Before the Writer was Born!

Year: 1998

I was a bubbly, skinny schoolboy with a newfound love for poetry.

No one in my family had ever penned a single verse, except for my melodramatic grandmother, whose wildly outrageous tales defied logic. Some were laced with divine interventions, like the one where Goddess Marikamba took the form of a pig to swallow the poison my parents had allegedly served her while she lay bedridden with a fractured leg.

Then there was the unforgettable exchange between my two deaf and tone-deaf grandmothers:

Naani: "It's so cold today."

Daadi: :No, no, no. I had my breakfast. Your daughter served burnt dosas."

I grew up among such endearing eccentricities. Yet, there wasn’t a single poetry enthusiast in sight. So, who or what inspired me?

Despite having in-house storytellers, their exaggerated tales failed to captivate me. But what I did learn from those enthusiastic 70-and 80-year-olds was that one could fall in love with words... deeply, irreversibly.

The first poem I ever encountered was "Under the Greenwood Tree," read aloud from my school textbook. I can't say for sure what fascinated me most, but as the lines rhymed, I smiled. And every time someone read a poem to me after that, I smiled again.

That was it. That was my calling.

Back in school, when teachers asked about our future ambitions, I had my answer ready:

"I want to be like Shakespeare."

Yet, ironically, I hated memorizing Wren & Martin. My English grades didn’t shine, but poetry? That, I understood. That, I loved. I began seeing myself as a lovelorn, mad romantic, so naturally, I dressed the part.

That’s when I stumbled upon my father’s hidden treasure... his wedding album. One picture, in particular, caught my eye: his engagement portrait. There he stood, wearing a classic 70s rayon shirt with minimal floral designs, skin-tight bell-bottom trousers and a villainous handlebar moustache... a look straight out of a Bollywood flick.

I was 13... not even a whisker on me. But I had to know: Did he still have that shirt? To my delight, I found it locked away in an old, rusty trunk, wrapped in brittle, yellowed newspapers. I slipped it on and... Voila! It fit perfectly.

Something possessed me at that moment. I felt as though I had time-travelled to that era where fashion made sense. But I lacked the words to express what I felt deep within me. So, I did the next best thing... I nearly memorised Webster's Thesaurus.

It transformed me.
Into a lover.
A poet.
A writer.

And that’s still who I am today.