The Story-teller who LOVES Colour Brown and Rings

When you were twenty-three, you 'still' hadn't dated, and you were so worried, convinced your life was the saddest story ever, and now you wish you never worried at all, you wish you would have told yourself that you had a whole life ahead of you. Wait, are you writing Tatiana's Gala, already? That's a tad too early, there's a lot to talk about. Kev had told you recently how he admired your creative prowess, and how you made magic with words, and you had blushed because you honestly never thought you'd receive such compliment, you also swiftly changed discussion, because compliments made you nervous. "You are smart."  "Oh, thanks, what's the colour of your best friend's favourite dress?" "Your hair is beautiful." "Is it? When did your grandmother die?" How many times had you responded awkwardly to people who complimented you or your work? Why did these compliments make you jittery? Well, as you

As you can already tell, the readers of "Tatiana's Gala" would react differently; the ones who would think there's nothing new under the sun so your story was not spectacular per se , the ones who would feel every emotion that you have felt, they would cry when your book says you cried, laugh when you laughed, and pray when you prayed. Then there would be critics who would critic your style of writing, your purpose of writing, why you cried at the point when you described crying. There would also be the sect that would never understand why you had sex with a thirty-year-old psycho when you were barely eighteen-years-old, they would likely call you immoral, or wayward. When you told Kev about your dating and sex episode with the thirty-year-old, he was "sorry you had to go all through that" and you were taken aback, that was not the usual reaction you got. The few people you had told this story to either blamed your mother for not bringing you up well or

Kev would ask intentional questions about you, he never assumed he knew this detail or that, he would ask, and you'd readily divulge every detail because nobody had ever been that intentional about you. You would name your first book "Infallible: a story about my father " and the fact that Kev loved your manuscript fuelled an urgency to publish the story. ******************************************************************************** Weeks after the "Aunty smile now" episode, you found out croaky-voice was everywhere, the darling of everyone around. Kevin was his name, and he came often to your office to gist with Nimi, your colleague, during breaks and closing hours. Nimi is a stunning woman with a clean dark-skin that she wore with such a graceful gait, you could almost fall off a cliff watching her. Whenever Kevin came to your office, he made efforts to ensure you were a part of every conversation, and he would smile knowingly in your direction like

Taina, that’s your name, the name that has stubbornly clung to you all your life; whoever gives such names anyway? The person who picked your first name must have been angry, or upset, or sad, or all of that. Taina is short for Tatiana, it means mystery, as mysterious as your birth; and your mother never fails to tell you about it whenever you both speak on the phone, which is quite often. “Tatiana!” “Tatiana!!” “Tatiana!!!”  That’s Kevin, hollering your government name loudly and foolishly, as he always does, you readily refer to him as your forever buddy; Kev, the one true person who knows you so well, so intentionally.  It was your first week at your new job, the one you had lied at  the interview to get, you wondered if the interviewer could see the anxiety beneath your badly made-up face, your desperation to get the job, the forced speeches, and your shaky hands. At the end of the interview, you could tell the interview went well, and a week later, when you