A Special Announcement | #writephoto

It was finally here. The call to arms Vasilis had been waiting for since he’d been inducted into the army as a lad of seventeen. And boy, was it beautiful: the usual black-coffee-baritone of the General now closer to a treble in his emergency shouts, the comrades he’d been having his lunch with until about fifteen minutes ago now taking up their positions in the bailey as if gathered by some automatic force yet to be invented, and most of all— the stone curtain. Oh, what a queen, that towering wall devouring all light that fell on it as though it was its only sustenance, that majestic piece of art running all around the citadel that sat within. 

Conversations with my brain: A Conversation with my brain

For the uninitiated, Wrinkles is my brain.

Wrinkles: No it’s not.

Me: I’ve already opened your dialogue tag with that. And I have no plans to change that.

Wrinkles: You think it’s a clever and taunty name for me, but it’s not.

Me: Hmm. Maybe I should do like an anagram of the word ‘Brain’. How about Brian? Top marks for not tryin’?

Brian: Pot, kettle, black.

Me: Brian, being, racist.

Brian: See, this is what you keep doing in every one of these: you pretend to take an idiom literally and then it’s like hahaha, so funny. If anyone’s “not tryin'”, it’s you.

Me: Oh, hon, I don’t need to try to insult you. You just inspire mockery by virtue of your very existence.

Brian: And so, by definition, do you.

Me: Oh my. Look at that. You’re agreeing with me on something. I can feel the historicity of this moment radiating like a museum’s.

Brian: If disagreements piss you off that much I don’t get why you even bother writing these ‘conversations with my brain’. All you ever write in them is me judging your bad life decisions and you trying to be funny by humiliating me.

Me: You judging my life decisions and me humiliating you isn’t restricted to the written word.

Brian: To be fair, that was only the last one’s pattern. All the others are practically me annoying you and you annoying me in return.

Me: A proper symbiotic relationship indeed. And as a gesture of good faith I will start retitling your dialogue tags.

Brian: For real?

Me: Hey, I don’t say things I don’t mean. There you go.

Mind your language

“Okay,” Angie cracked her knuckles. “I got this. I’ve done this every year, and I’ll do it this time as well.” Her nimble fingers were poised over the keyboard, ready to strike as soon as an idea presented itself. 

Indira walked over to the workstation. She was a bit older than Angie, but they both seemed to be the same age; not just in appearance, but, as Angie liked to say, in their heart and soul as well. She thought ‘heart and soul’ sounded cool. Indira huffed. Anything was cool when Angie said it. 

It wasn’t that they hated each other— far from it. They were practically siblings. It was either ‘hey I’ll help you bury the body’ or ‘yours is the body I’ll be burying.’ There was no in-between.

The second was what Indira was feeling today. Since the past few years it’d always been Angie, Angie, Angie. At best, she was riding shotgun. At worst, she was forgotten in a corner of the house. It wasn’t fair at all— she was a grown woman, she had been the first one here, she was the one who opened every single door and window. She loved Angie, true, but not at her own cost. Today presented a perfect opportunity for confrontation.

“Can’t think of anything?” she slurped her fennel-cardamom chai loudly.

“I- I don’t know, it’s just—“

“Sabe que tu corazon conmigo tu hace bom bom, sabe que sa bebe esta—” Espina was skipping around the house singing— no, shouting —the rap part of Despacito for the third time. In an hour.

“Maybe I could if someone would stop screaming lyrics they don’t even know the meaning of!” The walls felt Angie’s frustration, but the little girl, barely three, didn’t seem to take a hint. She continued rapping at the top of her babyish voice.  

“Tsk-tsk. She’s just a child, Ang dear, who you enabled.” Indira sat down on the empty chair, crossing her legs. “You seem tired. Maybe you should let me take the lead today?” she tried not to let her desperation show.

“No, I—” Angie put her fingers through the handle of her coffee mug. “I’ve gotta do this. It’s my job. I can’t let Her down. Not today.”

“Oh, please. You’re overworked as is. Besides, you do this all the time, and today’s a special day. If you do it, it won’t be anything… different. It’ll be just as usual. Take a break. Let me help you, Angie.” Indira seriously hoped she wasn’t sounding like one of those thinly-veiled Bollywood femme fatales.

“No, no, no. You don’t get it, Indu. You haven’t done this in, like, forever. You’ve done this, what, a couple of times in the last six, seven years? I do this at least every couple of months or so. I’m meant to do this. Besides, even if you do it, we both know what’ll happen. She will get tired, She will think it seems too…” Angie paused. She didn’t want to trigger the woman sitting in front of her. “…unlike Her. You’re best at the more sociable part. Why don’t you do that?” She smiled, hoping that’d clear any hints of an insult. Nobody wanted a pissed-off Indira.

