D.O.E.

“… Creative writing will give me an opportunity to revisit my human side.” I wrote in my application to the Department of English when I opted for the creative writing paper. My calculation was simple. Creative writing does not involve any ‘theories’. It was easily manageable. Besides, a wide database of politically correct statements made by cunning chiefs of states and the knowledge of contemporary issues in international relations would give me an edge over the English students who read poems and plays and lived in a world of fantasy and fairytales

However the magnitude of my mistake did not strike me till my performance at the Department of English came to resemble a Greek tragedy. Back in the department of political science, there is a department we regard the most dangerous to world peace-the American Department of Defense otherwise known as DOD. The English department posed grave danger to my mental peace. No wonder I referred to it as the formidable D.O.E.
In response to my knowledge of contemporary issues in international relations, the DOE students had impeccable French, Greek and Latin phrases. If I was only searching, packing and marketing the correct words needed to express my feelings, they were CEOs of Vocabulary Inc.! Why speak of the teacher when I could barely understand the words used by the students? Why speak of their writings when I could hardly comprehend what they spoke? Sitting there in the English class I was like a monk in a casino, with wrong cards and fake chips sitting at the ‘no limits’ table! The others knew the game well.

The essential part of creative writing is of course writing a story. The DOE students came out with truly wonderful stories. They wrote stories like ‘Medieval Romance,’ Irony of Fate and Sacred Passion’. On the other hand, “Rockets in the Middle East”, “Fate of Iran” and Secret Prisons” were some of my humble contributions.
Bewildered by my weird stories, the teacher called me in her cabin.
“Young man” she said to me “the art of creative writing demands creativity, vivacity and imagination. But you bring to it, simplicity, stupidity and brutality! You have a talent of analyzing violence nay, of finding it or even worse bringing it into most unlikely situations! I suggest you either see a psychiatrist or stop attending my classes”
I did neither.
One day however, she asked us to write a love story with a happy ending set in pre independence India (given: the boy’s father was the villain). The DOE students of course came out with imaginative stories. Some one showed the mother of the boy helping the two to run away, someone else made the girl take the initiative to ellope; one guy even had a tree by the village tank where the lovers used to meet (and do stuff) magically turn into a human being to reunite the lovers!
My story was something like this:
The boy, whose father is helping the anti British elements, makes a simple deal with the British- you give me my girl, I give you my father! Thus he gets his girl; he gets rid of his tyrannical father and gets a career with the British intelligence! A perfectly happy ending!
I was the last one to submit my assignment. I turned it in and went home satisfied.
I went to class the next day expecting very good marks. However the teacher was nowhere to be seen!
“Don’t know what’s wrong with her,” the office clerk told me. “ Someone has been supplying the old woman with violent stories. She’s gone to see a psychiatrist.”