Paper

Good luck for your exams, people. Try your best, but in case you just can't do well and it seems to you that you're an academic failure, it's alright.

This piece is from a kindred spirit. Take care of yourselves :)

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Paper's pretty cool.
There's just so much of it around. I can do so many things with it.

I can write books and make paintings, I can make boats and planes and they can sail and fly.
Pieces of paper can make you fly.
And you know what? That's pretty cool for a piece of paper.

But pieces of papers can act crazy too.
They screw up your washing machines.
Your printer jams,
And then you have report cards and leaving certificates and character certificates.

What the heck is a character certificate anyway? 
They're certainly too important in our lives.

People say computers are ruining us, you know what, I think it is paper.

This post is not about Bombay Times.

This post is about pieces of paper that claim to describe you.
You all know how it goes. Those terrifying days of parent-teacher meetings, it was like going to court. Your entire existence distilled into five letters, A B C D E and the greatest prize of them all.

You failed. The academic machine chewed you up and spit you out like a paper ball. And guess what? Paper balls don't fly. Little kids who are an inch too tall for class don't fly, there are those little red marks on paper that's just the blood that came out when someone clipped your wings off. There you were wishing you had paper with some spells inscribed on it that would make you disappear, just like the smile off your face when someone calls you and says, “Result lag gaya”, like the magic words your teacher says to your parents that make them forget that it was only yesterday that they were teaching you to ride bicycles and pitch balls. I know that sinking feeling, I know what it’s like to feel your guts come out of the other side of the earth and down below into whatever lies there, that little graveyard of dreams and victims of death by papercuts to the heart and soul, stabs by red markers, suffocation by chalk dust, asphyxiation by a thousand expectations that would leave you blue due to lack of air if you weren’t red already for the lack of A. Or a B. Hell, I’d settle for any letter but the sixth one in the alphabet right now. Someone told me an X marked my heart and there lay a treasure but this stupid, stupid map doesn’t go beyond F. F for failure.

Welcome to failure. If you haven't abandoned all hope yet, allow us a moment to shove your face into this piece of paper that says you aren't good at all. It says here that you can't count, you can't do science, you suck at English, you couldn't even run in the sports ground. The sports teacher flunked your for fucks' sake, how much do you have to suck for that to happen? You’re a miserable blob of equal parts fat and sweat and poorly-disguised misery spilling out of a little canvas belt that’s just about holding your gut in, your eyes just about holding the tears in, your heart just about holding the pain in, just about. It’s all ready to spill out like a little fountain pen you don’t quite know how to use, drowning like a misshapen little boat your finger couldn’t quite make, drowning like those little dreams you used to have that someone would tell you the world was better for having you around, a world that’s dyslexic and hence can’t read As and Bs and Fs, but you’re in a world that’s myopic and no one’s going to tell these people that.

But who's gonna tell them? Who's gonna tell them that these little fingers can count all that is of importance like the change they get back when they buy sweets for their little siblings? These little fingers that can wrap around brushes just tightly enough to paint sunsets above houses with slanted roofs and square windows? Who's going to tell them that the kid who failed environment is growing a little plant in the backyard, taking more care of it than his parents ever did of him? Of course one day you're going to cut it down to make paper, and that paper is going to tell some other kid she isn't good enough because she can't remember the water cycle, never mind the miles she has to walk to fetch enough water for home. Who's going to tell them that monkeys weren't meant for swimming and fish weren't meant for climbing trees and that little kid who's crying in the corner wasn't made for running across your playground but he was, he was meant to fly? Who's going to stand up to this goddamn prison that's made of pieces of paper and tell them that their report cards are missing certain fields like 'cleans up after dinner' and 'is a good daughter' and 'helps old ladies cross the road' and 'keeps food for animals' and 'is always there when you need him' and 'holds a bass groove like the devil' and 'paints like that's what she sees out of her eyes' and 'could score a goal from 40 yards'?

But you also know what? No piece of paper was ever big enough,
To write down who you are. None of them could print all that you've seen and all you've been through. And never, all you could be. No paper is bright enough to see that, no matter how many times they bleach it and whatever seal and stamp they put on it. It will always be as dead as the tree that was cut down to make it.

No piece of paper was ever white enough to match the glow you had when You folded paper into a plane. And no paper plane was light enough, To fly like you would, when you got wings.

No paper was ever enough to hold all those stories
That you were part of, locked safely in someone's mind
You're a hundred letter word, you're a thousand word tale
You're a million tale book. You're a blank piece of paper.
You will take ages to read, and you're not even done yet.

What you're not, however.
Is the first five letters of the alphabet.
Because no piece of paper was ever enough
To have you drawn on it.
I could cut down every tree that ever yearned for sunlight,
And I could make out of them a million pieces of paper
And yet I would only about begin to describe you.
I would fail.

Just like you did. You failed, didn't you? All your life you've always been 'can do better' and 'needs to concentrate'. Well guess what.
But you wouldn't, you couldn't.
Because you're not the first five letters of the alphabet.
Take the other twenty-one and begin your story.
You’re as dangerous as any paper with a stamp on it, as inflammatory as any sheet stuck to the walls of a dying society, as magnificent as any beast found in an origami exhibition. I’m just so, so glad you all came to this no-parents-and-no-teachers meeting because we don’t ask for grades here, we ask for names. Here’s S for Shreya with the floor and I’m going to tell you the plans for next semester.
Spill ink across all pieces of paper that you see.
And don't trust the ones that claim they can describe you.
One day we will tear them apart and watch them burn. We're going to burn down this entire paper castle and roast marshmallows in the fire and warm our cold little hands still blue from the marks the rulers gave us and still red from the marks the pens gave us but still, still nimble enough to make boats that sail away to F for freedom while the prison burns down. And they know they are setting sail for a little X that marked someone’s heart once.

And I promise you, as these walls go down,
The ashes will take flight
Like little paper planes.
Just like that little kid in line for her report card.
Because if you can look beyond the little paper screen,
You can see wings on her back.
She made them herself.
Out of pieces of paper.
Blank paper.