Life in Narration

I always felt a need to write since I was very young. Maybe because I did not talk a lot back then. I was an introvert (still am) and always had my attention somewhere else.

My very first output was a poem, of all things. The memory was sketchy at best, but all I could remember was how very surprised I was at that piece of work. Surprised, because I was a very bad English student. I loathed the subject, or more precisely, the teacher.

Back to the poem. It had something to do with a swan gliding across a tranquil lake before stopping under a bough beside the lake. It could have been around three stanzas at most, and I remember thinking to myself, 'What in the world had just happened?'

A few days ago I saw a newspaper article lamenting the existence of Twitter and SMS and how they could spell the end of novels, short stories and the art of narrative. Life nowadays wants everything to be short but leaves a great impact. Ours is a generation that relies on speed, no matter how it comes about.

Storytellers and poets used to hold important social standings in the society across the history. When newspapers came about, they were replaced by reporters who more or less had that kind of gift, the gift of narration, albeit a bit terse and impersonal. (Objectivity sans emotions, or something like that.) Now, the writer continued, with the advent of Twitter and SMS, it destorys the urge to narrate the reality around us and replace it with several near-unintelligible words and symbols as such:

W8 4 me @ d stre! C wat I mean?

I really miss the days when the postman came and shove the postbox full of letters. Penpals were the object of envy back then. Someone you barely knew actually took the time to sit down, get pen and paper, and start writing about what he did that day to how the dog bit off his shoe.

My father once bought a typewriter - an Olivetti machine - but he rarely used it. Every time I sat in front of it, I imagined myself a writer and began typing away, taking pains to get the spelling and grammar right. Not because I wanted to practise my English, but more out of necessity - when you spelled the words wrong, there was no UNDO button. That also meant you'd waste the ribbon and paper.

Stories came out of the typewriter like nothing I have read before. Whenever I pulled the paper off the typewriter and read what I'd laboured upon, I questioned myself inwardly - Did you really write this? - then went off to play.

To be continued...