The smile did not help.

Spinning a story for my 200 followers

Yep, you read it right –the Factory is now the proud owner of 200 followers!

(Owner? That sounds wrong. Maybe you should say… caterer, or something?)

(Shut up Wrinkles this is not your post.)

(Well, technically…)

(I said Shut. Up.)

How to be funny: A helpful guide ft. Wrinkles, aka My Brain

No, Wrin dear, I am not changing it to ‘just My Brain’. And no, the title’s not too long.

Well, hello there. Three days ago, it was C&C Fac’s 3rd anniversary, and even though my 12th board exams are literally starting in 17 days (yes, I counted), I’ve come out of this blogging exile just for this anniversary post, which is basically the only tradition over here.

Results of the Raw Poetry Contest

After two long months, the results of The Raw Poetry Contest are finally here. Yay!

You can keep those hockey sticks inside now, impatient participants.

Before we move on to the fun part, I really want all of you to know that you all did great. And I’m not just saying that for the sake of formality- I genuinely appreciated the response to the contest. At first, when I launched it, I got very few entries and I was disappointed to know that so few people could relate to the concept of raw poetry. But extending the deadline by a week was one of the best decisions I ever made because entries poured in after that. I guess y’all are just as lazy as me, huh? So, in the end, I got 19 entries, which was a pretty big deal for me considering that I hadn’t expected to get even 10.

And boy, was it a stiff competition. Even though there were three judges including me, we had a hell of a time selecting the top three. That’s why it took us two whole months to fully analyse and rate each poem.

I don’t want to be one of those annoying judges that say ‘participation is more important than winning’, because I know all too well that more than comforting, it feels like salt on a wound. So to all of you who couldn’t win this time, I will not say that. But I will be very honest with you and tell you that it takes a certain amount of faith in your work to submit it even for a small-scale contest like this one, and all of you who participated had that faith. All of you put in the effort to come up with a uniquely ‘you’ poem. And I think writing raw poetry is an achievement in itself because we’re so used to writing regular poetry. It can be difficult to remove that inherent propensity to use poetic devices and write a traditionally beautiful poem. Even if you did not win, I hope you learned something and most importantly, had fun.

Many of you still wrote regular poetry, and though you did not win a prize, I do hope you will read the winning entries and finally understand the concept. And if you do, my purpose is complete- the whole point of launching this was to familiarise you with the idea of raw poetry and encourage you to deviate from the traditional norms.

Just one last thing before I move on to the prize winners. The trophies displayed with each of the names were personally designed by me in Paint 3D (What a multitalented girl. I know, right?). All of you digital artists, don’t judge me, because it was my first time using Paint 3D. Prize winners: you can upload those trophies on your own blog and/or social media if you like.

Also, the three of us individually rated each poem out of 10 to keep track of our opinions about each one, and the average rating mentioned with the prize-winning poems are the average of those three ratings.

So, here we go:

The good, the bad and the ugly

The Good: The deadline for The Raw Poetry Contest has been extended! Yes, people, you now have till 21st June 11:59 P.M. Indian Standard Time to submit your entries. Do not let this chance go unused- if you wanted to participate but couldn’t because of lack of time, here’s a bonus week for you. So, spam me with your poems.

The Raw Poetry Contest

People usually launch contests, awards and other such things of their own on a special occasion- like their blog’s or their own birthday. But I, like Lewis Carroll, am going to do so on my unbirthday instead. After all, you have 364 unbirthdays and only one birthday, like he so insightfully said.

You don’t need to be Sherlock to know that it is the Raw Poetry Contest I’m launching today.

But what is this Raw Poetry Contest thingamajig?

A public announcement

*Brazenly copies Misha Collins’ twitter greeting*

Hola, Anishamigos!

Now I don’t normally do social media-y posts like this; if I have something to tell you, I usually put it in an author’s note at the end of my regular stuff. But if you’ve read Killing the Creator part 13 you know I didn’t do it this time and even told you to watch out for this post. What the hell? Have I finally gone batty, you ask?

Well, no. I would’ve told you this in the author’s note itself, but then it’d have been too long and it wouldn’t be fit to be called a note anymore. And besides, the news merited an individual post. So, I present to you- me wasting your time a public announcement.

Ahem, ahem. *Spends five minutes clearing throat* *Drinks a one-litre water bottle* *Picks up a megaphone and gets on the soapbox*

I’ve been published.

Two years

Once I was seven years old,

A ball pen did I hold and

On a half-used notebook wrote a story

Once I was seven years old.