” the form asked. Even though the question was printed – or typed, rather, I found the tone to have a warm lilt in it, as I basked in the inherent, comforting glow that made every word glow with a different shade of red, reminiscent of childhood cheeks painted by the summer sun.
“I write pain” I found myself answering.
Praniti Gulyani
Praniti Gulyani is a seventeen year old girl from one of tbe most vibrant and colorful places in the world. She likes to call herself "a woman of words and verse", and aspires to become a full time author when she grows up. Praniti has been published in over thirty literary journals around the world, and holds laurels in all spheres of creative writing. She is a Gold Finalist Awardee in The Queen's Commonwealth Essay Competition conducted by The Royal Commonwealth Society, London. Recently, two of her poems won honorable mentions in the prestigious Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest conducted by Hollins University, USA. Praniti wishes to teach creative writing someday, and bring more youth into this beautiful world of literature.
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