“What would you write about me?”; She asked. This wasn’t a question, this was more of an assertion, She knew I would write, and I knew to myself that there couldn’t be anything more stimulating than her for my mind to think about. She wasn’t this ordinary, girl next door. She was a living, breathing chest of extraordinary tales, She went by an amusing name on her Instagram handle, her Quora profile too mentioned her to be nothing typical, She wasn’t just the ‘regular mahila’. Her life was nothing ordinary too, so much of content, so many tales to tell, She held them within, often her eyes would let out a thing or two.
I hadn’t until then found this inspiration to write about just one person, although I would often jot down about the people I knew, no one could otherwise supply my mind with such stories and words in plentiful. In her; I found all that my mind desired for, my soul craved and my heart sought. She was the perfect dose of sedation my desperate and restless mind needed to calm itself.
My quest She was, and She had become. I would go through her profile, read the answers She wrote on Quora, re-read them and try to dive deep into her psyche. One such answers had her mentioning about her twin nephews, the daylight they showed her, I found my daylight in her. I could understand and relate to the pain She withstood when She had suffered a major accident. All the while, I was busy reading into her, reading about her and reading what She wrote about life and her experiences. I was never into poetry, I could never understand anything apart from the rhyming scheme of a poem, the poems She wrote on her blogs took some time to make sense to me, I thank the countless pegs of rum which aided the process. I could finally see sense, understand a little more; relate to the emotions that She so beautifully chose to keep layered within.
It took time, almost three months for me to decide upon what had to be written, She brought the answers along and sprinkled them on my mind, it had to be her, and about her. I could think nothing else; nothing beyond her.
And, finally after a struggle of a couple of days I could give shape to a piece on her, it didn’t attribute everything to her, I couldn’t do it, it would have been in haste, I knew what I had to mention and in what proportion. She making up all the ratios in my mind now, all that I thought I would do is pull her out, put her on the piece of paper and cast her in words.
It has been a good 18 months since I started with this humble attempt at capturing her, my words often fail to come through. Her magic beyond everything that I have experienced, her aura spreads beyond everything else that exists. To cast her, in her perspective would be hard, to put her in mine: it would still be a colossal mountain to climb.
The question still remains: What would I write about her?
I have no answers, I will have no answers, for She remains a question, still intriguing my mind into thinking, provoking it with questions. I look out for her, look at her answers and the poems She wrote, there’s a hint about her; the rest will follow. The trail, the quest will go on forever.
abhishek purkayastha 