We’d like to thank you all for your entries. The winners of WordSpill are:

1st Prize

Nimmy Chacko for Foe
Christ College, Bangalore

2nd Prize
Anirudh Gopal for You’re A Slave
Delhi College Of Arts And Comerce

Special Mention
Shruti Rao for Haruka’s Forest
Kamala Nehru College

We’ll contact you soon for your prizes! Meanwhile, happy reading!

Prizes sponsored by PT Education.

“Freedom of expression?! But there’s no such thing as that! Naresh, what have you been teaching them?!”

I thought I saw a flicker of genuine bewilderment brush against Mr. Wilson’s sneer. But I could have imagined it, of course. I was busy concentrating on blocking out the Silence that had exploded like a bomb in the staff room.

The red pencil decided that it had had enough. It did not like the printed sheets that lay at its mercy. They didn’t have very flattering things to say about anything. They reeked of nasty, scandalous truths! Red couldn’t stand the smell.

A neat slash. That’s all it took. A controlled action in a guise of carelessness.

Across two weeks of sleepless work. Yet another bruise across Unsilence.

I felt Christine stiffen beside me. My lips had disappeared into a thin line long ago. A murdered fight lay in bloody mess inside my stomach.

It was against the rules to argue, my footsteps said, as they led me out.

* * *

Sister Margaret was a short, plump woman with a sunny face. The picture of affability, you’d think, until your eyes fell on her favourite accessory- a thin, vicious cane held almost apologetically in her tiny right hand. Of course, the instrument of correction was only used for major offenses. Like looking at a Boy.

School taught me many things. Life’s lessons simplified, compressed into a few basic principles:

Hair is a Mad Person, meant to be straitjacketed in steel pins and black ropes. Ribbons, I mean. A strand of hair sticking out of the line shows that your character is majorly flawed.

A good girl pulls up her socks till her knees. If she doesn’t, she is most likely to grow up into a slut.

Prayers are meant to be learnt as formulae. You have to gobble them up like bad medicine (without a spoonful of sugar), and puke them out during Catechism exams and Sunday mass. You must pray aloud. God can’t hear silent prayers. What do you think? He has magical powers?

You shouldn’t talk to boys. Or even look at them. It’s a crime. I’m sorry, did I say crime? I meant sin. God will send you to hell for it.

Words are meant to be choked down. Talking is a vice. It has to be curbed. Haven’t your parents taught you anything?

Finger. On. Your. Lips.

A refrain taken up by the kindergarten teacher. Said in different words by others. Always meaning the same.

That’s what the red pencil said to me today.

I entered college, thinking I could finally step out of the line, and write MY name on my body and my mind.

But the first thing they said to me was-

Toe the fucking line.

It’s yesterday all over again. A tall, grim man stands in a white cassock in place of Sister Margaret, his raised eyebrow a veiled threat, dictating life’s lessons, simplified and compressed, once again…

(more creatively, this time)

Adjust…Adapt…Belong…Conform…Accept

(Also, please shut up)

Being yourself is against the rules. Sorry.

While his faithful disciples stand around pointing machine guns at denim, extra piercings, reactionary newsletters, answers other than the ones in the textbook, signs of protest, people walking on the grass, people sitting on the steps, people holding cell phones, people resting their backs on the walls, people not taking part in mechanical discussions, people hugging (gasp)…

Sigh. Life must have been so simple when there were only ten Commandments to follow.

In our modern, progressive, free-thinking world, freedom of expression is still a hunted animal, an extremely endangered species. Killed actively in concentration camps called ‘Reasonable Restrictions’.

Of course, my journalism textbook has a completely different definition. Honestly, what has Naresh sir been teaching us?

