Micro Life

I quote my real life example for this: I was a 90% scorer in my 10th std. (Note that here in India that 10 STD is very crucial for the students and the marks we score here are apparently going to decide our future). My mother wanted me to become a doctor. My Dad wanted me to be an engineer. My grandpa wanted me to join the Police by doing IAS (Indian Administrative Services); my grandma wanted me to earn a lot of money. But me- I always was interested in making movies. Till then, I had watched, say, about 3 movies every day since I was 3 years (that would be 15-years-multiplied-by-three number of movies! Not literally but nearly!) I always wanted to write and direct a movie that would resemble HOLLYWOOD blockbusters. But I never had a chance to do what I wanted. Or did I ever know what I wanted?! Well, I don’t remember what I was thinking then. It’s almost been 10 more years since then. Anyways, I wanted to create a story of my own and live a life of marvel and adventure- making my own rules and feel satisfied. I wanted to do something great, unusual. But it actually began when one of my best friends of my school days came to me and told that he wanted to write a book. And the book he was about to write was supposed to be about true life experiences. The book would picture day to day life and happenings of a typical youngster. The way my friend narrated the theme of his book was very catchy especially for a guy like me whose orientation is towards movies and stories. He had already authored and published a book of poems and was good at it. I felt, “Yeah this is the chance that I should utilize. I should bring out the filmmaker in me and present it to the world.” And for that, I decided to take the aid of stories, write-ups and articles. I and my friend started to write. But I was always shy to show my write-ups to him. “He is a well-seasoned writer. At least he is sure better than me. What if he makes fun of my writing?” I would think and hide whatever I had written. He used to tell me to be less complex and more open in my approach with him. He also suggested a number of novels which could help me in my language and treatment of it. But I always tried hiding the fact that I was not confident about my writing. He started getting frustrated because he felt that I never wrote. He had a goal in his life. He wanted to complete his book within a deadline. And he wanted me to add my experiences to his book. But I have my problems- I would say this to myself and hide all my work.

Time passed and I had somehow managed to stay with my friend without showing him any of my write-ups. I would crack intelligent jokes, speak emotionally, speak about patriotism, speak about politics, responsibility of youth towards progress or matters like teenage love, sex or relationships or worst case give a broad smile to my friend and charm him out from asking about my writings- I would SPEAK anything to avoid showing my write-ups to my friend. I started realizing that this had crossed the limits; that I had become very complex in my relation with him that I had started lying. But my friend had gotten used to my behavior. He started behaving lightly with me. And I became relieved. We started watching a number of classic movies-