Writing About Writing

The call was placed at two in the night. He answered it with the same annoyed tone he used to answer his calls “This better be good”

“Nishant, listen, I have been going through your past works and I really wanted to ask you something” she said

“What is it?” He could spare few minutes for his favorite fan, he decided.

“You know right, I just love your works, have read all your stories and I demand for more”  

“I know! You have told me this hundred times over.” He was good, but not as good as she made him feel, then again he craved what all budding writers craved, an attentive audience and she provided him just that.

“So” she paused “I have been wondering, the thing you write is just cosmic and the way you behave is entirely crappy. It is like two different people, the writer you and the real you. Are you the one who writes these stuff or do you copy it from somewhere?”

“This is why you called me? I am hanging up!”

“No! I don’t know, this thing was bugging me, keeping me awake. I have to know!” there was an edgy impatience to her voice.

“Sunitha, we writers are heavy bluffers, we borrow from reality, bend and twist it to fit our stories. We are conjures of magic from few words, it is there but it isn’t and you should never ask a writer if his stories are true.”

“Yeah, but your stories are too good to be true. You are not that good when you are around me. You shy away from conversations and hide yourself in a cocoon. You are a goofy good guy and when I read your stuff about sex and murder it’s like a completely different person”

He chuckled, “I am not sure to consider that as a compliment or not?”

“Neither am I” She said fidgeting with her hair “Am in love with that writer part of you”

“Too bad, you will only find him in words”

“Tell me, how do you do it? How do you exaggerate a simple line and make a story out of it?”

“What do you think this whole conversation is? It never happened! You never asked me these questions! There is no Sunitha, no Nishant. This is your love, exaggerated from a single line!”

---

She placed the coffee mug in front of me and added three spoons of sugar.

To my favorite writer

the mug’s side read in cursive writing with a little heart dotting the ‘I’ in writer. I could never get tired of that mug, or of its contents, or of her, especially of her.

I placed my hand on her naked waist, watched her sharp nose turn in the air as she pulled away from me. Her wide blue unblinking eyes were on mine. She bit her lower lip and let of a soft moan in such a way that it could only mean an invitation.

How could a woman be so perfect?

As if reading my thoughts, she bent down to my ear and whispered “Come and join me in the bed after you are done with the story, I will show you!”

“Story? What Story?” I looked at her puzzled.

“This one!” she turned and slowly walked into the lines of the paper, leaving me alone with my pen, ink and coffee.