A love for language

As I enter the threshold of adulthood, I can’t imagine what life would be sans words

January 18, 2015 12:04 am | Updated 12:04 am IST

My love for language started with a fear of words. Big, big words can be really intimidating to a small, small girl. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth or a golden pen magically stuck between my fingers. English to me was just another subject, a subject which in fact I wasn’t exactly very fond of.

At the age of 10, my family shifted base from a sleepy little town to the national capital. Oh, how terrifying it was! The city-dwellers, with their perfect pronunciation and impeccable spellings, instilled in my heart a great fear. Fear of being wrong, being picked upon.

The next summer, my grandfather came to live with us. The man who had held my little fingers and taught me how to walk, bought me my first storybook . Accompanied by vibrant pictures, the words found a new lease of life. Looking back, I know that very day, a tiny seed was planted in my heart. A love that would soon become stronger than fear.

Every day my grandpa would sit with me, and we’d take turns to read the story. How wonderful those moments were, moments that ended too soon but lingered on forever. Each month on a given date I’d receive a story-book from him. “It’s your ticket to travel the world!” he’d say.

How true those words were! I could travel to meet the Copperfields in 18th-century England one moment and then find myself in the sweltering heat of Malgudi in the next. Twenty-four world tours and two years later, I decided to pick up the pen. I wanted to create my own worlds, write happy endings, describe tearful farewells and most importantly, meet new characters.

That was the year, 2010 to be precise, when my first article got published in my school magazine. A small piece of a hundred words that brought a big smile on my grandpa’s face.

Later that year, when the cruel winter chill descended upon Delhi, he passed away. In an attempt to keep his memory alive, I let the floodgates of my heart open. Out came pouring a river of words — gushing, leaping, splashing, bubbling. The same words which had proved to be Anne Frank’s only window to the world, and saved Liesel Meminger’s life in the midst of bombs.

From then on, the number of books on my shelves kept growing, each finished within a day or two, making way for the next one.

The next year, I took part in a poetry competition in my school and won the first prize, leaving my seniors behind. It brought to me a sense of vindication, a sense of identity in a sea of faces.

At this point, I decided to put my foot down on the pedal and accelerate. Through the terrible mess of crumpled sheets of paper, I found the way to my heart. Words became my friends, which had once been my enemies. Without knowing, they soon began to be effortlessly woven into sentences, paragraphs, stories, poetry. A thousand sparks lit my heart, a million smiles burst on my face. A dream had come true. A tiny worm, scared of the blinding lights, had metamorphosed.

Today, I can’t imagine what life would be without words. I would have been a leaf falling from a tree, a bird struggling to be set free. As I enter the threshold of adulthood and polish my battle armour to enter the race, I find my first book smiling at me. And I smile right back at it.

s26101995@yahoo.co.in

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