Sunday, September 21, 2008

Such is life!

I can feel it. It’s right here – on the tip of my tongue waiting to be uttered; inside that brain cell that’s connected to that nerve that’s supposed to send me the idea; on my fingertips ready to type away; in that drop of ink waiting to be scrawled into patterns; in my eyes that keep scouring for interesting subjects around me. It’s futile – all of it. I still can’t do it; I still can’t write. My tongue won’t speak; the ideas won’t flash; my fingers won’t move; the ink won’t flow and my eyes won’t stop.


All those things I’ve tried. But, this has to be done; I have to try harder, even hard, as hard as it takes. May be I’m not reading enough – I picked up books after books, rummaged for new blogs, read all the popular literary magazines. Nothing changed. But really, how giddy can I get! The spark needs to come from inside, I told myself. I opened a blank word document. It remained blank after two cups of tea and an hour of staring at it with fingers ready atop the keyboard. It’s the corner; it’s making me sick. I moved, lock stock and barrel, to the balcony. I stared at the sky, the glass pool, the flowers and day dreamed, instead. This is really not working. Why can’t I just write – a story, an opinion, a page, a line or even a question!! May be it’s the laptop – too modern for my conservative style. I picked up my yellow pad; doodled a bit and gave up. I’ll take a walk around campus, may be. The greenery, the architecture, the silence, the children, the swimming pool, the peacocks(!!!), the young faces – should inspire something. An hour of walking around in circles with a yellow pad and a pen didn’t change anything other than burn a few calories. May be I need fresh air (or in my case polluted air) and new people; it’s getting too familiar out here. A pocket notebook and another hour later, I was at a close-by supermarket, biting into a Frankie and sitting at a table all by myself. Perfect – so many different kinds of people, their acts to watch, the busy street on the other side, the entire world going past – and yet not a scribble! Can’t sit in a place; doesn’t work; I need to move; capture the world through moving eyes. The 4 pm shuttle, a window seat and a return ticket. Two hours later I had gone all the way up to the city and back to my village; the paper, no doubt, remained blank; my mind had gone still more blank. I give up – this is not my day; it’s hasn’t been my month or even my year. May be it’s time to hang up my pen after all.


Then, in perfect movie style, the phone rings. Oh, the pleasure of a change. Here I am, after a brief from my office I’m trying to put together this note by EOD, as they call it, and I have five word documents and 22 browser windows open. While three word documents and 10 browser windows relate to work, in the remaining I have two plots that are being developed and on-going research for them. And oh, another flicker from my brain– why things happen when we least want them to happen?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I was reading ur blog posts and found some of them to be very good.. u write well.. Why don't you popularize it more.. ur posts on ur blog ‘I hope you dance’ took my particular attention as some of them are interesting topics of mine too;

BTW I help out some ex-IIMA guys who with another batch mate run www.rambhai.com where you can post links to your most loved blog-posts. Rambhai was the chaiwala at IIMA and it is a site where users can themselves share links to blog posts etc and other can find and vote on them. The best make it to the homepage!

This way you can reach out to rambhai readers some of whom could become your ardent fans.. who knows.. :)

Cheers,