Broken language and writing my first poem..

Idealism is a scam. There is no such thing as perfect in this world, neither the living nor the non living. The only thing that can be quoted as being almost perfect is our ability to evolve/change (i mean it’s kinda dope that we can rectify our mistakes right? some of them at least).

For a nine year old i was surprisingly very excited when I had to leave my hometown to live with my older brother’s family in Lucknow. On my first day of school my class teacher asked me about the mode of transportation I would be using to travel from home to school, although the question was very basic it made me freeze. I didn’t know how to reply to her . The reason for my reaction wasn’t the complexity of her question or anything to do with me being a shy kid but it was my inability to understand English. It was when she saw the puzzled look on my face and repeated the question again in Hindi , my mother tongue that I understood what she was trying to say.

After a month and a half into school and it was time for summer vacations . Like every school mine also conducted a parent teacher’s meeting . I went to school with my brother and father, I was excited for the holidays ,I had scored well in the first assessment and my sister in law had just given birth to a baby girl , everything was perfect. As we were leaving the class , my class teacher very kindly pointed out that my English communication skills could use some improvement and she suggested I read story books to get a better grasp of the language .That incident never bothered me growing up but now that i look back it strangely feels like an important part of my childhood and how it guided my adolescent self. The first story book I read apart from my school textbooks was some Peter Pan storybook, after that I became a regular visitor of the school library throughout my school life. The genre of books changed from children story books to Nancy Drew to Chetan Bhagat to Amish Tripathi to whatever I want from then to now but my love for overthinking about fictional characters never ceased, it just flourished. Although I wrote quite a few lines , quotes and poems throughout this journey the first poem I wrote after realising how much joy it brings me to actually share my work will always hit different. Admittedly, I am far from being a bibliophile or book nerd but I could never deny it’s influence on how I perceive life . Books will always be my safe haven when I need to escape ,be it from my problems or my mobile phone.

Now coming back to my initial claim of idealism being a scam , to me being ideal or chasing perfection seems like being stuck in a place even when you are running. Rather than trying to achieve something superficial I want to be able to achieve something that is more precious , that is change .