Cul De Sac

Pranathi Diwakar

 

This is the story of how I became a weaver of words, and it entails a very long journey: from holes in my eyes and a very old dictionary, to a penny that refused to be wished away.


Every journey begins with an origin; mine was in the state of lacking. I have never been able to trace with my finger the exact boundaries of that state, although everyone is constantly reminding me of how lucky I am to have overcome my circumstances. I don’t know that my circumstances were so awful to begin with, or that I was deprived of any material comfort, growing up. In the department of the heart, however, there may have been a few files missing, which is what I set out to find. Lacking: a funny concept. But I suppose the state of lacking is a volatile territory where no one has a true feeling of citizenship, or if at all they do, they live in self-denial.


Ma’am was always telling us that words are slippery creatures, and definitions are, by far, the most elusive of them all. They like to have the last word, as a rule, and do not compromise their position under any circumstances. There they remain in the dark void ahead, slick beings of the night, never within your grasp. But you experiment anyway. You open that leather-bound dictionary; inhale the sharp, musty scents hiding in holes, bumps and secret crevices on yellow-smelling paper, all the while listening to the self-important crinkling of individual pages. You feel for the right dots, trying to avoid the trail of the silver fish. A definition. It is there in black and white. What makes it so difficult to understand?


1. vision– i. the act or power of sensing with the eyes; sight; ii. a vivid, imaginative conception or anticipation.


Oh but I definitely had vision, or I would not have left the orphanage that night in April. The winds were speeding along the highway, carrying with them the slow scent of oncoming rain. The smell of anticipation was palpable, and I was nudged ahead by the song of the wind and the sound of pristine, heartening words like petrichor and serendipity. In that dramatic setting, I eased into the seat of the underdog protagonist, and made my way forward in life. I remember walking to the sound of metal tapping on asphalt and the tumult of a hundred different words, each clamoring for attention. I never looked back once. I couldn’t, even if I had taken it upon myself to try. But there it is, in black and white. I chose the second definition, and not the first. When I discovered choice, as a child, it gave me the power of sight.


2. sight – i. the act of looking at or beholding; ii. a thing regarded as worth seeing.


Since childhood, I had employed the first meaning of sight, as commanded by the dictionary, differently from the other children. If we had received cheques for our school fees in the mail that day, from some generous benefactor who crowed about his magnanimity, Ma’am would make blueberry muffins on June mornings. I smelled purple and gold, and waltzed alone to Ella Fitzgerald’s voice that was breezily floating from the radio. The lazy, swinging notes sauntered over to me, took my hands and spun me around. I would spin and spin until I could take it no more, and then collapse on the ground laughing. Ma’am would glide in bearing a tray of muffins, and the scents of innocence and sheer joy would interweave in my mouth with every single bite.


Ma’am sat down daintily, one such June morning, bringing down from her altitude a series of sighs and a lifetime of regrets. ‘If I had a choice,’ she whispered, ‘I would save up and visit the Trevi Fountain in Rome! It’s a thing worth seeing. I saved the first penny I earned to throw into the fountain and make a wish.’ She pulled out a coin from her purse and pressed it into my palm, with the whiff of conspiracy clinging to the words that were stealthily trooping out. The conspiracy threatened to leak out of her eyes, what with the weight of the plump tears I could swear were standing faithfully at attention, teetering on the edge. I brushed them away gingerly with unsteady fingers, as soon as I heard them fall on the tiles with resounding bursts. The words I really heard spill out that day, ‘My dream: if only,’ convinced me then that my dream was to knit words together on a gossamer canvas of hopes, with the shimmering threads of joy, love and laughter.


3. dream- i. A series of emotions and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep; ii. A wild fancy or hope; iii. A condition or achievement that is longed for; an aspiration.


I stood at Trevi fountain, rubbing the coin against my palm. Long, long ago, when we were both five years old, my roommate had asked me whether I had a hole in my eye, just like he had a hole in his heart. He pressed his chest where he said he ached from missing his mother. But is that why I could not see, because of the holes in my eyes? I could hear the silence fill up, and I felt his eyes opening as wide as coins. I could not answer then. But I could see. I saw further than anyone at the orphanage. Maybe that’s why I left my nest that rainy day, groping for my piece of moonlight in the velvety darkness. Maybe that’s why I chose to wake up from the slumber that showed me the dream, and fashion the wild fancy into an achievement. I wove stories from the recesses of my mind, using the words to light the way. The holes in my eyes became holes on paper. Page after page of patterns of holes. But I had never felt more complete. ‘The thing about your eyes,’ she said, ‘is that they aren’t blind. Why, I can read them as clearly as the words in the dictionary!’ I put the penny back in my pocket. There was no more wishing that night.

Pranathi Diwakar is a 2nd Year MA student. She is very fond of the stage and has the ability to imitate 378 different accents from across the world.