“Sir
I have been sick for a few days now …. grant me an extension for the submission “
I write to you almost lying. I say “almost” because I think I am sick, I am sick of doing these petty things. I am sick of copying.
All I can think of is pastel colored curtains in a dark room on a rainy day, the curtains that move gently with breeze, all those beautiful folds that make it seem like very many layers of water color. All I can think of is a million ways to capture the scene that’s eternally etched in my mind and heart. I am growing into a crazy aesthete; I find solace in thinking of the squished streets of old Delhi although the farthest north I have ever been to is Shirdi. I so want to learn Bengali sir, for I can understand Rabindra Sangeet, all that Tagore saheb has written, all that he was associated with and why Kadambari Debir did what she did.
I search through amazon and find books of Satyajit Ray, books of films, not like today’s films. Books that have pictures of beautiful ladies in black and white. I go crazy about books with pictures, that, in fact, makes me preserve NCERTs from school more than anything else. I am always almost lost in a village with which, I can unfortunately not associate my roots. I have halted, in my head, I am living in a much slower paced world. This world is all about calmness, all about smiles, all about sweat you see, the sweat that doesn’t make you cross countries in months, the one which would not add an extra digit to your pay. Yet I choose this, I consciously choose to slip away into this world, only temporarily.
(1/2)
And sir, I ask you to grant an extension. Your humility strikes me, did I know when I first saw you- that you went to top notch colleges around Europe? No, it’s not even a thing. What matters is how patient you are in your late fifties, how calm you are while you try to explain yourself while carrying a potbelly, to half of us who love you and the other half that doesn’t understand you and think you are stupid. I am neither but half of both for I do not understand what you teach but I immensely value your being. How can you be so soft-spoken, so indifferent of looking intellectual? I respect your humility; I respect a million stories that the creases on your shirt and your wrinkled smile tell me.
Sir, I wish you liked the world I love too, but for now, grant me an extension for I respect you, for I wouldn’t like to be a defaulter in the eyes of such a wonderful person. I will make sure I’ll be on time, the next time. I will keep trying, as I continue to churn between two worlds too far apart. As I continue to churn for people I love and respect.
(2/2)
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