Operation Pearl: Some Stories Need Time

One apartment. A slew of temporary random characters. An author slowly losing the plot.

Some stories are best written while they are happening. Others need a little distance, a few deep breaths, and perhaps the occasional reminder that one has, in fact, survived the experience.

Operation Pearl belongs to the second category.

As most of you know, I was in Pune in August-September time frame, dealing with my apartment: I had decided to sell it. Why? I’ll get to it in due course. But it was a simple decision, right? What should have been a relatively straightforward exercise turned into an experience involving an assortment of people, unexpected complications, and enough plot twists to keep a moderately ambitious novelist occupied for several weeks.

And that was only one part of the story.

While navigating the property-related proceedings, I was also dealing with some other formalities (again, details to uncovered soon), dealing with incompetent arrogant colleagues, handling obscene amount of workload and pressure, checking whether my name had appeared on a particular list (it DID), making payments, doing medical screening for the same, dealing with and generally trying to keep the various departments of my life from staging a simultaneous revolt.

There was a lot going on, and not all of it was particularly pleasant. I had a ton of stories worth sharing but not in the right mindset to share them.

Some encounters were baffling. Some situations were frustrating. A few were so absurd that, had I encountered them in fiction, I might have accused the author of trying too hard. And through it all, I was expected to make sensible decisions, remember important details, meet deadlines, and behave like a perfectly functional adult.

An unreasonable amount of responsibility, if you ask me.

I did consider writing about these experiences as they unfolded. In fact, I wanted to. There were moments when I thought, I absolutely must write about this someday. There were other moments when writing about it was the last thing I wanted to do.

When you’re in the middle of a difficult experience, it’s not always easy to find the right words. You’re too busy dealing with the next problem, recovering from the previous one, or wondering what fresh surprise awaits you around the corner. Turning the whole thing into a coherent, entertaining account requires a degree of emotional distance that isn’t always available when you need it most.

So I waited.

Now that I’m back home, I can revisit those events with a little more perspective. I can laugh at some of them, roll my eyes at others, and perhaps finally articulate a few things that seemed impossible to explain at the time.

I don’t have a grand plan for these recollections. No meticulously plotted narrative, no promises of a chronological account, and certainly no claims of literary genius. I merely have a collection of experiences that deserve to be written down, a memory full of characters who wandered briefly into my life, and a few stories that have been waiting patiently for their turn.

Reality, after all, doesn’t always need a fiction writer to make it ridiculous.

One apartment. A slew of temporary random characters. An author slowly losing the plot.

Welcome to Operation Pearl. The story begins here.

Shabana Mukhtar