Beginning, Middle, and End

A personal essay on the most memorable moments of my life.

Every great story has a beginning, middle, and end, but not necessarily in that order. We are all great stories — Jean-Luc Godard.

Chapter One

The girl is born in the morning, they think. She cries, and they know she is alive and healthy. But no one ever cared about those cute little details of her birth time, so this chapter just might be a ‘based on a true story’ fiction.

Chapter Fifteen

In the room with the black backdrop, state-of-the-art lighting, and poorly dressed, sweaty-palmed teenager, the judge said, “Friends clapped for you”. The girl would walk out of that room and not win the debate competition. Yet she would remember that moment for the rest of this story, for it was the proudest she had ever been.

Chapter — N/A

The girl has a memory of visiting her sick brother at the hospital. She is two, and he is four. She hands him a pack of cheese balls in the field but can’t remember anyone else in the scene. She swears she experienced that moment but is certain her memory of it is warped. Is every other memory she has warped?

She got a whooping from mummy today. It was the first and last time ever.

In the same year, she gets another whooping but this time from Daddy. It was one of those days you simply want to throw a tantrum, but she lived in an African home, and they were running late for their embassy appointment. Maybe this would be their big break, and they will soon move to the land of milk and honey.

Chapter Ten

The girl cries. Her friend is dead. She heard the news days ago, but only in that unrelated moment many days later did the floodgates open. “It gets better”, I whisper to her, but she can’t hear since I don’t yet exist.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The big break never came, and she is kind of grateful it didn’t, as the passport from all those years ago was ugly, with her face swollen from crying. She is at the embassy with mummy to renew her international passport. It is the era of japa, and every youth in the country swears by the word ‘japa’.

Chapter Nineteen

Guilt is selfish. She feels terrible about her choices with him that led up to his death. Their friendship ended a year ago, but it is only after the news of his death that she acknowledges she messed up. As the author, I think her guilt at his death is pride. She simply has an overinflated ego regarding her significance in his life. She just wanted to matter. But my opinion is biased as we are one. Guilt is selfish.

Yellow. Like the aura of the sun. That’s what she reminds him of. They shake hands and say, “Nice to meet you”. This is where this chapter ends because she is the story we are telling here.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Maybe the girl wakes up to the sound of her phone ringing, caller ID — Mein Mann. Happy birthday to us, he says. Or maybe she never slept. Perhaps, like always, they talk about everything and anything, and she dozes off once, twice. They say good night as many times as the number of candles in her imaginary cake, but she wakes up each time asking to talk some more. Like this, they make it into the new year but don’t realise it’s the next day already, so no birthday wishes until dawn.

Maybe this chapter is the end, as it is unwritten. Maybe it never exists. And just maybe, it is the beginning. But she knows that every great story has a beginning, middle, and end, but not necessarily in that order. She is a great story.