1st Monologue: The Boy Who’d Rather Play With Dolls
Stories come from strange and unexpected places. Mine came from another boy’s life. I didn’t know it then. I only know, in hindsight, how his story somehow became mine.
A boy was born and he became himself. I still remember seeing this little boy sitting all alone, playing all by himself while I was springing around busy ‘being’ a boy. The bigger boys of the neighbourhood spent hours, it seemed to me, making him cry. What I found strange was that even though they did this every day, he still managed to put on a smile at the end of it all; one much bigger than mine, evidently.
It began to rain right in the middle of a cricket match played by the popular kids of the neighbourhood (only by invitation, of course). I was the happiest and I said to myself, “Oh, thank God!” My companions fled home only after agreeing that the match was a tie. When my cricket coach would speak endlessly about how he hated the rain, I would stand listening to how grossly wrong he was. Obviously, I couldn’t tell anyone. I stood there now, only listening again, and I saw that boy sitting under a tree at the edge of the field. It was just him there, but nothing about what I saw made him seem to be alone to me. Although, where I was standing, it felt like it was just me.
I often felt the urge to ask him what on earth could possibly make him so exceptionally happy. And like every coward to have walked this earth, I always turned back as soon as I took a step towards him. Until that rainy afternoon came from nowhere and changed me.
I walked towards him, looking for words that could frame the question I had always wanted to ask. Suddenly, it was simple: “Can I play with you?”
He looked at me in disbelief. It was a soft reply: “Yes.” I took a look at his bundle of things – twigs, coloured paper, discarded ice-cream spoons, an old coin, a dice and a doll.
That boy made me realise who I was. He didn’t care about ‘being’ a boy. He had always been one. He had a friend in himself and he always remembered that. Until that moment I had always felt like a stranger to my boyhood. Standing here, I lost that strangeness: I was the boy who would rather play with dolls; not him.
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