Ink

The bin tired of being hit over and over again was overflowing with words written down in last one month and this time it was about to bounce the crumbled paper back.

"Argh!", she yelled in disappointment yet again throwing away the coffee stained paper off for the 36th time in a row.

The antique yellow wooden table was filled with all these disorganized sheets that read a bunch of chaotic words that meant nothing to her- just words, words without meaning. Picking up her coffee mug that left coffee rings on her antique she got off her spot in despair.

"12 cups of black hot coffee, 36 failed attempts and yet, nothing", she said to herself walking towards her study with 13^th cup of coffee. She played ‘the falls’ in the background which she believed was an ultimate masterpiece by her personal favorite artist- Yo-Yo Ma and slapped her head on the desk.

The mind you see is a complex organ which is both a blessing and a curse that observes, processes, thinks about the things in and around us. Our mind imagines characters and their life owing to these observations only to remind us about a life that we don’t have, the elements that are missing. Our mind can bring us both joy and melancholy. It has been a month since she found an inspiration that could structure her writings. Her mind seemed to run out of thoughts that addressed things that she wanted to really write about. She wrote, but the stories did not find a purpose of their own. A story with a purpose is a whole new world in itself- an alternate universe of our own thoughts and that was exactly what she couldn’t deliver.

She as yet was laying her head on the table, eyes closed and fingers dancing to the tune of cello. Opening her eyes to a reminder notification on her cell phone of taking her meds, she couldn’t help but notice a sheet of paper. Out of the many bundles of crumpled stained paper there was one paper that was peeking its way out, a paper that communicated a different side of her. She pulled that sheet out and, it was a sketch of two animated microphones that she drew almost six months ago when she was dragged to one of her cousin’s music recording sessions. For a person who isn’t entertained by loud music which she often refers to as noise to annoy her cousin and who enjoys silence and tranquility with cello music playing in the background the only way out was indulging herself into her blank sheets. Watching her cousin sing at the highest pitch possible, she couldn’t help but notice and think about the mic placed right in front. She drew inspiration from the mic and doodled it on her blank sheets that craved art. The bunch microphones doodled portrayed one of them troubled by the high pitch of her cousin, the other mocking him and the third one showing his peers how music should appear to one’s ear. Funny but, it was amazing how she could bring life to this inanimate object by just sketching it onto a piece of paper. That thought triggered all the nerves in the left hemisphere of her brain. With this explosion in her brain and the creativity at its peak, the mind seemed to recollect all the experiences she lived developing fondness for inanimate things. Everyone is capable of writing down their imaginations about the objects that breathe among them but the art of infusing life into inanimate objects is rare.

Growing up a single child to working parents, she spent most of her childhood speaking to dolls and soft toys and her teenage speaking to the stars that gave her an adrenaline rush when she saw them through the telescope. Being an introvert, she had a couple of friends but preferred staying indoors speaking to things that she thought listened to her without the fear of being judged and talked about. She had to pull out this piece of her childhood to write a story that explained a journey of something that was left very much talked about but yet unsung- the story of growing up to inspire others and to make a difference.

“Like I found peace with my toys as a child and in stars as a young adult, now I find peace in sharing stories that inspire people giving them a perspective different from theirs in a way that changes their life forever”, she thought to herself. This time she painted words, words that were a part of her, words that made her the person she is- words with meaning. There it was- the inspiration, the force that lets you break the walls that you create around yourself to shield yourself from being tormented by the voices that won’t let you be. The words that decorated the sheet now had no filter but came straight out of her beating heart and her mind flooded with thoughts that triggered imagination. Clickety-clack went the type writer as the carriage moved from right to left with each letter she pushed against its motion, heart beating faster and faster with every click. She went on and on, a paper after another- five sheets in a row and finally hit a stop. She held those sheets sequentially and read them, eye balls bulged and a smile that gradually grew appeared as she exclaimed, “This is it! The inspiration that I needed- A story of its own.”

It made her feel like a magician with no wand to click magic, no fancy suit to appear like one but just a body breathing to the rhythm of her heartbeat. A story that gave rise to a masterpiece honoring the feeling of freedom narrating a unique journey of everything to find a purpose. The story of the ink, ink that flows from the spool of ribbon to the sheet of paper distributing hope, knowledge, power and life.