When i began to understand the beauty of words...

Lately, I have been bitten by this bug of writing. Four years back this was the same thing I abhorred intensely…why? Only because I wasn’t good at it! Just the thought of writing 300 words essays gave me creeps and my hands started sweating…and the result would be some crap that resembled the writing of a fifth standard student.

Here’s an example…yeah, yeah have a good laugh..

The essay title is “A visit to a historical monument”…written way back when I was in 9th std.

This Diwali vacation our school arranged a picnic to Taj Mahal. We had to pay two hundred rupees for that.(only??) We traveled by train. It was a journey of fun and frolic. (I know the start’s miserable and you guys are guffawing..more fun ahead)
The arrival time of the train was at morning 7 a.m. We went by Taj express. The wonderful scenery enticed me (my futile attempts to use good vocab) and others. Time went by and we didn’t even realize that it was time to sleep. We slept comfortably. We reached Agra in the morning, the next day. (this is so pathetic!!! Full of grammatical errors…d’uh. Did I really write this? )

Taj Mahal was built at the expensive rate of more than 6 crore rupees ( who said that? Such a pheku I was ). It took more than 300 years to be constructed. (300??? I could I write such a dumb thing???what on earth was i thinking?)

Okay back to some serious business. My ma’am used to laugh at this and insult me. Soon before I knew she used to avoid my doubts, and pretend that she was imbibed in teaching other students. That taught me one thing- make a resolution and most importantly abide by it.

So I poured over my oxford dictionary for hours and hours together…learning the meanings, the structure, the origin, the usage…everything…read numerous novels…ransacked the newspapers for any new word I could find..I never used to read until I faced this disgrace…and then I fell in love….with words…I never imagined how an assimilation of words could weave such beautiful stories…it was like opening an Aladdin’s cave. ..

And then I started writing…I had left my tuitions after the shame. The first time I faced her after my transition…she was extremely pleased…and that certainly was a boost…"Nanjangud ma’am (my English tutor) wherever you are I owe everything to you…" I wish I could meet her and tell her how thankful I am to her…for she was the one who taught me, of course unknowingly, the beauty of words…

Here I would like to quote a paragraph from a book called “Totto-Chan” –
‘ Down through the ages, Watt and Newton cannot have been the only ones to notice the steam from a boiling kettle or observe an apple fall. Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having eyes, but not perceiving the truth; having hearts, but never set on fire.’



She set my heart on fire and made me see the beauty…and yes there’s lot remaining to be explored……..