One fine morning… well not really, it was more like I had been brooding over for a couple of days, months actually – what do I become? A little late do you think? Given that am 45. Yes!!! The August of 2020, the year of the Corona… I reached the magic number – but no celebrations… bhoo ooo ooo. Okay that’s enough of crying.
The question of ‘what do I become’ came up so late in life because I actually realized what I want to do pretty late, in the rather recent past. Fortunately or unfortunately I was a good academic, so I excelled in whatever I tried doing, but my heart didn’t go with it. So I left it, left them all – I have quite an interesting agglomeration of degrees and certificates. Am an eccentric who needs to love what is being done or must have a dire need, like a family crisis to love what I am doing.
So I didn’t become anything, money and position have never motivated me and I was perfectly happy having a loving spouse who does all the hard work of making a living for us. I handle the family finance portfolio though and you know by now that I love the job as I have been continuing it for the past 18 years. I also love to organize and plan; so the household and its inmates, my child(13 years old) and spouse, to be precise live in a closely monitored strict regime.
I love activity, I always wanted to live on the edge… but that never happened, and now when I am reaching midlife – I believe I’ll live to be 90… at the least! I suddenly have the wish to become something, such that I can say like ‘Evelyn’ in ‘The Mummy(1999 movie)’ – “Evelyn: Look, I… I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure-seeker, or a gunfighter, Mr. O’Connell, but I am proud of what I am.
Rick: And what is that?
Evelyn: I… am a librarian.”
An astronomer, a zoo-keeper, or an artist – these are the three choices – I want to be any one of these. A zoo-keeper the most, I love animals. But alas! my situation physically and mentally doesn’t allow me to step out of home or go all out to chase wild dreams. They are not dreams actually, just the things I could have been and enjoyed, given sufficient effort and time.
And then it came to me, no not like a lightning bolt, but from friends and family who have read my small narratives that if I put my heart and some years to it, I could become a writer! That would not exactly be being an artist but definitely close – it is creative after all!
Thus in the wake of my new found enthusiasm, I wrote my first novella…