Coming to Life

Once upon a time in a land far far away lived a little girl named Avni. She lived in an old house with her old grandparents and her lovely parents. Their house was nested in the hills and had a lovely backyard. Little Avni spent days playing in the garden her father built for her and she spent nights gazing deep into the night sky and questioned–

“WHY ARE YOU SO INTERESTING? OH GODDD! I could sit all day listening to your once-upon-a-times… Gah! Stupid fairy-tales: no such thing is ever true. Why does everything have to be lovely in your way, eh? You better shut up now, I’m in charge. Let me narrate my story, my way and you, oh dear narrator, better stay the hell out of the question!

“I am Avni, and if I was anything like this stupid narrator made me sound, trust me, I would not have had a story to tell you. Firstly, I am not little – I am a whole sixteen years old, thank you very much, and I live in the heart of the city that never sleeps: Mumbai. Secondly, there’s no house (seriously? House in Mumbai?). I live in a regular apartment that has no access to any glimpse of the sky whatsoever – but I do have a full HD clarity view of my neighbours doing business that must be kept private (I’m talking about financial discussions, obviously).

“All you need to know about me is that sometimes I can be sweetish, while at others I am totally your worst nightmare, and this is the story of how I was nearly killed. In the story I am a part of, of course. You see, the Writer of this story is highly destructive – to Herself as well as Her characters like me. She can pen me down at some point and forget about me for three years. That’s just who She is.

“Anyway, so She made me one day, and soon I realised that I have a life of my own beyond just her story. So I decided to go out of her pages and explore the world. Comparing myself to the ‘real’ world I may be tiny – I think I am about four inches tall according to your ‘real world’ measurements, and totally transparent. Yet She can see me clearly. People say I am a fragment of Her imagination, but from what I have heard from an old wise man from one of her bookshelves, ‘Just because it is happening in your head, why should it mean it is not real?’ Funky old Professor Dumbledore!

“So, back to my story. It was a rainy afternoon in Mumbai when I was brought to life and shortly after, I decided to slip out of the pages of the little leather notebook in which She created me. I found myself standing on a desk. I turned around to see Her – she is beautiful, even though she may deny it. She was fast sleep like a baby, sprawled across her desk like a drunk old man at a bar. I looked around. It was a very untidy room I stood in. ‘Hey you!’ someone called out to me. I saw a few of the other fictional characters like me pull themselves out from her book. One of them was a tall lanky boy, about twice my height named Shantanu, and another was a chubby little girl who was my size called Jill Sullivan. Jill had a brother named Jack, and they lived with their uncle and aunt, Ben and Mel Sullivan. They were very cheerful people. They introduced themselves and went on to call every other character She had every created on the little desk. It was a party! My first birthday party!

“Everyone was so nice, introducing themselves, asking me about myself. I told them what I knew. I told them I lived in an old farmhouse with my parents and grandparents. Our house was nested in the hills and… you know the drill. All I knew was I was supposed to get into some trouble, I didn’t know how.

“‘She is really strange, the Writer,’ said Jill, ‘None of us really ever understand how She is going about this whole situation, making us do things we may or may not actually do.’

“‘Sometimes I question whether the Girl understands us when She does make us…’ commented Mr Ben Sullivan. ‘She is not very… professional, you see.’

“‘Don’t say that!’ I exclaimed. ‘She is new to this, she is still learning…’

“The others shrugged. Suddenly, there was a loud thunderclap. We all turned to face the window which was right by the desk. It was open. Harsh winds started blowing. The gust almost made us fall off the desk. We all clung on hard to anything we could find. And then it happened.

“Raindrops started pouring in, shooting straight for the desk, soaking up the pages that stood open – my pages. The droplets landed on the illustration She made of me, along with little details She wrote about me. They were absorbed into the pages, making the ink bleed. I felt my own outlines fade. I was finding it hard to remember certain details about myself which on paper were now blotted. Was my birthday the 5^th or the 8^th of… September, is it? Was I supposed to have just three fingers on my right hand? It was physically affecting me. If anything, I did not want to be washed out from Her pages. What if She forgot who I was? What if I was washed out of Her memory completely? The other characters were as afraid as I was. They had grown fond of the new sixteen year old girl they had known for fifteen minutes.

“Ben Sullivan, his nephew Jack, and Shantanu tried to jump for the window but it was in vain. Us imaginary characters couldn’t interact with anything in the material world, except for Her. We knew if any of us fell from the desk or were lost in any way in the pursuit to save me, then the pages had no meaning. They were just scribbled ink that when She saw again and She would grimace at, cursing Herself for writing something stupid. And if there was anything I was sure of, it was that She was quite the opposite of stupid. There was only one option. I jumped.

“I jumped as high as I could and clung on to Her shoulder. I pulled myself up using Her sleeve and ran towards Her head. I felt my energy fading. The pages were about half soaked. I had to keep pushing. In the nick of time, I leapt forward, shrinking in size, diving right into Her ear canal. I crawled in deeper in the darkness, and passed through the pores in Her skin into Her brain.

“All I know next is coming back to life in the damp pages of Her notebook. I had all my fingers intact. I knew my birthday very well, the 5^th of July. I found the others looking at me once I was ready on the pages. They told me what happened. Apparently my little stunt woke Her up. The first thing She realised was the pages getting soaked. So She moved the notebook, wiping off any droplets with a cloth, and closed the window. Her first words were, “Oh no, Avni!” And she rewrote me immediately.

“I realised I was right about Her. She may not fully understand us but that is because She is expecting us to be Us and guide her the way We want. She may have created us, but We will be creating her story. I smiled at my friends, who now made their way back into their pages, where we all waited for Her to call upon Us.

“And THAT is how you tell my story, okay?!”

Okay. Then they lived happily ever–

“Completely missed the point!”