I beg to differ...

Pre-Nursery…

I’m coloring. Furiously. I’m focusing all my energies on filling those white spaces because my teacher wasn’t too pleased with them last time around. Those and the crayon marks outside the picture. I was not supposed to color the rest of the page. Yup that meant that the sky was supposed to be left white, unlike the deep blue I had filled it with. I was only required to fill in those drawings. I was also not supposed to draw a smile on the sun’s face, no sir- even though I knew the Telitubies rose each morning to a sun that always smiled.
And I had to remember, nobody’s face is brown. Nu-uh. Or yellow. You either leave faces blank, or color them with peach crayon. I also had to color in a single direction…
Too many instructions that I had to retain in my pea sized brain. I was forgetting them; it was like trying to hold water in my cupped hands- and like the water they were trickling away. Coloring was hard work and no more fun.
Kindergarten…

I’m sitting in my class, tongue stuck out, eyes narrowed, concentrating on the alphabet. Mommy wasn’t too happy when she got hold of my report card yesterday. Apparently, I do not know the right way to hold my pencil. I hold it between my thumb and index finger and that is not the right way. “No wonder her writing is so untidy,” the teacher had snapped.
I need to wedge the wooden paraphernalia between my thumb, index finger and my middle finger. That is the only way to hold a pencil.
Grade 2…

Urdu Teacher tells me to rethink if I wanted to discuss ‘Timatar’ as my favorite fruit. I tell her I do. The essay is returned with a big, fat, red zero on top. As big, fat and red as the tomato I had drawn at the bottom of the page. I try to argue with her how the Science teacher had told us it was a fruit. She tells me to stop creating such a fuss; everybody knew tomatoes are vegetables and not fruits. Tears well up in my eyes. It was the first time I got a zero.
At a party…

Everybody is dancing. So am I; twirling around like a mystic, the music is intoxicating. I close my eyes and spin round and round in circles-till my head starts spinning and I feel like I’m floating. It feels so good, so...light… Till she taps on my shoulder and tells me it’s not the way we dance. I wasn’t following the steps. I open my mouth to argue and a minute later, I am being escorted away. They’re pointing and giggling at me.Their eyeballs that are glued to the nape of my neck, the way they laugh at me stings like a bitch.
Tonight…

I tell them they will regret curbing down their individuality, and I am shunned away. The city gates no longer welcome me. I trudge on barefoot and wander away from the city lights; I step out of the picture and I can see everything clearly now. I can see them belittle anyone who dares to be different; I can see them ridicule those who’re not “conventional”. I can see them chalk out lines for those who fit their definition of peculiar. I see them hurl stones at the odd one out- and he is forced to retrieve in his shell like a turtle and stay there until he is acceptable; until he conforms to the whims of society and lets society determine what is right, moral and ethical, instead of his heart; until he is the death of himself. Ultimately, the weights of solitude drag him into a massive throng of people, and he is lost forever in that swarm, never to be found again.
Sometime later…

And not too long from now, I see a band of troops marching away in sync. I see the same faces everywhere; faces inhumane. Uniformity, conformity, homogeneity. The world is afflicted by monotony. Only because they failed to perceive the premonition they received, not too long ago.