Words, anyone?

It just occurred to me today that words are the only constant in our life. Other than oxygen, of course. 

[Please tell me i'm wrong in less than 20 words.]

Words have been around us from the moment we took birth. They kept changing and yet they are so damn constant. They are always there through one medium or the other. A TV/radio playing in the background, people chit-chatting and you gossiping. Come to think of it, the only time words don't really make themselves known is when we read. 

Some are gems while others are precursor to noise.

The resulting question: Is that why we don't tend to remember every single word while it doesn't take us too much to register smell or taste or touch in our mind? 

Of pens and keys

If you can write 25 lines without feeling a hint of discomfort in your knuckles, you’re awesome. Your handwriting—good or worse—be damned! No joke. There’s a reason to it too. You haven’t been destroyed by QWERTY. Yet. And that should be a matter of pride even if you’re not Murakami or Rowling or Pamuk. You see, over the past few years, our literal realities have been going through a paradigm shift. As a result of which, desktop has become a common noun and typing, commoner. Pen doesn’t seem as mighty as it once used to. Keys have taken its place; at least in the urban scenario.

                                                   Or maybe it’s just me.

Nowadays, i barely let a pen point attempt paragraphs on paper. It’s usually words or short sentences, if not plain signatures.  With such a discouraging backdrop, what happens to the good old custom of writing long epistles? With telegram honorably extinct, what’s the future of exchanging hand-written letters? Cultivating pen pals while we are it? Postcards, someone? Love letters, huh? Will they survive? By any measure of chance, yes is the answer. The real question is a bit different though: what about you? It’s not like the whole world has suddenly turned against the poor postman. The street dogs continue to chase him while people in the neighbourhood can’t wait to welcome him without offering a glass of water. So things aren’t evolving THAT phenomenally. People exchange e-mails and everything is more or less fine. After all, everybody appears proud to have the same print-perfect handwriting.

So, the question keeps coming back to you. Your skills and your personal touch. When was the last time you wrote someone a letter filled with cancellations and food marks? Whom are you planning to send one in spite of having each other’s e-mail IDs? Holding a page with words meant for you can certainly beat a lot of in its category. Besides, it’s never too late. Yes, Gandhi was right. Our handwriting and gymnastics indeed stay with us forever. But it’s OK. You’re not writing a medical prescription. The person on the other end will get what you’re trying to say. 

Hopefully.

Perhaps it’s not about the choice available but about doing something which we once used to. Before technology made time invaluable and emotions, redundant. If you sit down to quantify the amount of time one invests in browsing and posting comments on social media that will never be responded with a reply, it becomes stark obvious that we’re simply wasting the power of fingertips. Shouldn’t that be diverted towards those who’d be happy to really ‘hear’ from you… for a change? By any yardstick, that’d be better than having an imaginary friend/acquaintance who never writes back to you.

NB: I wrote this drivel for my only surviving pen pal on Earth.

The burden of distinction

I don't get art. It's much easier to understand artists though. I can't call myself an expert yet but i carry a hunch when it comes to cinema and poetry. The former undoubtedly qualifies for art but i'm not so sure about the latter. However, i also feel that the exact opposite should be true about the two. In my spaced-out eyes, art has to create noise despite being absolutely silent. And it's pretty obvious that cinema took birth out of silence before turning noisy while poetry came out of voice before becoming mute. It's quite an interesting development. Since i haven't made any attempt towards film-making, i wouldn't know how close to art it is. I'm an unaccomplished former poet so i know a bit about verses and metre. As a viewer, i can tell that a movie is originally made in a director's head—no, not the writer's—and from that moment onwards, the whole effort is to convert that vision into reality. Henceforth, the concept of art suffers a bit as too many people are involved. On the contrary, poetry is a one-man-standing-against-nobody exercise. So where exactly do you place art in a poem? In the core selfishness of words or the gaps left by phrases and punctuations? Wherever you please. At least the purity of an idea is maintained. Furthermore, art is not a pursuit but a creative journey to find respite in the end. Like the act of masturbation, for lack of a terribler example. You know when it has to end and there's no such thing as perfection in it. What could be finesse for one could be an interval for another. A poet has nothing to prove while a filmmaker has a lot. Precisely why a poem can never be perfect. Precisely why a film can.

One man, two insights

One man's hunger is another man's food for thought. One man's meat is another man's proverb. One man's "Oops!" is another man's "You're fired". One man's mistakes are another man's wisdom. One man's Saturday is another man's Friday. One man's Monday is, well, another man's Monday. One man's courage is another man's outrage. One man's anger is another man's nirvana. One man's tweet is another man's uncredited quote. One man's onion is another man's opinion. One man's salary is another man's joke. One man's dream is another man's nightmare. One man's wife is another man's password. One man's truth is another woman's rumour. One man's food is another man's thought of hunger. One man's :( is another man's :P!

