Can We Get Used To This Silence

Photo by Karen Lau on Unsplash

Can we get used to this silence? The empty streets, clear sunsets, the gentle rustle of leaves falling from trees, silhouettes across windows. Birds faraway chirp in tandem with a Hemanth Kumar’s song playing in the neighbourhood. The schools are shut — where are the kids though? Are they stuck to their parent’s phones? I dust bags full of books; I charge my Kindle and watch the day take its own time. Things that mattered a few weeks back, don’t anymore. To say I have fleeting moments of hope and faith is an understatement but it gets me through the day. Some nights I feel hollow and it weighs me down, but I’m partly in charge of this state. There’s not much I can grumble about now, can I?

Can we get used to this silence? The new normal is not everyone’s cup of tea. People have stretched their sleeping hours and yet complain about not getting proper night’s sleep. We get more face time with our friends but now I find it tiring. Oscillating between what they’ve eaten for lunch and who’s tagged me on a new Instagram challenge is plain vanilla. I’m sorry but I can’t keep up. Where’s the heatwave everyone’s talking about? Maybe it won’t kill the virus. Maybe it will. But never have I ever looked forward to the summer. Unless mangoes are involved.

Can we get used to this silence? The dogs in the colony don’t bark much. Obviously, they don’t spot strangers lurking or driving in the dark, anymore. It’s safe to say they’re practicing social distance better than humans. Dogs have always had the ability to sense danger before stupid humans. We are truly at the helm of our own suffering. But let’s talk something else — happy thoughts, happy thoughts. Let me ask the voices in my head to shut up. Numb down for a while.

Can we get used to this silence? The future seems fickle but it’s best to accept misery as a company. For now. Let it sit next to you like a fallen leaf. It fidgets, it bothers. Pick it and tuck it between the pages of a book. I’m not reading a sad book for now. I’m picking something blithe. I don’t want my characters to suffer. With misery for company, I’m not making long-term plans. I want to get through the day. As a friend said, you’re one day away from suffering and you’re one more day healthy. If there’s a perfect book or a movie or a song that could save me….it’s probably my mind.

I’m five again. It’s summertime, the trees have come alive with mangoes. But this time, I’m allowed to binge-eat only after I finish my milk and Milk Bikis.

Tune for the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwRYh8lBjCI

Respite.

(Originally written for Paragraph.)

On a walk that deemed unfit for a cold winter night, he set off in a direction he never took before. The soles of his shoes were barely firm to protect his feet, but the condition of his windcheater was even worse. The streets were desolate as he paused under every streetlight before he moved any further and the wild wind did no good to his chapped cheeks. For a moment, he wondered if he was going in circles agonizing over the only shelter he left behind. Having no option left and no human in sight, he ran, engulfing himself in darkness and cold. He came to a halt when he saw a distant light. Catching his breath and senses, he approached the light. When he came close, he noticed that it was an all-night library. Glad to have found a roof for the night, he went in to find himself surrounded by large bookshelves and his long-lost lofty dreams. Life and blood rushed back to his cheeks as he held the hardcovers and inhaled the scent of the paperbacks. Maybe the world of fiction did more to the homeless than reality.

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A Room Without Windows.

I once asked for a room of my own.

Several months and appeals later, I got one.

But with no windows.

As a person fond of windows, I found this deplorable.

Confined to the four walls of the room with a shelf full of books and a painting of a mountain on the wall, I began to make conversations with words on blank sheets and stories inside books with slightly torn pages.

I fell in love with words and together, we realized that we had stories to tell and hearts to win.

It was in this little room I grew familiar with Elizabeth Bennet and her love for Darcy.

Here, I discovered Shelley and her Frankenstein and grew weary of the mysterious things the world held in itself.

The adventures were many, but I was a lover of windows and longed for a room with one.

And when I got one, I rejoiced!

I was no longer a prisoner of my thoughts and imagination.

Now, I had visitors in the form of pigeons and neighbours who took long morning walks.

I began noticing the tasks of the watchmen in the night, and slowly fell into the regular pattern of life.

I grew weary again, and this time, it wasn't short lived.

I wondered if this was what life was all about? Mornings and nights, noons and evenings withheld probably nothing that the stories I read offered.

Horrified with the banal reality of life, I wanted to run back to the room with no windows.

Where I went fishing with Tom Sawyer and pictured the view of River Thames in the words of Pip.

It was here that I wrote alongside Ruskin Bond and the likes because they were my only windows to the world I desperately wanted to belong.

But like words, there was a lot in life, that once said and done, had no going back.

Heartbreak.

Get your heart broken. 

It's the best thing that could happen to you.

You'll never know what love is until someone crushes your heart.

Pour yourself some cheap wine and gulp down your sorrows.

Drown. Just drown in the ocean of pain. You'll learn how to swim gracefully.

Let out all your tears till you grow familiar with them.

Risk your heart. It was made to be broken only.

