The story of a story in the making

This could be the story of a story in the making. That is if the other story ever got made. The story of the adventures of Blackboots. And tagging along would be the story of Pothead. If Blackboots is never made, neither will Pothead be. And there are chances that Blackboots will exist and Pothead still might not. But that is another story.

The trouble starts at the start. Because, where exactly does it start? And anyway it always seems to get so boring after about 3 paragraphs dedicated to flashback.

There were 2 mails from BB. A word doc and a blog link. It was about Saleha. The girl who sits next to him in office, and of whom he’s terrified of thinking too much, because “A man is a happy man as long as he is not in love.” The blog was a bore. All you got from it was that it was written by a guy who was going gaga over a girl. :P. I called him up. He was in the bus with the said girl looking out of the window. She was looking out of the window I mean. He was reading a book- that is supposedly :P.

Phone. 20 mins. And now I have lost track of what I was thinking. Just started reading an e-copy of Kipling’s “Under Deodars”. Sent it to BB after reading out the first two paras to him. And I read the word doc about Saleha. I LIKED IT (To which BB exclaimed delightedly” I am proud of you” :P and then corrected it by saying..”Are na, I mean I am proud of me :D”). And the part about her ideas on marriage was the best! What a pity guys from good families do not want to run away from home these days!!!  So we kept talking and talking about writing and about ideas. And by now I’m bored and want to read Under Deodars.

Notable points from today’s conversation:

1)      Boys are stupid about girls. I mean just think, BB writes about Saleha’s beauty parlour visits as expressions of her personality or independence or some such rot! Garrrrr……..how can boys be so dumb as not to realize that girls go to beauty parlours simply for the reasons that beauty parlours exist- and that is to look prettier and pamper themselves.

2)      By some inexplicable misfortune I’m being charged Rs 1.50 per minute instead of the 25 paisa per minute I was getting accustomed to.

3)      In the last four years, that is since I came to Bombay, me and BB have met once for about 10 minutes…or maybe 15, when he came to visit me at the hospital last year. That was when both of us had been in Kolkata at the same time..

5)      Oscar Wilde was a homosexual and had to toil in prison for that.

6)      I am to be courageous. Though what that implies I am not sure. And that I am wicked- supposedly because I am intelligent enough to “think”. (Wow! No one’s explicitly told me that I am wicked before :P)

7)      How am I ever going to be a writer if I get bored with what I write in less than 10 minutes time? I’ll probably end up being acknowledged by BB (if he ever becomes famous that is) as the girl who painstakingly went through all his writings correcting the style and the grammar and the spellings! (Phewwwwwwww). And BB is happy about my being just that, because in case I become a better writer than he is, I’ll stop liking his stories :-/.

8)      The name of his first volume of works might be “Workaholic”.

9)      And finally, I can never be a good writer because I can never seem to get totally “honest” (as BB puts it) when I am writing.  I have realized the pretences I live in my life, but can’t seem to think clearly enough to accept them to the extent of baring it all on paper. I mean, look at me, I can see the pretence glaring out through the words I write. Not that I’m writing dishonestly—but I can see it all there. The fact that I don’t accept my feelings and keep it for private vision and private smiles (How on earth did BB know that? He must be even more “wicked” than I am, which he probably is) is proof enough that I am not comfortable with what I am. But then, who is?