Wordsmith of the month: Joohee Shherma

Joohee Shherma won the creative writing contest at Symphony 2013, organised by K.J. Somaiya College of Engineering. She was given the them ‘Opposites Attract’, where she had to write a story around two randomly picked characters; in her case Albert Einstein and Gabbar Singh. Joohee managed to weave a humourous tale around this unlikely meeting. Here’s her story:

“So, what’s up with Samba? He looks terrible”

“Oh yeah, he just broke up with Basanti. She isn’t over Veeru yet apparently”

“So Samba’s single now?”

“Why do you care? By the way, you know how possessive I’m about my partner, don’t you?”

“Chill, Gabbu! I’m yours, I’m all yours!”

And that made me smile for atleast a minute straight. I’m tired of asking Samba “kitne aadmi the?”  I’m tired of bullying. The world seems to stop when he calls me Gabbu. Despite the image he has, I never thought he was in my league. Only he knows that I’m different from what I’m known to be. Only he knows I’m gay.

He has a documentary film made to honour his work and I’m just another villain from a Bollywood movie. Inspite of that, he left his family for me (and people thought he wanted to continue his research). It’s because of him that I’ve begun taking interest in dark energy. All we have in common is our beard.

“You look disgusting Gabbu, please shave!”

“Look who’s talking!”

And it’s these light moments we cherish. We know it’s wrong; but this wrong feels right.

It was our anniversary yesterday. I bought him new glasses and he bought me rifles. It wasn’t weird for us, until yesterday.

“You are supposed to research! You aren’t supposed to buy me these rifles. I have Samba for doing that! Then why are we together? What if the world comes to know about us? You should go home!”

“Shut the hell up! How many times do I need to teach that Opposites Attract?”

His statements of the length of a tweet have always been persuasive enough to be descriptive about our own world.