WOW - Nobody knows that I...

Nobody knows that I have a few secrets which very select people know, people whom I can very easily count on my one finger…yep just one finger, coz its that much private.

So lets start with the very light hearted one.. even before I knew what scrapbooks were all about they made their foray into my life in a very innovative and different way. I have the habit of keeping news articles/ photos which I like, with me forever. The very first photo I had been carrying with me was from an old india today magazine way back in 1988-89 when I was a kindergarten kid. It was the photo of a MIG 29. I always knew that I kind of somewhat loved fighters but until my late teens could not fully understand that it was my passion. I had accumulated a lot of “ raddi kabaad” (waste paper) that way. I used to keep the whole newspaper section in which any defence news or pic used to come. Very soon I ran out of storage space so I resorted to cut down that particular news and keep that. The rest of the useless paper could go into the raddi and now I could very easily store my articles in a file. I did not knew how would I store them until the bolt from the blue happened…

I had an article about the Indian Sukhoi 30 with me ( the very 1st generation ones, not the later MKI ones) and one day I just lost it. Just could not find it anywhere in the file, must have slipped out of it and gone into the morning broom cleaning. That got me thinking that I just could not afford any more “losses”. I needed permanent solution and that’s when I decided to stick them on A 4 size sheets. I did not want any wastage due to this new hobby so it was decided that I would use the blank backside of the wasted papers churning out from my printer ( I had a bundle of them. Save paper, save environment). Instead of fully pasting the whole article by glue, only 4 drops were applied to every article, one on each corner and pasted on one paper. Now they were beginning to look organized. Articles and cutting were in various sizes and shapes. If the article/ pic was small, it was checked against every ready sheet to see if it can be pasted on the leftover space in that sheet, otherwise a new rough sheet was put to use. For articles bigger than a single sheet, 2 sheets or more were joined by cello tape just like the pages of a book. The success of this keeping meant that I started on a few more sections- Nature ( pics of nature , cute birds or landscapes in newspapers), Misc. ( any interesting offbeat news) and my most fav. actresses- until the arrival of Katrina, it was preity zinta but she was replaced in 2003 by Katrina since her movie “ Humko deewana kar gaye” with Akshay. 

Arranging for waste A4 sheets, specific cello tape (only the one by Prime and no one else) and glue meant that it all required a lot of planning and concentration. It was my way of mediating and when I did that work, I met no one. Over the years time constraint means that I cannot pursue my this “ सनकी “ hobby regularly but even then I have many envelopes with cut out articles of defence and pics of kartina ready which need to be pasted. No picture is used twice, I know which ones I had. What started as a mission became a passion. My parents have a hint that maybe I keep all of them in different files in my bookshelf but they dare not touch it because they know that if even one page goes missing , it would be a nuclear holocaust for all.

The very first paper from my collection...notice that

        zigzag cutting ? (thats since time immortal) That piece is

             with me since 1989 when I couldnt handle scissors properly.. 

There are a lot of blogger friends who read my poems and ask me but I always sidestep the particular question about the real inspiration behind the love and emotions I pen down in those. Nobody knows that there is a real girl behind all that I write, every emotion I have ever written. I lost her (don’t ask me how) and even after all these years I am unable to forget her, nightmares come to me on a daily basis, don’t know what sound sleep means. I wrote for years about her, some 1.5 years at a stretch but left writing poetry all of a sudden in 2014, the pain was too much and her memories even more. People say that my future wife would be lucky to get me as I am caring, romantic ( glaring misconceptions if you ask me). Pain and deep scars have meant that I am not the same as I used to be… I am an extreme person now, more so towards the cold hearted one. I can never explain to anyone what she is to me, all I can is that there is someone who is keeping me just the way I am. Nobody knew it before but there is an “angel” and her memories behind every thing I write even till today…

Nobody knew that…nobody ever would have…not until today… 

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.