 The
Lowland Gorilla - Issue Twenty-Seven |
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A Good Girl by Preeti Singh A good girl, she is a sweetheart to everyone around her. She is every man's dream, every mother's pride. She is a trophy wife and a trophy daughter. She is the prize that everyone wants to posses and show off to the society as their personal achievement. She is a validation to: someone's correct choice and someone's perfect upbringing. If we take a closer look, we can find her everywhere. She could be our mother, sister, wife, lover, batch mate or the sweet neighbor next door to whom we run in the hour of need. We all know the kind. I have known one very closely. It is past midnight and I am sitting in front of my computer in an attempt to write down a story which is not letting me sleep. I want to comfort and heal myself by sharing the load with someone. As we know, writing is one of the best ways to express our sentiments, desires, hopes, bliss and wounds. We can write what we want and vent our feelings to strangers who won't judge. I want to share a story; it is a story about a girl who forgets her true identity. She was busy running around people, pleasing them and getting their approval. They were the people with whom she shared her life; her teachers, family, relatives, friends, lovers. She was a busy girl; busy playing the role of a good girl. The one who is supposed to be: a good daughter, a good sister, a good friend, a good girlfriend, who is expected to keep everyone's needs before hers. In the whole affair of pleasing others she forgot to please herself, she forgot who she really was. She forgot that few years back she had zeal to write, there was a budding talent which was never acknowledged as it was never shared. In her college days she used to write small stories, personal essays, news articles, scripts, reviews. As life moved forward, she was drifted along and forced to blend with the flow. She simply forgot that she had the desire to write. No matter good, bad, average, not worthy of being published but at least she had an urge to write; and might even be recognized for it someday. As time passed, life took a different turn and things changed for her. She was occupied in taking care of trivial things, her priorities changed with the passing years. She started serving others, she became busy living up to their expectations and thought that's what she was supposed to do and be; be a good girl! One evening she got a text from an old acquaintance who wanted to discuss a project with her. He contacted to enquire if she was still active as a writer. After receiving the text, she was startled for a moment and replied in haste, "Yes, I am," which was a lie. She was amazed and disturbed at the same time with this text message. She was amazed because people still remember her as a person with writing skills; and disturbed because she had completely forgotten that she had a special skill. How can she let slide something of that significance, where was she lost, what was she doing all these years, what kept her occupied or what kept her away? What was she busy with that she over looked the desire to be identified. She must have been very busy indeed; yes she was truly very busy. She was busy playing the good girl. The ambitious girl was lost becoming the good girl, the goodness took over ambition, and the desire to be accepted took over the desire to be known. She was busy living for others, as per others, in sync with others. She has always been the giver, the one with a big heart and enormous patience to adjust with the unfairness of life. She was just giving and not receiving anything in return and what happens when we put the needs of others before ours? We make them our priority and in return all we are left with is a lost identity. They start to take us for granted and it becomes a pattern, it becomes a thankless job. We make someone our whole world only to realize that we are just a small part of their selfish world. While we were busy serving others there was someone who was starving for our time and attention. It's our own self; we have forgotten to make time for ourselves. It's time to gear up, get up and look into the mirror, whose reflection do we get to see? Is it a reflection of someone we were or someone we are? Such moments of realization have hit us several times in our lives; but what bring a turning point to our story are the decisions we make and the steps we take hereafter. It is a wake-up call; we take it and change our lives or ignore it and continue to live in denial. Change is scary but if we step out of our comfort zones we can change our stories. It can give a turning a point to our lives, as it did for "the good girl" who I know very closely.
Preeti Singh, based in Mumbai-India is working as a freelance French language Interpreter and media professional who is engaged in writing and acting projects. She is a newbie blogger at The Huffington Post and a member of the Film Writers Association (FWA), an association for television and cine writers. She has assisted in film pre-production and script writing for the Indian film industry. In addition, she enjoys working as an artist and has portrayed different character roles for Indian television series. She is multi-lingual who can communicate in English, French, Hindi and other regional languages with adequate fluency. You can get in touch with her at: http://languages-consult.com/ and on Twitter: @PreetiWrites. "A Good Girl" was originally published at Ashvamegh Journal by the title 'The Lost Writer' in a slightly altered form. It also appeared in Scars.tv (CC&D Magazine), Brown Girl Magazine, and Randomly Accessed Poetics. |
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The Western Lowland Gorilla lives in montane, primary and secondary
forests and lowland swamps in central Africa where they eat around
19 kg of roots, shoots, fruit, wild celery, tree bark and pulp which
is provided for in the thick forests. Their black skin along with
coarse black hair that covers their entire body except for the face,
ears, hands, and feet. At the largest, they can stand at 1.5-1.8
m tall and weigh 140-270 kg. They travel within a home range averaging
8-45 sq Km and usually go as far as 5-3 km per day in family groupings
of 4 to 8 members in each. The leader organizes group activities,
like eating, nesting, and traveling in their home range. Females
do not reach sexual maturity until the age of 8 or 9 when they can
give birth to one infant after a pregnancy of nearly nine months.
The infants ride on their mothers' backs from the age of four months
through the first two or three years of their lives and can be dependent
on their mother for up to five years. Their intelligence can be
seen through their ability to fashion tools by selecting branches,
remove projections such as leaves and bark, and adapting their length
to the depth of the holes. Koko, a trapped gorilla mastered more
than 1,000 signs in order to communicate with her human captors.
A number of factors threaten their extinction. They are hunted illegally
for their skins and meat in Africa and captured to be sold to zoos,
and they are affected by deforestation, farming, grazing, and the
expanding human settlements that cause forest loss.