OK

Calm down,
get up,
walk beside yourself,
look ahead but don't stare and hurt your eyes.
Not worth the unease, you see?
Don't talk if you don't wish to,
just make sure you aren't still
or dead
or consumed by memories.
Whatever happened shall make you strong
—if not stronger;
wait and vouch for the future.
In case possibility reckons, do destroy your own negative thoughts:
nothing more, nothing else. 
Trust me, it's alright.

Unfinished verses

Once upon a rhyme, there was a poem waiting to be written. So many things happened around it but nobody came close to finishing it. Perhaps the literature was conspiring against the poets. Whatever be the excuse, the poem never got penned in its entirety. Since it couldn't fully take place, it couldn't fully die either. Immortality stayed out of question. As an aftermath, it remained hanging somewhere in the middle. For what words are worth, it still is. The world seems to be falling apart and whatnot. But it is yet to fulfill its destiny. Something doesn't feel right but who's to blame? And everybody in the room is leaving happily ever after.

Poetically challenged poem

This may not look like a poem
But trust me, it is
Although too coarse and unrefined  
It has all the ingredients necessary.
Check.
These lines are speaking to your soul
Like no else ever did 
No, really
Your mind shall realize it a bit later
But trust me, it will
Being in a lecherous relationship with words 
For months and years and more
They've learned to listen to me
They'll listen to you too
All you've got to do is shut up and read
Anyway, what your eyes are going through is poetry
In its purest form
In fact, formless 
In this particular case—senseless
Whatever.
This poem could have been subtler but what's the point?
Who cares?
Other than you of course.
But then, you've got too much time on your wrist to waste
On my verses
Thanks indeed.
You're encouraging a groundbreaking phase in literature. 
Just so you know.
Never before has prose sashayed so bizarrely as now
This may not look like a poem
But you've accepted it
You just don't know it yet. 
Aren't you silently wondering?
Yes, you are.
What more proof do you need?

Write whatever is left

Last week, I found myself in a conference room with an elegant lady sitting across the table asking me “Why do you want to write?” That question caught me off guard and I did what I do best – gape with a patented awkward look. Then I mumbled trying really hard to make sense in my fluent Nonsense. Obviously, she didn’t buy them. Neither did I.

But now that I have ample time to improvise on my answer, I’ll sit back and type what I believe are the reasons why I want to write. For a start, I’m neither mundane nor skillful. And this reality is attested by my absolute disregard towards learning something as basic as replacing empty cooking gas cylinder with a filled one. It goes without saying that I’m darn lazy. But when it comes to writing, I guess I’m a different person. I can write. No matter how rubbish my thoughts are, I can truly write.

A: "I want to be a writer."

B: "You mean you want to die of hunger?"

A: "Nope. I want to be a writer."

People usually wait to break in. Like actors have their break with a certain movie. Or an IT professional with a remarkable project. But a majority of us often forget that we had our first break with education. We were lucky enough to grow up as literates. And the ugly fact that there are still billions who don’t receive the kind of exposure to knowledge the way we did is preposterous. No matter how big a Pink Floyd fan one is, s/he can’t disagree that that cult song couldn’t have been penned had the band members been illiterates.

Having said that, not everyone can write. Everyone has a story, yes. But not everyone can write, no. There is a widespread misconception among literates that they are always write. In simpler words, some of the brilliantest writers who lived never had the fortune to write. There are zillions of thoughts enveloped in an idea but very few are able to draw them down to alphabets and let it flow on a page or screen. Besides, it’s rather tough to find an excellent writer as they are mostly lost in thoughts. On the other hand, some of the greatest writers will remain so as long as we don't get to read their books.

I want to be a writer too but while I’m at it, I wish to get paid. Though I don’t harbor Indian middle class’ (read: parents’) ambition of getting married and settled, I don’t desire to be broke either. You know the awkward moment when you and the ATM screen engage in a staring contest and you always end up blinking first. Yeah, that.

My love for writing is conceptualized in a simple philosourphy – don't bother whether you're wrong or right, simply write whatever is left. In a not-so-ideal world, a writer is the pauper who writes on his own, of his own, but nothing to own. Well, that may be the harsh reality but a writer is not someone who writes but someone who gets paid for doing so.

For instance, have a look at Twitter. Some of the brightest thoughts disguised as jokes are relegated from public memory in the name of tweets. These lines get circulated far and wide but eventually they don’t carry the name of the person who wrote them in the first place. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with it as plagiarism and attribution don’t sleep with each other on Internet. In any case, pro bono tweeting is rubbish for charity. And to help this illation, there are remnants of a failed writer in every tweep.

Fair enough.

Coming back to the HR’s question, I thought I’ll be able to express why I want to write in this blog piece but I digressed and got carried away as usual. Perchance I need to abandon one-linerism and go back to poetry. Back to a boundaryless world where the poet and his poems are meant for each other. He writes them. They read him. Or maybe I just need to STFU and then write a book on how.