First Draft

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.” 
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

I had always wondered how do people write novels? Do they borrow largely from real life or are they mostly fictional? Do interesting things need to happen to people for them to write about them? My life is interesting in parts but mostly just normal, ordinary and boring even…can I ever write about that? This was somehow in a serendipitous way answered by Haruki Murakami, in an article titled “A long way from the stuffed cabbage”, he precisely talks about this and many more…He even goes on to say that sometimes when unbelievable things happen to people they find it hard to tell their tale…as if the words fall short of their experiences…this is really reassuring for someone like me, I could completely relate this, sure there are exciting even life changing events which take place and have taken place in my life but my everyday sort of life is quite mundane. So why haven’t I every ventured into writing something longer than a chapter (short stories are usually a chapter or two long)…I could come up with many explanations like not enough time, not enough material, sometime I even feel I may not be a novelist at all…but why do I crave for it so? To understand what I crave for, I must explain what I feel when I write…I always feel that I express myself much better on paper (or computer! Given I mostly type these days), there are two ways for me to get relief from the dull reality of everyday routine, read or write, and writing does help me escape to a better place (I remember how much I enjoyed writing in a diary when I was an adolescent, granted things were easier to write about, petty jealousies, young crushes, I was less cynical then). On some days I can’t shake this feeling that I was meant to write something, some story stored deep in my subconscious, maybe that’s why I dream such vivid dreams every night…I have written from my dreams before, but they usually turn to short stories…and I have written novels before as a child (when I was 12) but those were greatly influenced by R.L. Stine style of short novellas about teen angst and ghost stories…pretty juvenile! There are two things that bother me when I think of writing a novel, firstly have I found my voice? And secondly, do I have a story to tell? When Murakami talks about how he wrote his first novel, and the circumstances surrounding that, I feel better and worried at the same time. Let me briefly describe the incident, so he had gone to see a baseball match, and suddenly he thought to himself if a player called Hilton strikes a double (I don’t know anything about baseball!) he would start writing…and the player did strike a double and he did start writing, and his first novel was a success! He does mention that he doesn’t know if he hadn’t been to the game that day what would have happened? Would he still be running a jazz bar, not writing but thinking about writing? This story really moved me in a very deep way, somehow on a very ordinary day something extraordinary happened and he started writing, it was quite serendipitous...this really encourages me that unexpected things can happen to very ordinary people but at the same time I am worried what if I miss the bus? Would I then keep thinking of writing and never get to write my first novel? 

Lastly I would again resort to borrowed words, maybe just to express what I feel and what I dread...

“you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.” 
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.” 
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

Along the highway

Following the trail of lights along the highway...

I wonder what do I want to say...

The meaningless blurr of everyday life...

The suffocating embrace of boredom and strife...

Is there much left to say today?

when I couldn't remember much of yesterday...

What does it mean not to complete a thought, to let myself go...

Not to make sense, not willing to show...

Even when I know I want to be heard I would hide myself away...

Following the trail of lights along the highway..

Chaos

What if the end of it all I find a question mark?

What if I am nothing more than a blank, a nothingness?

What makes the difference so stark?

Who clears after the mess?

In a world full of confusion I might add more chaos and disorder,

My mind hangs in the middle of insanity and order...?

I don't think I am complelled to complete this quest..

Gravity is such a suck fest..

Life is just a disaster with lot of goodwill..

We might find our bounty on the way and have our fill!!!!

Confused musings

Often when I have come across this term sprawled on the walls of buildings and on roads in Calcutta, I have always wondered what does it mean? “Brigade chalo” (Let's go to the brigade, crude translation!), “Dharamtala chalo” (let's go to Dharamtala/ Esplanade)...but why go anywhere? What does it mean? Invariably I have always tried to associate this term with the poem “Charge of the Light Brigade” by Lord Alferd Tenneyson...to put my confused mind at rest, I looked up the word 'brigade' in Wikipedia, and this is what it said “A brigade is a major tactical military formation that is typically composed of three to six battalions plus supporting elements. It is roughly equivalent to an enlarged or reinforced regiment”....So where in Calcutta, can there be a brigade? Somewhere near Fort Williams, Maidan? Again, Wikipedia helped me to understand this vague idea of mine, “During the British Raj white soldiers were stationed in Fort William. When they came out on the Maidan for strolls, they used to kick Bengali boys they found on the Maidan.” (Imagine that!)

Now, that we have understood where “Brigade” is, why would some slogans entice us to go to “Dharamtala” (Esplanade), “Dharamtala Chalo” (March to Esplanade)...is it because it's near Maidan, that is a very silly reason so I won't elaborate on that further!!!

