The best piece of advice I have recieved with respect to writing is to keep writing something, anything everyday. Be it four lines or four pages.

 

Of tin boards and laughter

Tin boards rattling on their hinges, neighbours chattering nineteen-to-a-dozen, trees and building speeding past, a dirty tenager in rags peddling cheap ornaments, trendy girls squealing and laughing, enuchs jostling for space aided by their loud, obnoxious voices, an impromptu dancing session. Me, oblivious to all, fast asleep.

 

A miraculous thing, this

A friend and I were talking about all and sundry one evening as your typical friends usually do. We got talking about miracles and existence. Well, observance and faith would be a good substitute for existence in this case.  This friend was speaking about a miracle that occurred as a result of her prayers and how she came to believe that faith on the basis of the miracle.

Now, that got me thinking.

There are numerous religions in this world. Each one has religious leaders, staunch supporters, religious texts, examples of miracles and cures that heal the most common afflictions that people usually have. They have tales of how people from another faith came to regard their customs, beliefs as those that gave relief than the one they believed in earlier. Heck, I have seen miracles as a result of my prayers!

If only the world were so simple that I heard this story from any one source. I would then, definitely believe “The One” faith as my own and adopt it. But alas, I have experienced and heard about so many similar incidents that I have some questions that I need to clear with the Maker.

What does God feel about all this? Are we justified in separating the Maker according to our faiths and beliefs. I don’t think so. I feel, there has to be one single answer to mental speculation, silent hostility, differences of opinion, arguments, riots and full-scale wars. Why doesn’t he come out in the open and say, “Stop. You guys are driving me crazy. See the basic funda behind Me is this…..”

Is this His way of signalling that fighting it out is a step in the process of finding out more about him. Our fervour is heightened if we or our kith and kin die for a cause. Does he sit up there and go, “Good going, you are one step closer to me”.

Maybe he is one single puppeteer that we keep seeing in different forms just because we believe Him to be so. In either case, what he has to give, he gives and what he has to take, he takes. When we go to him, he’ll probably answers all our questions patiently and then look up our balance sheet of good deeds and bad deeds and say, ”Let me check your account. Aah bloodshed, and your penalty is….”

 

Moonlit memories

Picture this.

A cool summer evening. Warm sand beneath your toes and a chilly sea breeze. A bunch of dandiya enthusiasts shaking a leg long after dusshehra on a temporary lagoon made by the sea as a tribute to the dancers. A group of college kids lazing around at 2:00 AM and warming themselves with “cutting” chai. A long walk on the beach alongside the dark blue waters of the sea. Jokes, teasing, silly games and cold wars flying in the air. Sixteen pairs of eyes a little sleepy, legs protesting at the day’s end, but ethusiasm still alive .

The full moon shines brightly down on the sea. Its reflection makes a silvery white path that stetches out from the point the moon would drop into the ocean if to the spot in the beach where it ends lapping its silvery threads on the sand. It is a perfect getaway to escape the world, the grim and the grime. It entices to hop on to the watery path, not unlike the red carpet. Once you chose to walk the dreamy lane, there’s no turning back. It’s a whole new world.

I am the queen from the moment I choose to tread.

 

Four days before national independence ‘09

Lousy moods bring out the artist in a person. A lot of artists have a background of having extremely troubled childhoods or lives which brings out the creativity in them. It becomes a source of release that brings out depth that a normal person would skip over the surface. Does that mean that prolonged bad moods are essential for creativity to flow? The way I see it, it’s just a way to immerse yourself into doing something that you love. Hmm… there I am, talking about it once again.

On the other hand, to be able to pour oneself into the task at hand is a gift. That’s when you maximize the usage of your brain. Your senses are at their best. You are completely connected with your self and the universe. You stop learning and start discovering things that you would have never thought of.

I read somewhere that extraordinarily talented people have difficulty in getting attached to people. Assuming every human is extremely talented in one field or the other, should’nt we all have that problem? What about people who are good at ‘people skills’? What would they suffer from. Too much of human contact?? Well, that can be dangerous, I would vouch for that.

Attachment is compulsory, to what, is the question. Too much attachment to work so that you tend to view people as machines without feelings. Attachment to people might rob you of your concentration towards work or am I being too presumptious here.

Feelings complicate things anyway, so why waste time on them. Right?

 

Weanie!!

