The love for art and literature is not something new.
Looking back, rather long back, I find the most enchanting tales having been
articulated in the most inspiring manner – yes, I am talking about Indian
mythology. The character building, narrative styles, dialogue exchange and the
imaginative tour they take you on – well they are the love of every reader!
While everything here begins with Once Upon A Time.. and not
too much to our surprise ends with Happily Ever After, the grandma tales
enabled visually with our Disney Experience made our childhood not any less
magical. They spurred not only magic but several fantasies with the magical
weapons, the Arabian castles, the fairly lands journey; how could I forget –
the rat and mice that became family to most of us – that’s the power of tales!
Time has moved forward- things have evolved; almost
everything changed I must say, except this one – the power of tales.
As passionate as a car racer, a computer game freak, a scuba
diver, a football player or a reader – being any of the above is truly a
wonder! And you would realize this, just as soon as you became any of these;
life feels light - as if you carry no
baggage and that’s wonderful! Shifting back gears, let me tell you what’s
my favourite of all these – being a
reader and a writer.
There are somethings I live by – if you do not read you live
just one life, but if you read – you live thousands of lives! Isn’t the choice
easy! I am a mad traveller – it gives me goose bumps each time I see airfare
sale and I choose to believe that world is my home. Well travelling is nothing
but newness. And so is a book – it
brings a new vision, a new live, new feelings, new characters, new situations
which are not really your own, but surely they become yours as soon as you find
yourself falling in love with the scent of old paper books. It’s addictive!
My love for more newness didn’t end with traveling or
reading; it made me go ahead create a world of my own – A world in the middle
of seventeen hills, where I lived with Nanu and Gauri for several years. Nanu
and Gauri who were siblings, they worked at the tea gardens of Conoor, Tamil
Nanu since the day Father left them. Nanu was scared of monkeys and he would
hide behind like a scared sheep. They looked at the ‘conestillations’ and went to the Tara Mandal.
I stayed there. I walked with them, ate with them, slept on
the old cot with them, heard water falling down the old white tap – dip dip; oh! That sound still jingles
loud in my ears pulling me back into the green cover of tea gardens all
around. Life was different in the
seventeenth hill – ‘Just like Ma was Ma, Nanu was Nanu, Gauri was Gauri so not going to school was not going to school’
Nanu’s pointy shoes, his blue box filled with marbles – I
never knew life could have this face as well until I met Nanu.
I had felt, seventeenth hill would just have a handful of
life – but when I lived there, I realized that it had much more that what I had
thought. It had answers to all my questions of life – the quizzical life that I
had been fighting with, ended gracefully.
Nights and days passed by – my life became matured, evolved
and philosophical in the seventeen hills, until I walked out of the place with
a last tear justifying my true sense of patience and imagination.
That is when A Handful of Seventeenth Hill Happened – I lived in a world of my own, the world I
created.
I embraced newness.
Nevertheless, no waiting for the flight low fare sale!
Write – if you love to write! It sheds off your emotional
filth, making you a wonderful person, it makes you philosophical. It makes you
share your feelings with the world, probably help you change a few lives – well
even if you change one life for the better with you writing, you are doing
great! Write if you observe the tiny things as ants moving in a row, or
trajectory of a drop of water on tulip near your old house, may be the tiny
line in the frame of your grandfather’s old glasses – well the literature is
calling you! Imagination, observation and persistence – if you have it in you,
go ahead and the world is your battlefield.
Website – www.asthasuneja.com
Book – A Handful of Seventeenth Hill
