The Unwritten Story

The Unwritten Story

I have to write a story.

It has been long since I wrote any stories. I kept making excuses to myself, sympathizing my poor brain on unsuccessful defending of my incapability to write anything at all. I really have to write. That is what I love. All these years, I kept saying to myself, - it comes naturally to me, literature is my life. But all my creativity has died. I have become a slave of my high self-opinion.

Days, weeks, months and years passed but I could not produce anything. All the plots appeared strongly at first and later became weak and feeble, and disappeared completely from my brain. Lots of stories revolved in the brain and knocked each other out. The characters started arguing and fighting after sitting in silence for a while, waiting for my action. And again their patience did not last long. The brain was silent one hour and then there was a volcano of thoughts and imaginations. People were created, God was created, dialogues were spoken, verses were read, but nothing was written. Yes, nothing was recorded. Everything faded away like evaporation of water. I got tired, then recharged, and tired again. This continued for years.

Until the end of last year, I was busy with school. Yeah… school. It was tough. I thought of writing stories but could not. One day, I was driving to school and something knocked on the door in my brain. Suddenly I was talking to a man who had a great mustache. I call him the mustachioed. His mustache was very beautiful, long and wild, almost covering all his lips. He was knocking and peeking his long nose through the door. I would tell him- “not now, time is not yet”. He would not agree.

He would say- “Let the mustachioed take control”.

I was very stubborn myself, I told him to back off. I liked stories on princess better than a mustachioed. The mustache man did not go away. He waited in front of the door silently but his presence was strong. I tried to ignore him, to talk to another beautiful girl but he kept peeking his long nose through the door. He was silent but he was strong. Every time I look towards the door, he was waiting silently, with hopeful eyes smoothing his mustache. He really wanted to be in my story. I tried to leave him behind. I was trying to drive as soon as I can, but soon a cop stopped me to a with his rainbow lights.

“Sir, do you know why I stopped you?”

“I liked your sunglass but I don’t want you here right now”-I said.

“What…”?

“I am talking to Mr. mustachioed right now, can you go away? This mustachioed was following me for a while. He was irritating me”.

“Oh! Yeah? I did not see any one. There is no car behind you and she does not have a mustache sir. What are you talking about?”

“Oh…. I thought for a while. “This one is real”. The mustachioed smiled and disappeared. I was going to school with my friend. The cop was real. He wrote me an amazing ticket for speeding 20 miles over the limit and left happily.

“What were you babbling, were you nervous?” -She asked.

“Well, yeah something like that…” –I covered up. I was not aware that she was with me. The mustachioed never came back.

I imagined stories in my head and that was not the first time. I forgot myself sometime. School time was not good for writing. I never dreamt when I was going to school, I spent whole nights awake. So it was not hard for me to create a story. I spent nights silently, not even with thoughts; and all day, I was with bald men or mustachioed or princess or cops. There were so many stories in my head, but I never wrote a story.

After graduation, I was free. I didn’t have to memorize anything non-sense.

“The journey has now begun”- I thought.

I had lots of time. I started a story that was bothering my head for a while. I was looking for a good title first but before I found the title, my parents came to visit me for my graduation and I could not focus.

My mother had really missed me for five years. Every time, I was about to write story, she cooked something with so much spices and smoke, even the mustachioed would disappear. I kept my response to minimum but she never stopped talking. For a month that I was with her, she was always talking about something. She talked about neighbors’ and their son and daughter in laws, her parents, brothers and their children’s. She talked about cows and dogs in the neighborhood, about her diseases, and her neighbors’ diseases, her clothes and her relative clothes, her jewelries and her relatives’ jewelries. I could sense she missed me so much.

One day she was tired, I was just about to type the title of so awaited story, she said- “You are old enough now, don’t you think you should get married?”

“No.”

“I and you father wants you to get married to a nice girl and settle down”.

“Okay”.

“Okay is that all you can say? We don’t want you to force you to marriage. You can choose from so many girls we have been looking for you. You can bring her here, we are not of traditional family, we will not keep the girl with us in Nepal.”

