Life back to what it has to be

Life has been busy these days. 'No time' became a cliched phrase. I am revolving in a mundane daily routine. Going to office, coming back home, watching TV, playing online games, eating, sleeping, all in that order of priority. In between these, are 24 hours, family members, dearest friends, smiling kids, noisy teenagers, pleasant places, tasty food and many more. But I chose to ignore them. I have been doing this from the past 3 years. Well, I am stoned enough not to get bored for few more years, I realized that only recently. Realization about both getting stoned and bored. 

I made a trip recently to my grandma's place, a village with 500 houses all in all, those including migrated and those still remained at their roots. I have experienced the unusual the second I stepped into the village. The good unusual. I was hit by a cool gust of breeze the moment I entered this nature-friendly zone. I perked my head out of the window to greedily breathe the fresh air as much as I can, forgetting that I have 2 more weeks here. There were never-ending crop fields on both sides of the muddy road. I landed in a place I mostly imagined (when read in books), sometimes seen (as shown in movies), but never been.

My grandma's house had a homely and welcoming feel. Every step and corner of the home made me comfortable. The untiled floor never bothered my pedicured feet, the huge pillars at the entrance formed the artifacts, the smoke from clay stoves din't burn my otherwise sensitive eyes, the lavishly big door-less rooms din't intrude my privacy. Instead, two big green fish formations at the entrance became my pets, the corners of the huge pillars helped me create a new game, round-and-round. There is a huge front-garden with vegetable plants and there was always a unique, different smell around us; a mix of stray animals wandering around, empty strip of land across the road and of familiar love. 

I would walk barefoot on the fields, eat in earthenware squatting on floor, take long walks, spend good time with myself. In short, I did what I never get to do in my city life. I simply carried clothes, novels, a dairy and my phone for this one month trip. My phone couldn't get signals in this remote area and hence there was no internet, no facebook, no online chatting or browsing. I surprisingly realized, I am not missing any of them or my usual life. In fact, I found here something that went missing from my life few years ago. 

In my alone time I tried to figure out the reasons for my 'mundane routine'. There seems to be more than one. The most important being - "I am surrounded here by humans, not machines". Humans who talk, laugh, touch, interact with me about trivial issues. They were not my family, friends, colleagues or neighbors. They were all noones and the topics we spoke about were nothings. My busy life reciprocated before my eyes. I counted the number of number of people I meet in my day. My family, neighbors, watchman, lift operator, kids going to school, bus driver- helper duo, co-passengers in the bus, office janitors, house-keeping staff, scores of employees, team mates and the same set of people on the way back. And machines include alarm, electronic shower, hair-styler, mobile phone, toaster, smokeless stove, refrigerator, A/C, ipod, tablet, laptop, data card, TV, remote, mood lights across the house. The list including both the useful and useless machines only grew and grew. And so did my understanding. 

I carried my realization back home with me, now content and happy. I replaced the lights in my home with plants, reduced the usage of electronics as much as I can, never brought work back home at any cost, enjoyed every curl in my hair, bought a clay stove and earthenware for actual home-made food. And to humans, I gave my time, love, ears and a smile. Found a way towards my happy life. 

Unblocking the block - The Writing Prompt Boot Camp

Every writer faces several kinds of problems during his/her career. Sometimes the creativity goes missing, other times there is not a single topic to write about. I, being at the very initial stage of my writing career and without even reaching the shallowest depth of its nitigrities, am already facing hindrances. The technical term for this is "Writers Block". 

My goal like everyone else's goal, just doesn't crave for and stop at the destination. It is not just succeeding as a writer or writing a novel. It is about the journey; the journey which teaches me, strengthens me, enhances my skills, shows me the beauty of learning and ultimately makes my goal worth reaching. I would like to explore the various genres of writing and switch from one another as comfortably as possible. My muse in writings remains to lie in the descriptions whether surroundings, situations or characters. I give descriptions more significance than the story. A story runs slow and a description runs long. Descriptions intensify the story. They all by themselves create a subconscious space in your minds to support the story. 

Aiming at all these dreams, I have joined certain 'Writing Communities'. As a part of the Boot Camp, I am supposed to write random articles on the topics or 'prompts' assigned to me. These communities whisper to my e-mail the prompts, just like how a friend whispered me an answer while I stammered in front of the whole class and just like how my father prompted me the reasons made up on the spur of the moment when I am caught red-handed.

These prompts intend to awake the fictional ideas lazing in the background of my head. All the articles written with the help of these 'writing prompts' are assigned under the label "Writing Prompt". 

P.S: I am trying to keep the fiction as natural as possible, avoiding the melodrama. Sometimes you may find the story not happening in India or rather not written from an Indian perspective, kindly concentrate only the content because it helps improve mine as well as yours. 

Shaping the world!!

'Shaping the world' is a collection of essays written by women writers across the country. It gives an insight into their heads revealing the Sorcerer's secrets of how they cook their stories. The book intends to help the aspiring beginners to take a closer look at writing not just as an ambition, but as a process. For those all who had already set their foot into it, the anthology gives a wider perspective about genres, methodologies, etc. But to me, this book from the shelf simply winked and said, "Go ahead, write your essay for this book."

