Of books and writers

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and the sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.” 

~ Ernest Hemingway

It rained yesterday, a good, earthy summer rain. It has been raining now and then since the last couple of weeks - the first moody spells of the year that have washed away the lifeless, sun-baked stagnancy off one and all. I hope they'll wipe the dusty panes of my mind too, and let me see the world more clearly so that some calm can be restored in my writing/blogging hours.
And so, somewhere between waiting for it to pour while grumpily editing a convoluted manuscript and the echoing persuasions of "you should write more often" from friends and family, these strikingly illuminating words of Hemingway happened. They further took me down memory lane, to a good ten years back when I had to present a paper on Hemingway's short stories as part of the semester-end evaluation for our Modern American Literature course. As an ode to his bizarre, very shortly-written short stories (there are some that are barely a page long), the title of my paper chuckled, 'The Difficulties of Reading Hemingway'. Being someone who worshiped Hardy and Keats and tried to emulate their romanticism, I wasn't too enthusiastic then about his curbed expressions and economic usage of words. Literature meant to describe, to paint a world laced with words. I remember the awkward look of our professor, who was quite the proverbial taskmaster, when very emphatically I ended my talk with how the great writer of his times finally shot himself in the head. Yes, I was that thoroughly tired of his brilliance that apparently the whole world got, but me. In stark contrast, over the recent years, I'm amazed at the candour that I find in his writing. The very understated style that once annoyed me now astonishes me - the art of saying so much in just a handful of words. Not for nothing they say, you don't read a book once. As you grow, so does its world and the characters living inside it.

PS. My current reading stupour comes from Elif Shafak's The Bastard of Istanbul. A plot that skids between two completely different geographies - Istanbul and Arizona (peppered with bits of San Francisco as well) - and houses at least thirty characters of which about fifteen carry the narrative forward, it's a whirlwind of a read. At times I felt the urgent need of drawing a family tree so as to not lose track of who was where and when. But like I have said here before, the element that tugged at my heart amid this chaos was Istanbul - its charming cobbled streets, the call of the simit seller, the greedy seagulls hovering over a ferry on the Bosphorus, and the history that coats almost every building of the city. There lies the pull of the novel. So yes, go for the atmosphere and for a detailed critique of the general Turkish attitude toward the Armenian genocide.  

Renewing, restoring

I have been away for more than a month, though it feels much more longer than that. It has been ages since I've created anything or given shape to any of my countless mute ramblings. Words, other people's, are all I have these days, across which I splosh copious amounts of digital red ink. At times it feels strange, even a little cruel, to be striking out ambitions so ruthlessly, to tweak thoughts so mercilessly that someone would have spent hours constructing. But that is how the world works.

What does it take to realize that there's always, always a little corner somewhere where days recycle themselves and things start afresh? That there's still a world of splendour waiting on the earth that we haven't seen? A walk to the nearest plant nursery. A stroll amid the stoic, old tombs. The palm-sized, sun-hued hibiscus tells you that; it's velvety petals tickle you with life and joy, rubbing some of that magic on you. The inviting archway of the tombs that have been standing there forever and are currently undergoing a much-needed face-lift, say it too.
With the tropical winter breathing its last, well almost, and a very short-lived, confused spring blooming here and there, it's time to start afresh. To renew the yearly stack of hopes, to air the room full of dreams, and to get cracking before summer takes over our lives. Here's to hope. And to more blogging!

Writing, editing, remembering

"Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”

~ Rilke

"Has she stopped writing?", asks a somewhat worried father to the husband, and before the latter could come up with a suitable answer for one who harbours strong hopes of seeing his daughter as a successful writer some day, the father concludes, "I can see her writing has deteriorated a great deal after your move back to India."
During this habitual weekend phone conversation, the daughter lurked conspicuously in the vicinity, trying to be a part of it while idling with a cup of tea and a fat, never-ending Barnes and Noble copy of Anna Karenina. But somehow the sharp din of the word 'deteriorated' reached her ears and stayed there for some time. It wasn't like she waited to be told about it, because she knew, deep down in that iffy corner of her heart, that there is some truth in her father's doubts. That these days, she cannot write.