I laughed. Silence followed. My story was stuck somewhere.

“You want to die alone when you get old?” she started again.

“Everyone dies alone”. My story was completely dead by now.

“But it is painful to die when you are alone- no one caring for you when you are sick.”

“Don’t worry”.

“We will soon be old and die. I have so many diseases…, even grandmother wants to see you married before she dies…, what do you want.....I let you think for a month, you can reply me after a month before we return so that we can prepare….why don’t you come back to home once…?

“I don’t look back mom. I said- “past is not for me. By the way, have you brought pictures of the girls too?”

She smiled. I knew she had pictures too but she was too embarrassed to show it to me because she knew I would make fun of her.

“Well, I said, “You gave me one month, I won’t take that long. I will answer you now. I give you both, one year to think about this. Think about it and tell me what marriage has done to you. What good has it served to you both, and what would you have missed if you were not married to each other? What difference has it make to you’?

There was a long silence.

Besides, my mother is not philosophical; she was just representing my father. My father kept silence during all the conversation. My mother was not silent because she did not know the value of silence. My father was silent, just did not want to lose in a debate with his son. It is hard for him. The debate was open for my mom but my story plot was already closed.

Now when my parents returned to their country, I had so many materials already, yet nothing was written. My boss was panicking that I was on vacation over a week. I had to go back to the same job that I hated with my every cell in my body.

But my writer’s instinct liked the job. I was so free to ponder my mind on characters when I was driving. Only thing was: I could not write when I was driving. My mind kept bursting in pain. Doing this job, not only I have hated it, I have started hating dogs. Every time I knocked on customer’s door, their buffalo sized dogs barked at me like crazy.

“She won’t bite you. The customer said.

“I look like a thief, don’t worry” I said.

“No, her eyes enlarged. “Why were you so late? It over forty five minutes, I hope the pizzas are hot otherwise…” now she started to complain.

“Oh because you ordered your pizza and perhaps started making love with your dog and forgot everything,” mustachioed whispered me to tell her that but I did not. I said-“Madam I am standing for more than twenty minutes in cold, it is snowing outside and I can’t feel my fingers. I knocked on the door and rang the door bell and you cell phone is dead.”

“Wow, really? She acted like she remembered. “I am sorry”.

“Its okay. Twenty three seventy one please”

“Here it is”- she gave me twenty four. “I know your job is hard. I used to do that long time back. I thought it was great at first but I hated it when I knew you have to go to apartments, and you don’t know the access codes…. and all rich people are greedy, they don’t tip you. Poor people tip well. But I will pray for you ….I am a Christian…if you believe in Jesus…”

Mustachioed wants to listen to the story but I don’t. “She is a hypocrite”- the mustache man said to me. “It is fun to listen to her.”

She closed the door in my face. I looked at her house- a huge castle. It was beautiful, and she thinks she is poor. In the driveway there were two new hummers. “Probably her servants are poor too”- my mustachioed made the old joke.

When I was returning back to store, I thought may be that would be a nice story. It had been always nice to write about rich but foolish people. So I waited until the midnight, having prepared some exaggerated version of this encounter in my mind to write a story that night. That night I went home after work. It was midnight, and I was starving. I opened my apartment’s door to find out nobody there. Just darkness…My cousins were supposed to cook as we agreed but they were too lazy. Both were asleep soundly. I washed the dishes, cooked the food, and washed the dished again. All that time, the mustachioed, the poor lady with the castle, my mom, all are all laughing loudly inside my head. “I am writing today, this is the day” I thought.

But with my dinner, I ate the story too. I postponed again and went to bed thoughtlessly.

Next day I had a job interview with a lady for a food company.

“Are you Spanish?” She asked.

“Is it not illegal to ask that? I thought you were equal opportunity employer.” I said.

“we are but there is a reason….She asked- “it seems that you are the best candidate for the position but you do not speak Spanish where 90 percent of all my employees speak nothing but Spanish”.

“What about English”? I asked.

