Writers Block

The page is my enemy. It stares at me in blank indifference, scoffing at my desperate need for recognition. It tells me nothing to soothe my questions, merely taking everything I throw at it with impartial disinterest. I rail at it wildly, filling it with words that refuse to stick to it. And when they do, the page seems to look askance at them, as if their presence was mere sufferance. The futility of this exercise frustrates me with its one-sidedness. Why are you being like this? Can’t you feel like me and open up your arms to my weary pen for once. Why must we always engage in this strange dance of domination? Why must it always be a tussle between the two of us? Tempestuous relationships are all well and good in the sharp-edged turns of plot. But between the two of us it is merely a cruel game.

Why don’t you relent, why can’t we play nice: just for once? I’m too weary of witty repartee and I am not equipped with the charm to artfully win you over. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you let these words bloom magically on your pristine body rather than cling precariously, desperate for absolution. As I try in vain to reach you, you throw spider webs in my path so I am caught up trying to extricate myself from their invisible strands. And as I twist and contort in vain, you stare at me with complete indifference: not even amusement at the sorry state of this writer.

Ah cruel, cruel page. It is not fair, this utter lack of feeling. Doesn’t it make a difference to you, that I burn with the dream of setting you afire with my inspiration? Obviously not. Why would it, anyway? I know you don’t care. There are so many greater minds paying greater homage to your exalted self. Yet, I try once again to bedeck you in my fancy: fool that I am. And again I look at you with hopeless hope that you will accept the meagre gift of my thoughts. You shrug and gather up the words, putting them up on the dusty showcase full of other tribute. And again I am driven by the insane urge to be the one to create that perfect tribute that will finally light up your dull, pale visage with glowing beauty. Determination rings like a hammer on the anvil of my soul and you stare back stonily at the fires of inspiration in my eyes burning the last failure to prepare space for another attempt... I will conquer you cold page. And you will carry my love with love.

The triumph of hope over experience.

Affirmation

Greetings! Due to unforeseen circumstances I was unable to publish my New Years post on time. But then again, as the University administration keeps reminding us, better late than indefinitely postponed.


There is very little faith in the world: not today, not for a while. However, the beauty of this world, of humanity, is that it can always find a way to pick itself up from the shambles it has reduced itself to and create something beautiful from the very wreckage in which it stands. Or so we can hope. Life thrives on its ability to continue, to survive, outsmarting all those chaotic gulags that threaten the very essence of it s being. For to live is to survive pain with grace and dignity.

A wise man once said that literature is that which can transform suffering into beauty. Boris Pasternak talks about this in his path breaking novel Dr. Zhivago. He writes, “... art has two constants, two unending concerns: it always meditates on death and thus always creates life.” The World According to Me is admittedly barely a speck on the infinite canvas of literature but it too hopes to fulfill this tenet of art. The world is so full of sadness, but it is also so very full of goodness. It is a positive place that is waiting to be rediscovered by the jaded eyes of the young human race. Though cynicism is the mantra of the Modern, the truth is that Faith springs within us through the strangest. We find it in that song that always raises your spirits, or that book that unfailingly reaffirms our tumbling beliefs, or that logic defying blanket that infuses you with a sense of protection, or the flooding relief you feel whenever you here that voice even through the squeaky conduit of a telephone connection. It's there, regardless of how much you'd rather let it all go and be an all out jaded being. And that's what it means to be alive: to know that there is dark, but it's only so that the bright shines brighter .

The World According to Me welcomes the World into it's cyber portals, taking the good with the bad. We are all blessed with the light of cognizance that fills the world with meaning and worth. And since it is our cognizance that gave birth to the world as we know it, we also realise that we can make the world what we want it to be; we can transform. It is our world to do as we wish with it. So endow it with light and open your arms to the world just waiting to be discovered in its multicolored vibrance. There is so much goodness to be savoured, so much music to be enjoyed, so much life to be lived and so many existences to be rejuvenated. And The World, According to Me can't wait to start.

Happy New Year!

The Creator

Evermore

Something else I unearthed from my notes.