* * *

Read our other winning entries, Anirudh Gopal’s You’re A Slave or Shruti Rao’s Haruka’s Forest

Lying in this dungeon through the ages
Alone you remain unheard
Thinking of sunshine in a dark cell
You wish you’d fly off like a bird
But these vultures who feast their thirst with your blood
Those who run the nations as if they were gods
Their so called laws don’t apply to you
Learn to live like this because
From the womb to the grave
you’re a slave you’re a slave
Blind you by their puppet media
They make you live in a hysteria
What’s for breakfast lunch dinner its oil
While you toil in the sun, burn n toil
You’re a slave you don’t have any laws
Learn to live like this because
From the womb to the grave
You’re a slave you’re a slave

* * *

Read our other winning entries, Nimmy Chacko’s Foe and Shruti Rao’s Haruka’s Forest

Haruka: From Japanese ? “far off, distant”.

Haruka wrapped his fingers around mine. Delicately fingering the creases on my knuckles, he lets his palm glide over mine. The fingers come after it, like a lazy afterthought. The forest is another world. Once you’re lost, there is never going back he sings to me.

The strands of hair look like hasty brush strokes on his pale, freckled forehead. They hang like stooped shoulders when they’ve let go of burden and forget sometimes that they’ve let go. They hang like…placebo. For what he ran away from. The beige khakis still have the ironed creases on them, even after a whole day of manual labour and light conversation. Sometimes, I think it’s the same with his mind.

While walking here, the trees seemed to hurriedly rush us inside. The show was beginning, so could we please find our seats, switch off our cell phones and not step on shoes. And now that we’re here seems like we’ve been closed in. Closed off. Same thing. But Haruka doesn’t seem to mind. He holds on tighter to my fingers, and I forget everything else and concentrate on it, I can feel the pulse on his index fingers. I might be imagining it, but it seems to skip a beat every now and then. As if that beat wasn’t meant for him. I wonder who collects the missing pulses, one by one. It could be tax- for living someone else’s life. But then again, I don’t know what I’m imagining anymore. I rest my head on his shoulder, and feel them rise up and down in soft movements. Cradling my head in the nook of his neck, I sing a song.

Haruka has always smelt of the forest. A mix of forbidden truths, fear and curiousity.

I first fell in love with him at the library that he worked in. Always the sharpened pencil at his command, poring over a book. I used to joke that Haruka was the library.

“You’re always singing”
” I can’t help it Haruka; I need to let it out. I can’t stop”
“Mm. I guess we all have that. Something that replays like a movie on the repeat mode. Over and over.”
“Haruka?”
“Mmm?”
“If you want, I can stop. I can sing in my head. Or I can sing what you want.”
A childlike chuckle.
” You know how much I admire your fierce independence?”, ever the sardonic wit.
A shove later, “No, we all have our own songs. Sing yours. I don’t mind”.

As we head towards the cabin he built with his brother over the course of a forgotten summer in the annals of history, he lets go of my hand I think. I think, because I can’t feel it. He looks at me as he lets me in first. Ladies first. After making out, like each time after making out, he apologizes and then shuts down. We must walk back out sometime soon. Give this time to mull and mope over. The trees usher us back out and close us out. Close us in. Whichever.

With a composed shadow at his heels, he squares his shoulders and waves a goodbye as he sits in his car. A very manly engine-whirring later, he’s off.

Of course, Haruka never really wrapped his fingers around me. Because that would lead to many things. The intricate hand-holding, the dry peck, the hesitant lick on the lip, the latent whimper; to the wet tongue, the hunger of misplaced identity and then the gnawing dismissal of it all. He won’t ever have that. He can’t let it happen. Because hands would search, hands would lead into places that aren’t there. He almost expects the look of muted horror disguised in a soft exclamation. He’s been replaying that moment so long now, that he doesn’t know what it is to live without it.

I understand the forests Haruka had been to and never returned from. I understand that for him I’m at the centre of the forest. Not outside it. Inside that forest was our world, untouched by anyone else. Because outside the forest, I would be just another girl. Outside it, even though he really was a man, he would still technically be female.