Chapter 1: jurithewriter has started writing her story

 

Everyone has a story. This is my story. Not that it is something exceptional, I just enjoy playing around with words and the process of airing my inner contemplations through writing. I come from a family of writers. Like most musicians or painters or dancers come from families that have these respective art forms inborn into their beings.

As with other art forms, writing is a flow, its natural, there is an esthetics to good writing, an originality, it’s a gift from the Universe, and it has a soul. One doesn’t write for an audience, one writes because one wants to express oneself though a medium. I do tend to digress during my ramblings, a little like the abstract art forms where the expressions get a little mixed up.

So back to my story.

It’s the problem I have with handling intimate relations that somehow confuses me. I mean there’s nothing confusing about it, it’s just that I’m incapable of handling such relations, that’s pretty clear; the confusion lies in the why. Why am I incapable, whereas other normal human beings aren’t.

Let me start with the story of my birth. I did come into existence approximately nine months before my birth, but that part of the story will be shared later.

I was born in Mahendra Mohan Choudhury hospital, Guwahati. My mum’s labour pains lasted the whole night through, you all know how intensely painful labour pains are. The clocked time for my delivery in the gynaecologist's delivery note is 10.07 am. That’s a really long period of bearing the labour pains. As a doctor, I know that the time taken for a primipara (a first time pregnant woman) is the longest. In subsequent pregnancies, the time gets shorter as the uterus and birth canal openings have been prepped by the first delivery.

That was in 1970, in a rural Assamese family. Everyone wanted the first born child (and perhaps all subsequent ones) to be males. Perplexes me trying to figure out that if all kids were male, who would give birth to them if there were no females around. You know, the chicken and egg story basically.

To make things worse, some Goddess had appeared in my mother’s dream when she was pregnant assuring her that her first born would be male. But look what happened, I am the first born and I was born unambiguously female. Obviously, there was disappointment all around, everyone feeling sorry for my mum. My grandfather had come to see me in the hospital. When he went back home, his 7 children and wife surrounded him eagerly, waiting to hear about their new niece.

How does she look, they asked.

Sotal Mohajanor natini, sotal e hoise.

Sotal Mohajan was my paternal grandfather. He was extremely fair, pink and fair, but he had a flat nose. Therefore the nickname Sotal (his actual name was Rajat). A courtyard is called Sotal in Assamese. His nose was as flat as a courtyard.

Sotal Mohajanor natini sotal e hoise. The granddaughter of Sotal Mohajan is also Sotal. That was a reference to my nose.