Heartbreak is glorified in countless forms.

Musicians write songs about it.

Poets pour their words into it.

Artists need it for their art.

However, our heart does not ache for it the way it does for love.

Forever cautious, we carefully guard it against destruction.

But then how would the heart grow fonder if it doesn't break?

Parks and Recreation.

This post is not about the TV series 'Parks and Recreation' or how much I adore Aziz Ansari over Chris Pratt. It's just a tiny musing that might interest some of you.

We meet different people at different junctures in our lives. Some uplift us. Some ruin us. And some, we don't even know the significance of their existence in their lives, but let's not waste these 500 words on them. I became friends with someone during one of the worst phases of my life, and no surprises here, I found him around me every time I hit rock bottom. Which happens a lot, by the way. This friend has always been the one I've had meaningful conversations with. As it turns out, we all come with a set of flaws, and so does he. Unfortunately, in his case, he underestimates himself. Actually, he underestimates the entire cult of nice guys. Nice guys have this understanding that women do not pick them and that they finish last. In one of our conversations, he stated that women might not enjoy his company, whereas they might absolutely thrive in the company of men who are all about discrete business. This rather half-witted concept originated from a movie where a certain actress advises the protagonist on how women will be happier with a man who is an epitome of a forest, but will feel spiritless with someone who is like a park. The writer has portrayed this theory quite beautifully because that's what writers do and in the pursuit of writing something extremely lovely, he might have sounded romantic but not realistic.

Let me tell you this. Forests seem intriguing. With full of secrets, you love maneuvering it at every corner. But that's that. Forests are amazing for vacations or yearly trips but life isn't an adventure. When we are done with the adventure, we all return back to our cozy comfort of taking a stroll in the park. Would we ever stop liking that simple joy of life? No, we won't, because, after a long day of tomfoolery, it's a paradise to spend a moonlit evening in a park. And forests? Well, no one needs a goddamn adventure every evening. It only gets darker and scarier.

P.S. If you’re stuck in a dilemma where you have to choose between a park and a wilderness, by all means, go for the park. There’s nothing challenging about wilderness after you tame and understand its secrets.

A Summer Night Rhapsody

My obsession with nights and the urge to stay awake till the wee hours of mornings began at a very tender age. Be it studying for the next day’s test or to derive pleasure from reading comics, I liked to do them in the solitude of night. The fact that nights are so serene and beautiful, with a sky full of stars enticed me into doing a lot of things, albeit making me an anti-social human.

I don’t know what kept me hooked on to the night. Maybe it was the joy of creating something at 12 A.M. Maybe it was the first poem that I have written at 2 A.M. Or maybe it was the flow of thoughts that walk with a panache into my head after 11 A.M. Nights have always been perfect.

Summers at my grandparents’ place were quite lively when I was a child. My cousins and I would exchange stories on paranormal activities, and most of the times we made them up. I still remember those nights when we would sit up on the terrace, often jumping on the water tank, and just talk. Those were the nights when even the fireflies participated in our conversations-brightening the dark night time and again. I still cannot fathom why even the most mundane things seemed interesting during those nights, because the entire magic of our conversations would vanish into thin air in the mornings. Now that I think of it, most of my cousins are highly reluctant to stay up late now. Quite funnily, even I find it atrocious to sacrifice my nights over them. But who stays awake in the nights? Apart from musicians trying to compose their best tunes, writers trying to put words on paper, lovers mending their broken hearts, watchmen witnessing stories of their lifetime (or not), burglars, and animals.

I know, that's a lot of people.

Anyway.

Some nights could be quite eventful. Even when they are absolutely simple. It is said that beauty lies in little and the simplest of things. 

Tonight, as I stood in the balcony talking to a friend, it started raining. Instead of running into my room, I stood there, letting my senses soak in the aroma, and closing my eyes for a moment. As I opened my eyes, I saw the dog in my colony cuddle with two cats under one roof; I could see a girl cooking in the kitchen and tasting piping hot food right from the bowl, a child pillion riding and tugging on to her father closely.

It does not matter even if all these things have happened in a flash of a moment, it does not matter if they were just fleeting moments. They reminded me how much I loved and adored the nights, again.

And on days like these, only nights will have their say, making me stand by the window a little longer than the usual.

Journey from Corporate Slavery To Creative Culture

“That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.” 
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

Hello!

It has been two weeks since I joined my new job as a writer and I am safely assuming that it is a good amount of period to write down some of my thoughts.

So far, so good.

In some of my previous posts, I have unabashedly mentioned that I have gotten the much coveted freedom from the corporate slavery - a job that I pretty much did because I had no choice. And I sucked at it. 

Sure, it did pay some of my utterly useless bills (Things without which I could have definitely survived. Say The Body Shop and Lush?) but waking up to go to work every morning seemed like an incorrigible task. The best part about that job was going home. Because writing and reading happened in the evenings.