Writing has been quite influential on me, influential to the extent of making me quit my job. Through my jolly days of college, I never bothered to think about writing as a career. By the time I realized, I already had a degree in one hand and a job in another. It was quite a generous balance, apparently. The reality hit me later, but it was too little, too late to react. As a software engineer, I trickily persuaded my heart coding too is a kind of writing. Turned out my heart was not as blind as I.

My interest in writing started during my graduation days. A cousin's idea that directed me to start a blog. The number of page visits was the unsolicited admiration for my work. And it is said, "A person who feel appreciated will do more than what is expected" not for no reason. So, I wrote. But after a few posts, I ran out of topics. A bitter truth stabbed me hard, that I can write about something only if I deeply feel about it. I accepted it was just a fad.

On a boring college morning, a sudden epiphany dawned on me; it was not writing that I like the most in my life, but it was the English language. Came the passion back! I was not an avid reader when I was a kid; but the only interesting daily chore for me was to read newspaper. From my childhood I had considered only 'The Hindu' as a newspaper and rest others a huge heap of words, software-made sentences and smelly folds of prints. May be the idea of reading was ingrained into me by my dad, but now at this complete sensible age I still stick to it. And so, delving into my roots helped me surface from the problem.

Though I love writing, I cannot write 24X7; so when I am not writing, I would be reading. Many times I wonder, would I ever start writing if I waited for my reading to complete? My reading would never end, line after line is read, call after call is ignored, request after request for help is not encouraged, days after days pass, novels after novels go on. And now, I am in a situation where I cannot survive a day without reading, writing or learning new words.

And when it comes to my Writing, there are no inklings or planned timings, it’s a sudden urge. This sentence may nudge you about something else, but not for me, at least not yet. There is an alarm inside me that pokes me until I reach for a pen and paper. It makes me irritable, speed-up my all other tasks, leave for a silent place and scribble. In dire situations like being in someone's company or lack of paper, a smart phone comes in handy. And if nothing is available for my rescue, a saggy unenthusiastic face pops up. 

The intention of sharing my writer background story is to show there are always glitches everywhere. Face, fix and move on. Things appear just as a fad; but only when they are either overdone or underdone. Balance your writing needs with other desires.

Click for reference

The One that got away - Part 2

What had happened earlier..

Surfacing myself from the dreamy nightmare, stabilizing my stilettos on the checkered floor, I called for a cab. We din't say our goodbyes, not this time or anytime before. At that moment I knew how exactly did Holly from PS, I love you felt. I was counselling myself, take a deep breath, expand your lips, give thoughts a break, close your ears and importantly, take help if necessary. I asked the cab driver to switch on the radio, 'The one that got away' by Katy Perry started playing. Here I am, back to square one. 

I closed my eyes. Scenes from my life were appearing like screenshots of memories flashing one after the other, our days together, long drives, no time for anyone else, always on cloud nine, few sacrifices, some differences, flood of gifts, here and there arguments, slamming of doors, short-lived reconciliations, again gifts, troubling possessiveness, many misunderstandings, ignoring of calls, busy days, giving time a chance to occupy the distance between us, signing a BFF agreement, promising to wish on special occasions, and today the accidental meeting.  

The span of 3 years expressed in a single sentence is a dry gist of: all kinds of emotions, my reactions to these emotions, its' effects on others, their patience in helping me, the strength needed to cope up with it, the gradually approaching positive energy and a better Me. Yet another para of illustration and it is still a dry gist. Any number of pages can only diminish the options to explain, but can never express it in life-like manner. It is like a shallow river; everyone would judge it as easily reachable, but only few can make it to the other end. Same way, only few who'd visited the island of unloved understood this.

We din't technically break up. This is what we felt about our separation, 'This parting will help us make this relationship better than what it was. We will smile at each other. We promised we are going to be in contact forever. We let the world free to judge and assume. It is an answer to the elders, a question to the youngsters, a slap on the apparent sacrosanct climaxes of Indian movies. Our relationship is not like a flower to bloom and wither. Its like a season, long and lasting, often changing and yet never ending. We din't dump each other neither did the fate decide this; we chose this next step of our lives. Fate's plan was to entwine us together, but we changed it. We proved the world that two best friends can be lovers and lovers can take a step back to being friends too.' 

With a jerk of the cab, I came back to reality. I reached my home, forgetting the party I was supposed to join. I did all the stuff that young women in movies do when they think of 'the one that got away'. After 3 hours of self-depraving, my eyes fell on the newspaper. As I opened it, a small soft toy fell into my lap. My eyes widened as a smile crossed my face I read the message addressed to me, "Time to replace old memories. You deserve much than what you have now. Happy Valentine's Day. Go, check your bus ticket". Grabbing my bag, I emptied it completely to find the crumpled ticket in a corner. It said, "Concentrate on your passion. That's the love of your life. Happy Valentine's Day. Diva, check your office mail". My eyes fell on the non-red packages spread on the table. I opened each one of them, the first two turned out business-related. The third package was bulky than others, I sprang to my feet when I saw my favorite novel tucked in velvet lying in it. The next one contained a 'Admission Card' to a course I was planning to take. Another, had a letter. It ended with, "We are waiting!!" 

I was out on the road within no time!!