Dastaan

Dastaan looks at the chopsticks resting on the open page. The verso held down by the seemingly sturdy chopsticks was feebly flapping upwards, egged on by the breeze wafting through the open window. The sister-page flaunted its freedom cheekily, dancing about and touching the edges of the trapped page teasingly. Sometimes it brought up few of the leaves after it as if to add insult to injury. Dastaan has had enough of this. She places her palm on this truant leaf, trying to hold down the story that was attempting to move ahead without her consent.

The chopsticks were very ordinary. Like any other that come with takeout Chinese food. Run of the mill bamboo, disposable. But the edges when viewed closely had bite marks, as if someone had wanted to savour the last remnant of taste that might have been absorbed by it. At the tapered ends, something silvery grey and stenciled remains. Dastaan is not a messy eater. In fact, she is particular about the care of her books. Never do two things when you can do one efficiently! She had read this in a book, consuming its lessons diligently. Dastaan picks up the chopsticks, the silver something with a semblance of alphabets stretched in italics trailing like stringy cheese. She transfers it quickly to her mouth and slurps the last word slowly, savouring its phrasal tanginess.

Dastaan devours stories. She did not read stories like other children, having grown up in a house with almost no books. But her family had some storytellers who had punctuated the humdrum of daily life with anecdotes and old tales. When she was young, she had listened avidly as her mother narrated the story of the nativity for the nth time, trying to coax her into sleeping. But projected on the back of her closed eyelids she could see the donkey carrying Mary happily trotting towards the stable and watching the Christ child’s birth (of course, for young Dastaan that just meant appearing out of nowhere just like the baby Jesus in the crib every Christmas morning). She met books once she was introduced to libraries. She had been nine then, gawking at the shelves of stories and tales that beckoned her. Words soon filled her life, speeding towards unreal places and distant times, away from her existence that whirled around her mostly unlived.

Once she learned that she could drape any character around her shoulders she ignored her surroundings completely. She had a thousand names and as many faces and genders. She was a dancer, an archaeologist, a biologist reporting for the National Geographic, figure-skating her way to the foothills of the Himalayas where she lived like Heidi’s grandfather. To while away her free time, she solved cryptic messages for the government and at times had to run away for fear of incarceration. She had been loved and spurned, married and divorced, entangled in affairs and lived a celibate.

But Dastaan had turned thirty this winter. A stubbed toe made her look out of herself, the pain transmitted through the nervous system making an accidental detour, snuffing the taper that was lighting the tomb her archaeologist-self had opened. But it did not have any lasting effects. A brief, bird-like reconnaissance was interrupted by the inscriptions on the tomb coming to life.

It had not bothered her much until the day she walked into her reflection in the mirror. She had not recognized it. It was not tall, with unruly, long hair, sinuous limbs and doe-eyed. The person she had collided into was tall-ish with cropped hair and a heavier gait. Dastaan’s reflection was neatly dressed, in an unassuming pair of jeans and t-shirt. Yet there was general unkempt-ness about it, stenciled grey somethings swathed across its shoulders like a ragged cloak, hanging in strips from its ears, spilling out of the pockets, splotched across its denims.

Despite the wispiness, it had seemed to ponderously weigh the reflection down. The slightly hunched back straightened in surprise on seeing Dastaan, smiling in recognition that was not reciprocated.

Dastaan thinks about that day, chewing on the articles and participles, attempting to brush off an alliteration on her jeans. She is becoming the reflection gradually; almost translucent, cling-film aura dragging after her. The half-eaten, regurgitated, undigested stories hang off her, refusing to clear away. Yet, she eats. Book after book, shelf after shelf, running up fines in different libraries across the city. The chopsticks, unwashed from her gluttony, lay passively in her hand waiting to scrape at descriptions, to twirl the plots for convenient chewing. The joy of consuming the stories had long been forgotten. It is a compulsion now attempting to feed the gaping question – Who am I?

Dastaan is thirty and cannot own her reflection. Having gobbled the novel open on her desk, she gets up, reaching thirstily towards a dictionary for few quick gulps. Tossing it aside she then paces about the room, moving sometimes to the window, then to her chair, dissatisfied with her study and growing irritated with a world she no longer ventured into except in fiction. She goes back to her desk, flips open her laptop, plugging in the external hard drive. Clicking on old folders, looking for more stories that will only add to the motley of her self, she taps on one that says ‘Old and Read’. The tab begets yet another window, displaying forgotten titles and soft-copy duplication for books from her youth. The cursor, racing through the thumbnails, stops abruptly at a file titled ‘What’s in a name?’ Still uninterested, she clicks on it, waiting for ennui to cloud her glasses.

A PDF pops up, words – black lattices against the white expanse of the screen – magnified and scrolling, a few highlights now and then. She gazes at the screen, repeating the words, the chopsticks trying to scratch their way through. Vague memories burp up, remembered pleasure acidified by time. One word has a comment icon over it. A cursor click later, she is unsure of what she has just read. She leans closer towards the words that have appeared before her.

Dastaan means story…

Dastaan means story…fable…tale…saga…

The chopsticks stop clicking in her hands. She reads again, her eyes following the words, turning up switches in a forgotten part of her being. Soon the ellipses are the tears in her eyes. She sits there, at the desk, staring at the screen, tapping a key now and then to stop the screensaver from taking over. She senses the gnawing hunger for others’ words growing quiet. If Dastaan means story….

Some stories were waiting to happen. Dastaan looks at the chopsticks resting in her hand…