Long after we have gone,
When dust has sublimated
Into something finer still;
When memory has become
A mere memory of memory
You and I will continue to live.

For the same emotion
That quickens my breath
Will pant on the lips of
That unknown new.

And in that shared emotion.
We will live again.

Of Studies

I'm a very serious student ( ok ok Stop! Shut up! Enough with the guffaws!). I take my studies very seriously. (ORDER IN THE BLOG PAGE!) But for all my diligence, my work never moves more than an inch per day! It is a temporal anomaly I say! How else can I end up sitting in front of the same page from 8 am to 5 am? Examine my tight schedule.

The first thing I do post-reveiller and morning ablutions is make a list of things that need to be done. But of course things need to be prioritised, and prioritising takes thought. And of course there are all those things you keep missing out. So constant drafting and redrafting is necessary to make the perfect plan. But then you realise the time-scheme that you had laid for the original plan is no longer applicable because the time has lapsed. So now you, being a smart person and all, draft a new plan which does not specify any time(fickle, slippery thing!) and finally finalise a plan of action. By this time, it is time for lunch and we all know that the brain needs food for thought. So we head off to lunch. In the return trip it is imperative that you drop by at the rooms of other students to brainstorm and also to partake of refreshing ideas. All this exchange of ideas is exhausting, so it is only right that we invite these great minds-the budding philosophers of tomorrow- for rejuvenating coffee.

The brewing of coffee is an exacting art. All the more demanding because we are sharply deficient of utensils such as spoons and the only one there is pressed into the service of stirring. Since we are tenuously trying to pour out the right amounts of coffee, some spillage is bound to happen. And cleaning this up is obviously going to take time. By this time, the lazy sun has dipped off and treacherous evening has crept in! Of course you return to your books recharged with the wisdom imparted by the coffee drinkers and pore over the miniscule print. But the light is bad so you go to switch on the tube, which is when the dog slips in undetected. Half an hour of tussle later the dog is out but you are covered with dog hair. A bath is imperative. And considering what you were handling, it better be on the longer side just to guarantee dog-freeness.

Post bath I realise that time has sped by on winged feet, and it is time for dinner. But, the diligent student that I am, I skip this for the sake of academics (that, and the fact that the tummy is still full of coffee :P). So the serious student studies seriously with nary a distracted blink for several hours. But then you suddenly recall your friend mentioned that she might send a mail. And, being such a responsible person, you realise that the easiest way to not forget a task is to do it as soon as you remember it. And since I am online I might as well check on the blog and then of course there are the comments to be answered and the non-existent comments to rail against. Multi-tasking is the sign of a true student. My duty as a blogger and netizen fulfilled, I return to my books full-throttle. A while later, the missed dinner makes its absence felt and your stomach compels you to fix a sandwich. And sandwiches are so crumby and messy, so there is dusting and washing to clear up. Making a quick job of that, you reprise your perusal of the blessed texts, post-haste with the concentration of a balancing act. Some time later you stretch your cramped back and happen to look out the window and realise that the light is not merely from the tubelight and that the sun has risen. When did that happen???? And the work has not diminished at all!

I tell you it is a conspiracy! All universities and academic institutions have placed their students in a weird time warp that refuses to let them finish their work. How else can a day, that supposedly has 24hrs, disappear in 20 minutes? I type this out in the frustration of the truly stumped, and will take the opportunity of this respite to return to studying. You see what a serious student I am?

Dogged Doggies-II

Chaka

It's a dog's life indeed.
Is it not enough that we miserable inmates of the hostel residences spent the first year of our M.Adness dodging the puddles and myriad other foibles of you furry fiends? Is it not enough that we are routinely assaulted by your panting presence cemented to our shins and, in some truly disturbing cases, to parts of the anatomy that should never have to come anywhere near canines of any sort? Is it not enough that you dog our footsteps like the dogged doggies that you are, renderings us unable to take a step without encountering your pungent presence?

Apparently not.