Dependency on another is what makes us living beings; emotional dependency makes us humans. We resist accepting new people into our lives. Once we are used to them, we find it difficult to let them go. Not from our lives. We are too rational for that. We can accept that. But to let them go from our heads, from our decisions, from our thoughts, that feels ugghh! We imagine our lives to be interconnected, intertwined forever. When we are having a good time, today always feels like forever.  Promises are made with eternity in mind. Nothing less.

But people we know today will move to new places, people, relationships, etc. Start forming several threads of interconnections. And gradually the old ones fade away. Not cut off, but that’s an interminable wait that will happen eventually. What does one side do to wean off? Stop calling, texting, mailing? The safest ways to intrude are social networking sites. Connected, yet not touched. Gave an opinion, free to be ignored. Better yet freedom to respond as per mood/time/circumstance.

 

About writing

Writing for the heck of it is something I would look forward to doing everyday. Ok, not every, single day but whenever I want to. And that’s usually every other day. But the thought of lugging my laptop out of my cupboard and connecting to the internet is not very interesting. Especially after a long day of battering. Which brings me to another interesting topic of ‘Why do people slog for 30 odd years at a place where peace of mind and sanity are a foreign concept?’ Anyway, will blog about that later.

 

Many faces, many phases

Life’s different moods brings out the diversity in an otherwise stagnant pond. The non descript person you work with turns into a loving parent who moulds the heaven and earth for family dearest when at home. He’s the under graduate student who day-lights as a personal trainer in your local grocery store. She’s a fresher in a corporate company with light in her eyes and dreams of changing her nation by her service. She known as the office b!#$% who has juggling balls at home and worklife; a home loan to pay, small kids, securing their future, juggling family life, namely in-laws and hubby dearest and is forced to protect her job in the way she knows best, water-cooler politics!  He’s the darling who’s unable to cope with the big bad world alone when alone. She’s  your dear friend struggling to combat loneliness of that the urban world begrudges us, with a smile on her face.

She’s the avante-garde pocket-dynamite with dreams of making it big, rocking the world she inhabits. He’s the starched-collar poet-at-heart stuck in a coding job. He’s the heart broken suit wearing lover who forges ahead determined to get away from a heart wrenching past. Or probably, she’s battering down the keyboard at night trying to find meaning in life by looking up the internet.

She’s the friendly neighbour who has known no security in either home or hearth in 40 years of existence, not life – existence, circumstances forcing her to trust a little less than what God would have liked. He may be the guy who’s moved overseas to pursue higher studies and finds that the developed world is not so developed or life that sunny as he hoped it would be.  She’s the born leader, the youngest of them all, though that’s not evident in her mood, language or accomplishments.  She’s an adolescent with the same dreams as kids the world-over, learning the world is much more exciting than her mundane existence of poverty and endless drudgery. She’s the rebel who charms the right people into cheering her all the time; most of them so blinded that reason does not have a place in their minds. 

He’s the loyal son with a dream to succeed, provide his family the comforts he never had growing up. She’s happy-go-lucky whose lost among a sea of pretenders. He’s a parent in the twilight of his years coming to terms with the harsh realization that ‘now’ does not belong to him. It cares even less about how that hurts. He’s grown into a man who reliance on himself sometimes hurts.

She’s finds strength in searching for love. She’s unselfish, caring, sweet and generous to a fault. She’s brutally honest, she snubs, she’s wild.

 

A watched pot never boils

Just cannot express how restless expectation makes me.  Waiting is the worst torture that I put myself into. A word, a mail,  salary, marks, a smile, appraisal (ha…ha… who am I kidding)  all these things bring out the worst in me. Fidgeting to no end, jumpy. It is like watching a pot of milk and waiting for it to boil.

Expectation from people can be a little more tricky. You have no idea what they would be thinking, what’s their state of mind or how they’re going to react. To put yourslf at someone else’s mercy is aaargh! too bad… Yet its something we do despite well meaning advice. More often than not, that goes in the pooper. Living upto expectations, i.e others living upto my expectations, oh that almost never happens.

 

What am I doing tomorrow?

Of course, what I’m supposed to do today!!!

Im the world’s biggest procrastinator. According to me, and contrary to the wise words of the god-knows-who, ‘If there’s something that can be done right now, it can and should be done tomorrow’.

What if there’s nothing to do tomorrow, or next week, or next month? I get anxious. I always keep things that I can do somother time and fill in work that I’m doing now, so i’m always busy. Drives a lot of people loco, but that’s me!