“They know English but they don’t want to speak it. They will just speak Spanish”.

“Really... Why?”

“They think they will be dominated. They think that is a way to discourage racism”.

“Why are you encouraging them, are you one of those too?”

“No sir, we value diversity” She told me.

“So why are you clinging stupidly to your Spanish thing?” I could not stop myself. “English is already my second language. You didn’t mention anything about your extra language clause in the posting of the job details”.

“Well not all things are mentioned on the details. That why we have interviews” she clarified hurridly. I could see her eyes blink rapidly with anger.

“I drove three hours from my place just to come here to listen to you say this. Wow bitch! You are one fat and ugly racist” my white cop with the black sunglasses told her from my head, “You look illegal to me. Perhaps you came from swimming in the Mexican border or maybe you were sold by an illegal Mexican hooker to this country…” But I calmed my racist people. They were ready but I told them that time was not yet.

After that week I was not working many hours, so I thought it was good time to start writing. But few job interviews followed. I prepared for the interview. I practiced every possible question. I conversed with myself. I rehearsed the whole interview hundreds of times differently in my head before I went to an interview. Neither my story grew nor did I get any job.

They never asked me anything. People didn’t like me because, for some- my name was too foreign, for some- my face was too brown; some thought I was an enemy of Indian people. Some people didn’t want to offer me job. Some wanted to make fun of me and for that purposes only kept calling me for interviews. Although I knew, I went. And in going to such waste of time, I killed a lot of stories.

Time kept racing and I kept forgetting what I had to write.

As I thought I was free from pressure, I wanted to write. As I sat in front of the computer I started thinking. “Now I have to write just for the sake of writing and I don’t know what to write. Without success, I have been thinking of a plot. My bills are due this week. Credit companies are bothering me everyday increasing my interest rates. My car needs to be repaired, the engine light is on. I have recent break up with my girl friend and I don’t know what to do. I have not cleaned my closet forever. I have to ask some of my professors to write me a recommendation letter. I have not followed on some interviews that were conducted normally. I have not answered a voice message about my absence to the church this week. I have not done laundry for a long time. Valentine is coming up and I have prepared nothing. Few girls are probably expecting something but how can I tell that I am not good with women and children? I have not called my mom to know she has found out about marriage. There are lots of things to do before writing I have to find a job very soon or I have to go back to my country to marry a girl that my parent chose for me. My interviews are not going well because they all ask about my rights to work is US. And no matter how I perfectly explain them with a proof, they try to find some fault in it. People have lost faith in people. I have to call my cousin in New York just to tell her that I might need her help. I keep not trying to remember what happened but the white lady in the lab yesterday humiliated me. So I am little unstable because humiliation is very dangerous thing. I try keeping my little ego inside the closet but such humiliation can bring war. She canceled a scheduled interview at the first place after knowing that I didn’t speak like her. After I responded strongly, she called me again, after a week for an interview. It was nothing like an interview, a typing test is what they called it. And she tells me- Oh you typed just 6000 date entry words per hour, we need someone who can do 8000. You are not eligible for interview. Let me show you the way out.”

The big black lady that I was writing a story on was really unhappy- “you are a white trash! A little unprofessional, so called supervisor of this lab, go to hell for such lies and humiliation. This part was silently expressed in my defeated smile. I only said this to her- “I don’t want to be here anyway”.

I keep trying to forget all this but it comes interrupting every time I sit to write something. I kept trying to philosophize things and sympathize myself that someday will eventually come, when I will be in no hypertension of my mind. But that never happened. Lots of things happened, lots of thoughts came by my mind and I kept watching my thoughts. Should I stay here or go back to my country? Do I want to go to graduate school? Am I liked by American people? Am I okay? For how long do I have to do the keep the buffalo’s size dogs barking? For how long am I going to put the mustachioed man in prison? For how long can I keep silence? Is it okay for me to eat meat? Is God watching over. I have to write a story but things kept interrupting.

I was trying to introduce the mustachioed and his story but today also the weather made me depressed.

The story was never written.

8th Feb 2010