The Unabridged Journals of Karissa Gupta

  As I sat on my desk with my legs lazily sprawled over my chair and random locks of hair loosely falling all over my face, I ritualistically wrote clusters of words onto a document and then promptly deleted them all with just a single click- every single time. This cycle drove me to the verge of insanity, resulting in my head throbbing with pain and my Hail Mary being a strip of crocin. I slapped my cheeks countless times, stared at my screen with a murderous intent and even wrote an entire piece only to realise that though the words were mine, the emotions weren’t. And I thought to myself, what good is a piece if it doesn’t reflect a part of my soul which had been previously hidden away, tucked beneath the surface, only to be glimpsed on occasion when the mask I wore slipped away momentarily . While I cascaded into a session of self critique and intense contemplation over my sudden inability to express through words, it hit me. I realised that the complexity of the theme ‘family...

  As I cerebrated upon the theme for this edition of the Network, my forehead morphed into wrinkled lines as my eyebrows furrowed up, due to the lack of evocation in my mind. I strained my tightening constraints, coercing my subconscious to lurch into its depths and unearth a glimmering thread lit up by my memories. However, my efforts were in vain as the only recollection of bedtime stories I could uncover was when my parents read stories to me. One vivid memory sparked my mind, but that’s it. All I could envision were blurry figures of my mom and I sleeping on her bed in our old home, as she read The Magic Faraway Tree to me, and I pleaded, “one more chapter please!”, engrossed within the fictional realm of moon-face and silky the fairy. Falling asleep in my mother’s arms as she patiently narrated the enchanting tales of the magic faraway tree, is what I thought my childhood’s bedtime stories were limited to. I falsely fell prey to the misconception spurred within the chambers of...