semestastellar

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Do you love fairy tales? Do you believe in fairy tales?

As a child, my life was filled with hundreds of bedtime stories. Sometimes it was a local folklore, sometimes it was Middle Eastern myths, sometimes it was urban legend from neighbor grandma, and sometimes it was a lovely tale from the fantasy world. I found those tales very fascinating. How something — someone, so memorable, so special they became a tale told to millions of children in this world. Not to mention the magic of perspectives that created versions of a story, serving you with choices of variables. You might also be familiar with the phrase “…history is written by the winner…” right? A similar thing also happens with tales. The plot, and the theme, could change under different perspectives. The Sleeping Beauty was cursed by an evil fairy. We hated that one evil fairy. But Maleficent was a victim of someone’s greed. We empathize with her. The story changes according to whose perspective we are looking at.

And the same goes for the story of a person.

You must have heard stories about people around you. I heard stories about people around me; my veteran great-grandfather, my great-aunt who married a rich merchant, my police uncle who caught a drug dealer, my cousin and her new boyfriend, the cat lady two blocks from my house, and even the female ghost under the mango tree in my backyard. Some were good stories, full of astonishment and admiration. Some were anecdotes that never fail to invite laughter from the room. But there were also some not-so-good stories, filled with anger, hatred, and grudge. Sometimes you tell stories about someone’s good deeds. Sometimes, you tell stories about someone’s crime. Remembering the existence of those stories and tales made me wonder about one thing.

How would I tell the story of Samudera Khagi to people?

How would I tell the story of someone — as calm as the ocean but never as cold, a good companion but too good to be true — that I love? How would I tell the story of someone I love? I would write hundreds of pages full of my admiration for him. I would write pages about his soft voice, his evil laugh, his warm hands, his fluffy hair, and his soothing gaze. I would write about how good he was at sport yet he cheated in a basketball arcade game. Maybe I would write about how he made an impromptu food song to entertain a crying kindergarten student. And I would never forget to include the random stories he told me, or the ridiculous fairy tale he read to me during our late-night call. And — and how hard he was to himself. He was so hard on himself he chose to struggle alone. He barely loosen up, he was always up for something, and he was almost always in guard mode. And he never allows me to love him, actually.

So, tell me how to write a story about him. A story that did not end well. It began with giggles and soft laughter and ended with tears of loss. It started off as a slice-of-life kind of story, and I got my heart sliced to pieces at the end. Everything was easy and clear at first but suddenly it all got tangled up somewhere. It gave me smiles and butterflies; never I thought they came in a bundle with cries and sweet lies. A story that made me go through stages of emotions — and stages of grief. So, tell me, how would I pour those emotions into words? How would I tell the story of our first encounter, our core moments, our hard times, and our goodbye? How would I tell the story, when he was not only someone I love but also someone who left me? What — which and whose perspective should I use?

My story — our story, too, might have variables. It could have different variables depending on whose perspective we were talking about. It could be a story of a young man struggling with his life, who was given a choice to be selfish or selfless. A young man who only care for others, but still, he couldn't make everyone happy. A story of a young man who got someone's heartbroken. It could also be a story of a young woman and her unrequited love. A story of a young woman so naive she got hurt by her own expectations. A story of my unrequited love and how I spent my time wishing I could have that love in my grasp.

Now tell me, which versions of the story do you wish to hear? Is it the life journey of Samudera Khagi? Or is it the unrequited love of Mentari? Would the story fill with anger-raising events? Or would there be hundreds of curse words? Or maybe the agony of a broken heart? Be prepared for disappointment because I would not tell that kind of story. I would not make him a villain, and I would not write myself as a victim. I would write him as someone I love, and I would write myself as someone who loves him. I just want to tell a story about someone I love, and everything we once had. And I want to write him so beautifully it sounds like a fairy tale. So, let me tell you the story — his story, our story.

Let me tell you a tale about Samudera Khagi.