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Tear Drop
Tear Drop
Ashima Shukla, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
This screenplay is a thoroughly enjoyable read that will leave you guessing until the end.
Ashima Shukla
Ashima is a second-year linguistics student at the Faculty of Humanities, who is hopelessly in love with the universe. She has led an adventurous life thanks to her mother’s job, because of which she has lived in India, Bangladesh and China before moving to Hong Kong for university. She is often found with her nose in a book or listening to music, fuelled by coffee and slightly sleep-deprived, attempting to satisfy her unquenchable thirst for knowledge. She finds herself overwhelmed with gratitude and love for the beauty of nature and is continually looking for new ways to engage with the world around her.
Author’s Introduction
I have always dreamt of writing, and some of my earliest memories include taking my mother’s phone to record dramatic tales of adventure with my dolls. When I turned 10, I asked for a small digital camera for my birthday, which I proceeded to use to make Barbie videos, experimenting with camera settings and building ever-expanding storylines. As I grew up, I started experimenting with different forms of storytelling – photography and art, novellas and poems. In the stressful and extraordinary circumstances due to COVID-19, writing this screenplay for ELC1C03 Creative Writing in English allowed me to ground myself by providing an escape from reality. The process of storytelling gave me an outlet for all my intense feelings and anxious thoughts. With Mr. Jay Bidal’s detailed feedback and support, and Ms. Dureshahwar Lughmani’s encouragement, I experimented with plotlines and characters. I was able to turn the faintest inklings of an idea into an actual screenplay. As Hemingway says, during the many sleepless nights I spent working on it, I discovered that there is nothing to writing except making myself sit down at the typewriter (laptop) and bleed.