The basic idea is to have a large gathering of people somewhere either near Maidan or Esplanade and then have a political leader give a speech, without going into the political side of the story (besides I have never been to such parades, so I won't be able to do much justice to the political implications of such gatherings). Yet somehow, such slogans bring these lines from the poem to my mind,

“Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,”

Isn't that what the crowd does these days? A mass of people inflamed by some ideas, but whose, theirs or someone else's? I am afraid it might be someone else's ideas these days...can a mass of people or in other terms, a mob, think for themselves, is it even feasible? How scary is it when a mob is influenced by the wrong political or social ideas, very much indeed! It is such ideas that lead to riots, mass violence and more appalling stuff! Then how is it brave “not to make reply” and “not to question why”, how come putting one's faith in someone blindly considered courageous and why is this glorified?

"Freedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that 'Oh, I don't get involved in politics,' as if that makes someone cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable" - Bill Maher

Bitter words

“I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out.”

― Bill Hicks

I can never avoid her, everyday while I wait at the bus stop she screams obscenities at me and the rest of the world. She really isn't in pain or at least I can't see her wounds, yet she always liked to hurl curses at people passing by as she went about her daily chores, like chopping vegetables or cooking or cleaning. I could understand her misery to some extent, who would be happy living on the street, displaying the very private parts of their lives in front of total strangers, be it sun or rain, cooking, cleaning, sleeping, eating, excreting...having no other place to go.

I couldn't always sympathize with her, not always, no....especially when she would scream obscenities at everyone on the street but I could never ignore her...She is not really dressed in rags but her clothes are not especially clean nor bright, dulled by the heat, sun and cold, her face is as worn as her clothes. Often when I am not really in a hurry to catch the bus, I would wait and listen, try to make some sense of her tirade, who was she angry with? She blames women who were of dubious characters some times, other times men who are immoral faces her wrath and then police, political parties and everyone and everything...I have realized now that she has no specific grievance or particular persons to blame, she blames anyone who crosses her path...

Sometimes she forgets to curse when she is too busy cooking or cleaning her so-called house on the pavement in front of a post office. The strange thing is that I have rarely seen her family, whom does she cook so much for? It's true, on very rare occasions I have seen her talking quite normally or sharing a laugh with some other people on the road, were they her family? if so why don't I always see at least some of them with her, why is she alone most of the times?

I have often felt guilty thinking how I live in a proper house with a room of my own and she on a pavement by the bus-stop, with a tree for shade and the branches for hanging her dull clothes...often when it rains or is bitterly cold, I wonder about her...but I could never muster up the courage to face her, let alone speak to her, whenever she goes on her rant I avert my eyes, feeling a shame that isn't entirely my own....

I spent so much of my time thinking about her, feeling sorry for her, yet when she screams those bitter words I would invariably despise her, scorning at her madness and her filthy mouth spewing such obscenities....but I don't know her name and I have never met her, no matter how many times our paths have crossed, I don't know why she says those bitter words, I don't know her pain....

Children of Time

"children of time we sing and we shout,

still don't know what our lives are about"

-Matthew Sweet

We are the children of time.

We like to mix pain with pleasure.

During moments of intense activity, we scream for leisure.

and often in the midst of leisure, we find ourselves restless.....

Then we pace for good measure!

What is our pain, and what is our leisure?

Or is our pain, our leisure?

Sometimes I find it so hard to breathe,

So much to take in...

And yet I feel so stationary...

This is our bane and our  blessing.

We are the children of time.

Our pain is our pleasure.

For the love of the written word

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."

 - Mark Twain

I could trace the start of my journey with books to when I was eleven, but then I would be wrong...it's true that I read my first novel at that age, but my love affair had begun years before as I would listen to my father reading stories from the antics of "Tenida" and his goof ball friends written by Narayan Gangopadhyay (Oh! I loved them so!) and the crazy rhymes of "Abol tabol" composed by Sukumar Roy (literal translation is gibberish, how amazing is that!). I had tried reading comics before reading proper novels, "Tintin", "Archies" and "The Adventures of Asterix" but the pictures were too distracting, instead of reading I would start drawing and coping the pictures from them! I wouldn't have started reading if my parents hadn't insisted that I must (the teachers from my school were complaining that I wouldn't participate in class activities and my language and grammar needed improvement). Hence my father in his infinite wisdom (supposedly!) gifted me an abridged version of the classic "The Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson and I have never looked back since then...I always had a very active imagination and I needed some words to give life to the pictures in my head, and my gosh! it was so amazing to imagine Long John Silver with his wooden pegged leg, bearing a parrot on his shoulder and Jim Hawkins with his innocent face, I mean what's not to like? I had finally discovered an outlet for my thoughts and imagination, I was hooked! This was followed by "Kidnapped" by the same author, I don't remember much of the story except the scene where the boy is made to climb stairs in pitch darkness without the comfort of a candle and he almost falls since the stairs end abruptly into nothingness! And "Moby Dick", oh what a tale of adventure! Oh gosh! If I have to go on and on about all the books I have read in my life that would be pretty long and not quite engaging, what I would do instead is recount the incident and the book which were pivotal and helped me to walk on ahead in life...And this is absolutely true, these books proved to be my best friends when my life wasn't going well (okay I'll admit what I mean is when life wasn't really good is actually when things are really bad and crappy! the worst ever!!)

