360@ Campus Story and Poetry Writing Contest was held at St Andrew’ College

Participants were given first and last line prompts and had to develop their creative writing through the prompts.

Story Writing Winners

Aamenah Merchant

There would be no answer to this one word sentence abortion?

Madeline sat there, hunched over the toilet seat with tears dripping off her chin. The double lines on the pregnancy test were starting to fade , but she couldn’t stop staring at it.

She felt stupid for letting her boyfriend skip protection, like an idiot for thinking it would be fine, but mostly like a child, who couldn’t handle this. She was only seventeen. She burst into laughter thinking about how he broke up with her a week ago because she insisted on contraction. Her laughter quickly transformed into crying again.

Her mind quickly jumped to one solution….. abortion?

It would solve everything, but her mind kept going to the future, if she had her baby and held the little baby in her arms, she wanted that.

With a squeaky voice, Madeline told her parents. There was absolute silence. Her mother askedher one question, ‘abortion?’

Madeline shook her head no. ”then we will love our grandchild” they all erupted in tears and hugged each other. Six arms but they were a family of four in that moment.

The day Madeline gave birth was a day of realisation for her, when she held her baby girl Emma, she cried more than when she found out she was pregnant but this time with tears of joy.

She knew her decision was the right one now. This baby suddenly became her everything. It is her link to the past, her anchor to the present, her gift to the future.

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Prachi Sarmalkar

 

I suppose this bloody mess may partly be my fault, partly the world’s? I am being supplied on a stretcher to medical care. And they elicit me out of the museum, the loud sky blinds me at first.

Slowly, as music begins to float through an isolated room when you switch off the fan, the blue umbrella arrested me in its pulchritude; obfuscating my senses, a pretty kind of dizzy.

Maybe dying in front of the oldest art known to the world was a fantastic idea. The “Shigi’s

Sculpture” in its delicate wood looked like pure gold under the small librarian yellow lights. The intricate motifs were so lovely, they made me cry. I don’t remember how long I stared at it , or much time it took for someone to notice my act, but my sharp brush had already carved thirteen lines along my wrist.

Perhaps, being on a perennial failure at art teaches one to signify one’s death in its course. A compensation for failing to signify life.

It was exhilarating. The pain exclaimed through my body and the idol began to look at me back, livelier. I fell with a thud, the glass creaked, my ears couldn’t hear as my eyes were reamed.

My eyes were awake till they saw the other side of paradise for the last time. As the high moaning doused my results soul, whispered to the idol in my mind- “of course I shall come back, I have always come back.”

 

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Riyaa Ariwala

In the days last night the glowing lake below the palace looked morose, as if it were reflecting my thoughts, even the otherwise constant chirping of sparrows seemed to be receding.

I haven’t left the window sill for the past three days. It was an old, rustic, window that had aged like my grandpa. The only difference being it was still here, physically attached to me whereas grandpa wasn’t. He met his demise four nights ago. It was a perfectly peaceful night, a light summer breeze gushing and dancing passed our ancestral palace. The moon shone in the sky, serenading the ground below and this was when grandpa breathed his last.

I wasn’t closed to grandpa, to start with. Neither was he extremely fond of me or so I thought.

If anything, he was a stoic, patriarchal figure who would sit on an armchair, staring at something that didn’t belong to the ** Of this world. My parents and I let him be. We didn’t talk much but there was something about his presence which made me feel different. One look at him and a sense of individuality would coarse through my veins, like I was my own person.

But, all that I feel right now, is listless and empty. It feels as if he took a chunk of mind along with him that summer night.

My mother comes into the room and her gaze taunts me to leave, as if it is advising me to leave her world.

I get up from the window sill, my legs bare and I follow my mother’s advice, I run.

 

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Poetry Writing Winners

 

A poem for/on love by Prachi Sarmalkar

 

I think I shall never see

The scars love tends to give

As withered roses staple it dead

Petals are the ones who live

Every lover, a new shape of dizzy.

Left me with a new fold;

Of flair are such humans, we

Turn into origami to hold

A thousand splendid ** will try

To vanquish the dark inside

But you’ll still see as in a lover’s greet

The heart note in my beat.

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Pride Inebriated by Harshita Rathod

 

It little profits that an idle King

Can sit on the bed with all the bling

And still feel empty on the inside.

 

He wears his heart on his sleeve

And covers with a smile, all his grief

As he waits for a queen, but not a bride

All his ** shining through his pride

 

His soul is at peace when his mind is inebriated

Three-seventy-seven of his men are liberated

But when his throne takes a toll on his sober mind

His world of rainbows is turned bleak

The days of pain may soon fleet- but then how it was **

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Ashmita Sunil

It’s a ruthless forest in concrete.

All I can feel is the ends meet.

No place to go, no soul to feel.

The pain and sufferings are now my meal.

 

I give up on life, death is what I breathe

Smiling all around, grief lies beneath.

Stop o Stop! Let the time heal your wounds

I can’t! I won’t! My life’s all ruined.

 

The vision seems dark. Silence prevails.

The boats will sink. Sailors won’t sail.

The touch of Satan, his embrace I feel.

End is near, in which shall I believe.

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Cheat codes by Harshita Rathod

The sky is pink satin, where our lips meet

I lose myself completely in him

so much that I can’t hear my heartbeat.

 

My soul shreds into strips

When I try to fix his flaws,

My imperfections are exposed, but I don’t think of any **

 

The sun shines everyday, today it shines a lot brighter

I see his shadow walk away, with a cigarette and a lighter

 

Once he is gone, out of the closet comes out a **

Both of us, are so quiet because our cheat codes were **

And just like a flower has around it a **

She whispers, “Finally, my love has come to me”

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Quarantined Ward by Warren D’Silva

The sky is pink satin

The lark heralds change in Greek and Latin

Cool blue swirls run through the river banks

A pallet of green stand on wooden plank

Euthopia- a dream like scene

 

With viles and injections taking up my life

And once again my body goes under a knife

To cure is to save, and to save is to cure.

But dreams like this are my only lure

My body waste away in these four white walls

 

To one day be cured, to run free- a dream

In which shall I believe

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