ABOUT ME
VERSATILITY
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I can easily adapt to any kind of writing - whether writing copies for advertisement purpose or other promotional items, drafting and editing letters or copy editing, writing for newspapers or magazines, writing reports, articles, essays, poetry or short stories. I write in English, Hindi and Urdu but writing in Urdu is a long drawn process and at present I'm unable to devote enough time reading or writing in Urdu. When you talk about creative writing, I can turn any word into a fabulous story, poem/lyric/song - and it is all about your sensibility to things and running your imagination on a wide range.
I've earned reputation as an art critic and have written critical reviews on prominent and famous artists of all genres; it becomes easy for me to understand art since I'm an artist/painter/graphic designer myself.
Specimen of Creative Writing
The Crawling Lizard
By Sanjiv Nair
I don’t remember the childhood experience of a lizard falling over me or how long I had been under the delusion of a lizard slithering all over my body every night after that episode. Even today I would shudder at the thought of a lizard falling and crawling over me. I can feel the chill running through my spine and reaching up to the base of my head whenever I see a lizard inside the house. I imagine that the unpleasant lizard is constantly stalking me. However, such thoughts would not be so petrifying in the winters as lizards would appear mostly in summers – I find it a bit of consolation as I live the winters like a King and cower down like a rat during summers. You know what these ugly reptiles do - they go chasing after insects everywhere, moving rapidly on the side walls and upside down on their bellies. What a crazy thing to do! They sometimes appear to me like small dinosaurs on the wall.
I find it very amusing to be caught in such a weird world of fantasy – living in two different situations: one of pure reality and the other established by my own imagination. I wonder at times about the terrifying influence of a lizard on my life and laugh, perhaps such a concession is available only in winters for me. The return of summers would bring the fright back to me and my laughing stint would be dominated by the ‘crawling lizard’. I have become a useful subject for ridicule and whenever I would be walking around the house with extra caution watching my every step and at the same time my eyes would be probing the roofs and walls for the ugly reptile, I would be jeered at by my tormentors without any mercy.
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What a mess has this lizard made of my life in the house! It has not only turned hugely on me but also turned others at my throat. The situation is even more agonizing when I find the occupants of the house dominating a fearful character like me in the hot summers and assuming themselves as innocent lambs in winters to my utter dismay. I curse the lizard, the cause for all the miseries in my life.
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The lizard having become a weakness for me had only increased my agonies more by each advancing day in my life. My four-year-old son with the connivance of his mischievous mother played a prank on me one night in the winters. The winters that I lived with such bloom turned into a gloom for me. This time the lizard appeared in a new incarnation in latex rubber made in China – so it was a joint Indo-China attack. The Chinese lizard in the Indian territory had the same ugly features of my real tormentor to frighten me to death. My innocent son had placed the Chinese weapon over my right arm that was placed over my chest when I was lost in my deep winter slumber.
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I discovered later that my evil wife did the dirty work influencing the innocent child and then the lizard made of rubber to traumatize me and plan the sudden winter attack. When I felt something slithering over my arm as my son slowly grazed the rubber lizard, I tried to fend off the thing with my left hand. The touch to something very soft like human flesh gave me the feeling that my little son was around. When I opened my eyes to see what it was – it was the lizard sitting on my arm with its mouth open and its ugly looks scared the wits out of me. I got up with a terrifying scream and I don’t remember how many times I had stumbled on my steps before I rushed out of the room and finally out of the house with the quilt wrapped around me. I could hear roars of laughter in the middle of the night mingled with the innocence of a child and the mischief of a woman.
The myth that winters gave me the royal privilege of living and sleeping like a King had been shattered. I curse myself for this; the summers and winters are alike when the ugly lizard is around. Both the legs of the season will ever remain crippled for me.