I shall with physical injuries and move on to emotional ones. I had been having this intense pain in my lower abdomen sometime in my early twenties which later turned out to be acute appendicitis (not a pretty picture at all) and had to undergo an operation...the operation part and the first day of fuzziness and pain was okay and somewhat bearable, but what really got to me were the the next two days...I had nothing to do, no one to talk to, alone in a sterile hospital bed and I couldn't even walk around....it was hell...I wouldn't have survived through those two days had it not been for "The Talisman", a Stephen King and Peter Straub novel...now I was and still am really into gory horror stories and had been a great fan of the Goosebumps series penned by R.L.Stine, in my early teens, although growing up I wasn't really satisfied with the simplistic plot and prose (it was quite juvenile and my sister could kill me for saying this since I think she liked them even after adolescence and the pre-and post? twenty phase!)...from R.L.Stine I had moved on to Stephen King, which satisfied my need for gore as well as complex story telling...and this particular book about a boy trying to save his mother's life and his frequent journeys to the Stephen king's version of the Neverland, "the Territories" a strange fantasy land, just sealed my loyalty to him and his franchise forever, I never tire of a Stephen King novel (except the one about a dog, "Cujo", couldn't finish that one for the life of me!).

This was a major injury but there were very many times when I had sprained my ankle (since I hate paying attention to where I am going usually, easily distracted by everything that is happening around me I often fall down and hurt myself!) and often during such times I would resort to Miss Marple and Monsieur Poirot to help me pass the tedious moments that I am trapped in bed....I had also without fail needed a new mystery by Agatha Christie every time I traveled from Kolkata (home) to Durgapur (Hostel aka HELL! where I had spent four years to earn a B.Tech degree), the train ride took around 3 hours and the journey started from Howrah in the wee hours of the morning and the book would help me stay awake through the three hours journey. I usually traveled alone those mornings and there were high chances of me sleeping through the stop to Durgapur (train was bound for Dhanbad!) which would have been quite disastrous to say the least! It was during the four years I had spent in Durgapur that I read “The Rainbow” by D.H. Lawrence, it was such a hard book to read! I had read his short stories before but never a full-fledged novel and I had to consult a dictionary for many words for I couldn't quite get the meaning of and there were so many of them! Usually when I don't exactly know what a particular word means I just read the sentence a number of times and try to grasp the meaning of the sentence and this helps me to understand what the word means but didn't help with Lawrence and his ornate style! No matter how much I crib and cry it was worth it, such a beautifully written story, some scenes from the book are seared in my memory even now, the part where Anna, heavily pregnant dances naked in her bedroom and Will her husband sees her dancing in such abandonment, feeling alienated from her, amazing! Such intense contorted feelings!

Few years down the line, after the exuberance of early twenties had settled, I was going through a rough phase, recovering from a break up and a bad relationship, and it was during those bleak years when I discovered Haruki Murakami. I had at last started reading “Kafta on the shore” after a friend and my sister recommended that I must...and it was such a surreal experience that I moved about in a dream-like state for the whole month...every time I read any of his books (my favourite till date is "Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world", "The wind-up bird chronicle" comes a close second) I lose my perception of reality, it is essentially the best and most “trippy” feeling I have ever had and I absolutely love it! Few years back I discovered Amitav Ghosh, a voice from Bengal, he restored my faith in story telling (I was losing interest in contemporary authors, real popular ones who wrote absolute crap, this was more of an intellectual injury if I may say so!!) and his depiction of Sundarbans in “the Hungry tide” did poetic justice to the beauty of the mangrove forest...I had been to Sundarbans as a child but after reading the book, I had to go again to lose myself in the lush green forest along the forking river. And of course, J.K Rowling and the Harry Potter series, I must admit I used to make fun of my sister and my friends who were great fans, I discovered this world of magic a little late but my word! What a rich world! Absolutely loved it, I remember finishing the whole series of books in a week!! I couldn't wait to read to the end, a beautiful read indeed! 

 In recent times, due to a busy adult life comprising of work, marriage and what-nots (often laziness since it's easier to lose myself staring at the computer screen watching TV series and moves rather than reading which is at times rather taxing on the imagination at least for me since I imagine whatever I read as if I am watching the scene right before my eyes!), my habit of reading has diminished, earlier I would finish one book in a week, now it takes a month or two...but I don't really sweat it out, since books are such an important part of my life, no matter how busy or stressed I get I would need a book when I travel, sometimes before going to bed and often just like that...they are like old friends, they just keep popping up...and I do feel pangs of guilt when I ignore them too much...but they never cease to provide me with a sense of warmth and comfort.