If there was a biography about you, what would the title be?
This is super funny. I actually went looking for names. My journalism lecturer told us never to give a title before you write a book or a story. So, I’ve never given the title a thought and usually as I work through the story, the context and tone kind of dictates the name. On more formal pieces, I usually have a working title and this is what I will use for this blog.
I have three names short listed. And I will give my reasoning as well or the stories that best explain it and you can help decide the best one.
Ms. Disaster / Here comes Disaster!
I have always wondered why the extended family never let their kids come and socialise when I was around. It took some time and eventually my uncle told me that’s because every time someone came near me, things crashed, broke or just plain got destroyed. He used to be like, “You had this penchant for walking through the curtain every single time. You never noticed if the curtain was tied to the side, so in your eagerness to walk through, you just pulled the curtain and the rod that held it up in the pelmet and the pelmet down, in a resounding crash. And no matter how hard you tried, it invariably happened around you, and you never got hurt, you were the cat with nine lives, that escaped and your cousins playing with you always got injured. So, they just preferred not to hang out because it would reduce the number of injuries they had.”
When I think about this, I also realised, that it was only the cousins that got injured, I had three siblings and they were just fine. Nothing happened to them when they were around me. But, there are a lot of stories in the same vein and hence the name.
Kintsugi
The Japanese art of fixing broken ceramic bowls with molten gold. I have always found this to be a very noble process, you are repairing and reusing rather than just discarding something because it’s broken.
I am not ‘broken’ in the exact definition of this word, but I am jaded and if left to my devices can very well live in a very comfortably set up cocoon by myself. The gold that fills in the cracks as they appear and ensures my sanity is the spouse. The yin to my yang and the balm (or is that the calm) that keeps the boat from tipping over. Considering the fact that I’ve been married for almost as much time as I was single, I think a biography without any mention of his noble contribution to world peace will be amiss.
This is me!
If I were to ever put down any part of my life down. These three words would best describe me. Unapologetic. Combative. In-your-face. Because I remember growing up to be like this. Third kid, grounded at 18, no friends, no relations, no interest in socialisation, happy to be by myself- it was too much of an effort to get to know me. The real me. And very few people made the effort. I was happy to be misunderstood, misinterpreted and misquoted because it ensured I did not need to be nice to anyone.
Just a little more 