My worst trait

you might hate me for this

My worst trait, as I have been told, is that I try to find a story everywhere I go and in everyone I meet.

A fun pin I found on Pinterest that sums up this piece

On my way to office, I see a pink tree everyday. Everything around him is green. And my brain shifts a little each time. How hard it must have been for him growing up?

The other plants, trees, grass and even sprouting saplings might have mocked him. Never invited him to come play, or to the birthday parties, or to even sit at the same table. All of this just because he was born different. He must have hated his pink leaves and cried to his mother, “Why didn’t you make me green?”

But I spotted it because he’s different. Because I find pink pretty and him prettier.

You might be thinking what’s wrong with me. But wait before you make your assumptions. Let me give you more reasons to think I might be insane.

There was this boy I saw on the metro last week. An average guy who works at an IT firm, has tattoo on his right bicep of the Icarus, lives with his best friend from college, sucks at making chai but folds clothes like an expert. He has a cat named Jalebi who’s not very friendly, and finds this boy stupid. A girl broke his heart a year ago and since then he finds her smile in every girl he sees. His guitar from tenth standard collects dust in his room in his small home town and he hates his job.

Also, he might have found me creepy for staring at him too long.

The only problem is he was just a boy. I built all this lore around him.

Maybe he doesn’t work in IT, maybe he doesn’t even have a job. The tattoo? His sleeves reached his wrists. And maybe he doesn’t have a cat but a dog. A golden retriever who comes running when he reaches home. He looks like a city boy, never been to a small town. What if he broke a girl’s heart? *Gasps* What if he cheated? Now I see a musician in him. One who wishes he had a full time job because music is unpredictable. Or what if—

Good god. I am doing it again. Finding a story in someone I do not even know on first name basis.

It for sure starts with an A. He looked the part. Or maybe he is a Rahul. Or a . .

STOP. Not again.

When I narrated one such story to my brother about a girl in yellow dupatta we crossed paths with in Lajpat Nagar, he was shook.

“Why the hell would you do that?” He asked, his forehead turning into a loosely-knitted web of frown lines.

“I don’t know. Maybe because everyone has a story we don’t see.”

He was confused. “It’s really not that deep. Not everyone has a story. Life is just . . . life.”

Then I told him the backstory I gave to his girlfriend the first time we met.

“It’s far from being reality.”

Yes. Because it is fiction, you dumbhead.

Just so we’re clear

That was the last day I told someone about this weird habit of mine. And conveniently left out the part where I miss my stations, cross wrong roads, visit the lousiest restaurants, and stand in the mall bathrooms for twenty minutes. All while chasing a story I see in someone.

The stories haven’t stopped but now I use them where they make sense.

You might not know but I am writing a book. Or books if you count the half-baked plots.

So the hero from one of my novels has a tattoo on his right bicep. No points for guessing that it’s a sketch of Icarus.

The heroine in a book is wearing a yellow dupatta the first time reader gets to know her. And there’s a pink tree in the rough illustration of what’s supposed to be my debut novel.

I am still weird and creep out people by looking at them a bit longer than normal. But I have found a place to steer this weirdness towards.

Growing up, I was the kid who sucked at sports. Most of my games period went in finding the best kind of dirt in the playground. No particular reason, I just wanted the perfect place to bury the grasshopper who died a death of valor. He jumped from the stage into a huge puddle of water.

I didn’t have many friends, now you know why. I would make a story out of them and when they failed to fit that narrative, which of course they did, they seemingly became less interesting.

If someone was to enter my brain, they would find a mess. Half-completed sentences written on the walls, random words making no sense. A mix of vibrant colors, orange lights, a TV running in full volume and changing channels non-rhythmically. You would be asked to wear shock bands and electrocuted at random intervals as you walk through a hallway where all the stories reside. Too many of them to peacefully cohabit.

So, my advice, do not enter my brain. And also do not cross paths with me unless you want my book’s protagonist to have the same hair as you and wear the same shade of blue you do.

And if you’re anything like me, too confused, entirely curious, and a tad bit of weird (or people say so), just know that there is a pink tree who’s different.

He survived. You and I will too.

Because people are born green and they think that’s the only way to be, but we can be pink.