Pujit Aggarwal Redivivus - Words as Remedy

 

 
  I was an average student though the school I was studying in, was quite pricy and elitist. I somehow managed to keep afloat by swotting up the syllabus a few weeks before the ogre of the final examination started looming larger and closer.
 
  My top priority was just to scrape through. Parents, ambitious as ever, worried about my poor performance. They sought help from tutors who recommended supplementary coaching to compensate for the deficit in me or the mainstream pedagogy.

  A bunch of private tutors was deployed to optimize my potential and boost my grades. The brunt of additional coaching began to take its toll and reduced me to a frazzle. I started suffering from insomnia. I dozed in the classroom.

  The inefficacy of the remedial modalities prescribed by the gurus and super gurus compounded the anxiety of my parents. Since eminent educationists with their formulary were unable to haul me out of the mire of mediocrity, only an exorcist could drive away the demon of low grades from my harried psyche.

  I tossed and turned in the bed throughout the night and fell asleep fitfully just before the crack of dawn. After an hour or so, I dragged myself out of bed to rush cursorily through the homework and prepare for school. Nobody, not even the sex-obsessed classmates, were able to teach me how to negotiate the labyrinths of early teens.

  Luiza, the untrained, unqualified therapist was the last to unlock my mind with a view to setting it right. I began to change and improve.

  She was fortyish, single and extraordinarily beautiful. I barely raised my head to gaze at her face. I was very self-conscious of how dazzled I was.

  “Feel free. Loosen up. Say what you want to say. If you can’t say it, write it down. Still hesitant, record it on a tape. We are made of words.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I am very shy.” I muttered sheepishly. She was sitting quite close to me. Her body language was minimal. Laconic but articulate. Every word she uttered, struck a chord which continued to echo in my mind. Sometimes she whispered her encouragements so persuasively her utterance nibbled your earlobes.

  Once, while struggling through a sprawling paragraph on classroom boredom, I paused for a few seconds to contemplate her long, slender fingers. She noticed me noticing her hand on the recto page of a large dictionary she was scanning casually.

  “You can imagine, even fantasize, about the dictionary or the hand on the right page that you were riveted on. Write about what interests you, what repels you, what possesses you, what disgusts you. You are saturated with words. You are a story that you can narrate with words.”

  A couple of months with Luiza gradually resolved whatever blocks I had been beset with. I kept a journal and wrote in it at least 100 to 300 words every day. My grades started rising though they did not hit the roof. Her conversations put me firmly on the path of ongoing self-education.

  What hurts also heals. Write about your anxiety, fear, guilt, shame, anger. Write about love, beloved, vanity, humility success, failure, profit and loss, forgiveness and vengefulness for the wrongs done unto you.

  I wrote about Luiza. Her indefinable mystique blew open my mind.

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