Last night, I had an inane urge to write something but I was too tired to sit in front of my laptop, or notebook, or you know, my newly aquired typewriter. I am sure I forgot that writing is a full time occupation now. So, here am I, writing down some random thoughts while listening to Clint Mansell.

1. Being busy is something very new to me. It keeps my mind away from some horrid thoughts. I do not overthink or smother my life with many complications.

2. While a corporate company has hundreds of people doing the same thing that you do, a creative culture job has very few people who do what you do. And it is a rare thing, you know? Too many different people at a same place. 

3. My new job definitely does not give me a lot of time to fool around. But my knowledge process and learning starts at ground zero. It is a good thing, you know? I get to learn so many new things and see such different people or write in various styles. 

4. These Hyderabad auto drivers are such a pain, I tell you. They want 300 to go everywhere. Hein? Even when the destination is generally around the corner, they want to be paid (Read loot) royally. 

Their excuse: Traffic.

But you know what? Sometimes, you board an auto with a driver who might divulge some details about our city and its politicians. Hear them out, they tell you the real time news.

5. The locality in which my office is located has too many adorable dogs.

And Di Bella coffee shop. Hee hee! (How I love that place and their waffles.)

6. The Monday morning blues have vanished into thin air.

7. While a creative culture has a lot of pros, it has its cons too. You cannot want to write all the time. But you got to. 

You are getting paid for writing, you fool.

8. Above everything, you will have that love-hate relationship with your first job. Just like that ex boyfriend of yours.

It is good as long as it lasts. But when it is over, it is done and dusted. It is time to move on to bigger and better things that shall bring happiness and creativity back into your lives.

And believe me, anything that kills your happiness and creativity does not really last longer even if it shines brighter than a diamond today.

9. Who said writers get paid nuts and that writing for writers is an easy job?

Bring that fellow to me. I will slipper him.

Finally, I am done explaining what I have felt in the past fourteen days.

You know someone truly said it right. When you do a job that you love, it cannot be called a job. It is fun.

On that note, I am off to read a book. Adios!

Confessions of A Writer

Originally written for Metropolis Hyderabad Magazine under the section of confession box and it is here! I have written this article along with another blogger, Sugumar and you can see his blog here: The World Around Me!

Click on Metropolis and explore the site. :D

I am a writer and I live by my pen. In my fraternity, there are my fellow friends who work in the morning and write by evening. A very tedious job, I tell you. As a writer, I have faced my problems but I derive joy from writing. I write when I am happy, I write when I am sad, I write when I am bored, I write when I am stressed out. Writing is the only way I can escape from my daily chores. Not that I am bunking them, but I need to write. At least, a thousand words a day. But I have my own plights too. Yes, I have some confessions. While I cannot pour out the gory ones, I can definitely tell the common ones.

After I took writing seriously, I mean very seriously, I have turned into a grave person. My friends complain that I do not have much time for them, which is quite not true. I do have time, but it is just that…..Anyway, the first confession is I do not like it when people contact me and ask me to write for them for free. I mean, I do have expenses, right? Any writer would feel the same. We have bills to pay, we have things to buy, we are taking time and writing and of course, it is not a social service. Like Joker in Batman said ‘If you are good at something, never do it for free’, and I believe every word that he says. With so many writers getting their books published, the writers have lost their cult-like following. Isn’t it? I do not see a single writer who has a magnificent following after Chetan Bhagat.

And then, there are people who think writers are unemployed. It is so in-appropriate. What about the writers who live by pen? Jane Austen did; did we regard her as unemployed? No, we did not. There are many such brilliant writers. And you know what the toughest part is? It is the naming of characters. The story gets completed in ten minutes but the naming part takes ages. Writing and the time limits are bitter enemies. But what can we do? They go hand-in-hand and deadlines are to be met. It is highly impossible to convince ourselves that we cannot be Jeffrey Archer in a single book. The things we write might be good, and readers might go gaga over it, but we are never satisfied with what we write. We always find it clichéd. How typical!

“I have gone overboard to promote myself on social media, being a first time author. It has made people come back and question my sense of modesty, but in an age where the publishing industry is at the boom I have no qualms of making the most out of social media”, confesses Sagarika Chakraborty, a famous writer and the author of ‘A calendar too crowded’. And I agree with her. Any good product reaches the market only with good promotion. Similarly, even writers need to promote their books. One cannot expect a book to be a massive hit by just putting it in the shelves of a book-store.

“Basically, writing is something that has kept me from the gloomiest moments in my life. It's nice to know that many envy the way you write and your work is being praised. But, writing is something only few adore, and only few bother to read.

Working against the deadlines, slogging off late in the night, typing stuff, writing doesn't seem that wonderful at those times”, confesses another writer, Aditya Kasibhatla.

So yes, we all have our major and minor glitches, complications, confessions and we, writers, pen them down, make fun out of it and laugh at our own expense. That is us!

-Sunaina and Sugumar