My
earliest memory is of my mother the Queen of Ka Surya, locking me in one of the
attic rooms of the palace, because I had been defiant. I don’t exactly remember
why I had angered her, but suffice to say that it was not an uncommon occurrence.
She despaired of my outright willfulness and in a backhanded compliment, after
a fashion, often told me that I had an iron will which would stand me well in
my adult years—only a mother’s instinct
could have spotted that surely?—but that for now I just had to be my age
and learn to obey.
Ah!
Disobedience. It was the hallmark of my childhood. When I think back, the uppermost emotion of those
early years was anger. Red-hot- stubbornness which raged at anything that came my
way, and feeling just one hundred percent obstinate. It was a tenacity that dogged
every single pore of my body—as if I were digging my heels into the dirt and
resisting.
 |
| Tiina, as a stubborn little girl |
What
was I resisting, you ask? I can honestly
tell you that I don’t know.
What
was I rebelling against, you wonder? I am
not sure.
What
made me so adamant? That’s a good
question and one I wish I could answer.
It
was always me against the universe, every thought, feeling, hurt felt in glorious
techni-colour. It was as if I lived in a state of heightened emotion all the
time, living each moment so intensely that even today at the ripe old age of eighteen,
my memories of those initial few years of my life are vivid. I can feel, taste
and see every detail in my mind’s eye. Why could I not be more like my twin,
the more docile Maya, the one who followed me everywhere, ready to burst into
tears at the slightest provocation? She was but five minutes younger to me, but
in temperament it may well have been five years. She was always the baby, the
willing follower. And me? I was the goonda
as my Mother termed me, the gang-leader. Sometimes, when I was really
naughty, she would in exasperation call me Shaitan
aka the devil himself—really only
a mother’s sixth sense would have sensed the impending tumult which the real
Shaitan would cause in my life. “Why are you so angry Tiina?” she asked me once,
at her wits end. The question genuinely stumped me. There was no reason for me to feel this way right? After all me,
the princess of Ka Surya had everything I could possibly want. But none of the
material possessions seemed to satisfy that thirst within me. A search for my
real soul mate perhaps, or maybe it
was the pure confidence of a child who could feel the blood of the universe
running through her veins. A kind of faith, a trust in the universe, that
nature would give me everything I ever wanted. A self-belief that came from the
absolute security of knowing oneself—one which eluded my now. After all it was
in search of myself that I am supposedly embarking on this voyage. Right? As Artemis and I set course for
Bombay, Earth from Arkana, I gaze into the utter darkness of space stretching out
in front and hope I can capture some of that spark, so that it would light up
just a little of my core.
A
shimmer of excitement runs down my spine as I wonder what is in store in my
future.