It was a fine day-One of the last days of our bondage within the academic shackles of the third semester. Exhausted by several nights and days of too little sleep and too much assignmenting, the author sunk into an exhausted stupor in the cool sanctuary of her room, savoring that "...still,unravished bride of quiteness..." (forgive me, Keats), sweet sleep. The room-mate, good soul that she is, recognized snoriasis when she saw it and left the slumbering mortal alone,thoughtfully leaving the door open in the unlikely event that the aforementioned slumbering mortal would wake up in the next 12hrs.

Had this is been a marginally fair world, this rosy picture would have played out to its logical conclusion. However, as we are regularly reminded,life rejoices in being perfectly Machiavellian.

A few inadequate hours later, the author was resummoned into the land of the living by something unpleasantly wet being applied to her flung forearm. Amazed at her room-mate's desperation that she should be moved to using water to rouse the sleeper, the author reluctantly cracked open one of her bleary eyes. And flew out of bed in a leap that put mankind to shame! For you see, the sight that greeted the author's poor shocked eyes was not the benign countenance of her very comely room-mate, but the grinning, drool-dripping face of Chaka the doggy demon!The creature had crept into the room when no one was looking and clambered over the bed to loom over the author's sleeping head, deciding that the prone form was an apt petredish for drool samples.

While the author's ravings brought people from other rooms running to her doorstep, it had no effect whatsoever on the lolloping limpet-like mutt squatting on her bed grinning unrepentantly, tongue lolling. Apparently in Chaka-tongue yelling and screaming is a sign of bonhomie and love. Why else would she take the writer's raging roars to be a signal to lie down on the evacuated bed and furthermore proceed to rub herself all over the author's poor precious bedsheet? And the fact that the dog smelt like an open drain and had obviously been frolicking one too, did not do much to reduce the disgust her actions inspired. It was bad enough that Chaka had parked herself on my pillow and then went on to mambo on my mattress, but the red began to seep into the vision when she started for the blessed blanket. Something about the raised arm must have raised an alarm in her dim doggy brain, for she scooted off the bed before the blow could fall. While the author fought against her restraining compatriots, heaving angry lungfuls of air now permeated with Eu de Chaka, the dratted dog gave a queenly shrug as if to say "wha'ever" in Barbie-esque nonchalance and proceeded to disembowel a few unsuspecting dustbins in the lower floors.

As the discerning reader might have surmised, clean up was a b***h. The sheets and pillowcase were washed with both detol and savlon, and then left to air for 5 days just to be on the safe side. The author spent many a happy hour dreaming of transporting Chaka off to Nagaland, where the people have a penchant for toothsome canines. The Nagas are a smart race! University has leeched me of any dog loving tendencies that I might have harbored. Never again will I coochie-coo over a conniving canine. Forever traumatised by the trauma of living with these colonising curs, I can no longer look at an adorable puppy without recalling the menace it will become.

But then again, truth be told,we are the trespassers not the dogs. After all they stay on at the University, while we are merely passing through in the long line of passages in this transit flight called life. Students may come and students may go, but the dogs go on for ever. The full-throated howls ringing through the campus at 3 am in the morning are testament to the fact that they go on and on incessantly. The author realises that in this dog eat dog world one will come across strange bedfellows: there is nothing to be done but to wait for the offending mutt to boot out and then clean the sheets. And so she will go nurse the headache that all the live howling has brought about with nary a slight against the wretched animals.

It's a dog's life, indeed.

Something I found while rummaging through my Russian Literature class-notes while we were discussing Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak.

Something so "never again",

That it was bound to happen again,
Happened when we were not looking;
So we didn't know it was happening
Until it did.

Perhaps then, it makes sense
That each time it happens
It feels like Genesis and Resurrection
Together:
The coldness of the newness
Crashing against the warm moisture
Of congenial birth fluids of emotion,
so sharply,
That we cry out in painful ecstasy
That steals our breath.
Or rather,
Chokes our wind pipes.

"Never again," we say breathlessly
Panting in the aftermath of it all;
And fall headlong
Into the spiralling kaliedoscope
of again.
And again.
And again...

Observation

A work of fiction: The NUTRITIONAL facts on the side of a chips packet.