For a myriad of reasons, both wrong and right in their own situation, it has been like this for the past couple of months. True, there's an absolute lack of inspiration in this coldhearted, perpetually shrouded by pollution city. Concrete cannot lead to creativity. Period. Then there's this recent job, where I sit, for the most part of the day, editing manuscripts of others' writings. When you have to pin, tuck and shape someone else's stories, it's a little difficult to find your way back to tales of your own. While being a part of their imaginary worlds, I often get wrung out of mine. 

And then, the autumn child remembers. With uncountable sighs. It must be autumn somewhere. The leaves must have turned somewhere. The trees must be spitting flames somewhere. It must be like this somewhere. Somewhere, but not here.

A little bout of self-love

What do you do when you are happy? I cook. Yes, and pretend as if I'm the queen of the world, more so when it is the least expected of times for anything worth celebrating. I am finally done with the Creative Writing course that I have been doing for the past few months and to be honest, I could not be more pleased with myself. Off late the course was getting too much to live with and let's face it - how could one be even remotely creative while chalking out one's cross continent relocating plans. But I trudged through it all somehow, all thanks to our ever patient and understanding tutor.

Now to hop on to the actual reason of the celebration (I do meander a lot, don't I?!) - the result of the final assignment, a short story, came in last week and ever since then I've been floating on cloud nine. Fortunately, I had a plot tossing and turning in my mind, the rough draft of which was lying abandoned from a couple of months. Despite half the work done which made the final draft a tad simpler, I remember I had submitted it halfheartedly. Of course, my routine procrastination played some role in that too. But with the feedback including chunks and bits like "skilled and stylish piece of writing" and "polished and confident handling of dialogue and narrative", I can't help but be a show-off. Well, for the time being at least!

Fanning my amour propre was the sudden rise in temperature to an early summery 72 degree Fahrenheit. Cool evening breeze, a long walk down the old lake trail, counting the cackling geese on the newly leafed trees, a very late sunset followed by a simple homemade dinner of pea and basil pasta - one roaring weekend it was.

Miles to go...

"Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing."
~ Sylvia Plath

Just when I was submitting a creative writing assignment yesterday, something hit me with a quiet yet brutal force. Why is it so hard to believe in oneself? This question does not just ring in my doubt-prone ever fretting head, but the each one of us who has tried to be creative in whichever way. There are times when we just fall flat on our faces refusing to get up. But then we always do, for so huge is the urge to carry on, on this never-ending journey of dejection and lucklessness. The in-between moments, the ones between applaud and despair, are the ones where we question, fear and sometimes lose all hope. For someone like me who suffers from chronic pessimism, that 'sometimes' becomes most of the times. I don't know how good or bad a writer I am (or if I am a 'writer' at all!), but I do want to be someone some day. Even if it is through just one story. Just once. Thus the battle must continue, for how long who can say.

A tiny fragment from a lost moment (it just flew in while I was halfway my rant!):

"She was late that day. Again. Bus no. 256 had left. For someone as blindly confident as a race horse when amid friends, she often found herself miserably vulnerable in such situations. Standing neat in a cerulean dress and black heels, she could sense her flagging self clam up like a morning glory at night. The bus would not be here before another hour. Even the hands of her watch crawled labouriously, ticking reluctantly. Her eager eyes scoured the almost empty bus-stop hoping for someone to appear, for a flicker of that sudden surprise, like a deer appearing on the middle of the road out of green nothingness. She fumbled inside her trendy taupe tote, fidgeting through the tangled mass of keys, Kleenex and cosmetics, fishing out a book. It was a collection of short stories by Margaret Atwood. Books had always comforted her like a mother comforts her bruised child. Words gave her strength, cleared the clutter of emotions in her doubting head. The nagging unease receded into the background like a stale story of the past. She was a lover of words, after all."

November, faithfully yours

It is a beautiful, very beautiful yet desolate November afternoon. The dramatic melange of the pristine, white snow and the blood red winter-berries makes my heart melt. Despite the absence of the sun. Despite the want of warmth.

There is something contagiously ominous about joblessness. First, you scream bloody murder for every lost opportunity of glory. Second, slowly but steadily self-pity replaces self-respect. Not to forget the all and sundry's opinion of you as the sole person inhabiting planet Earth living an idyllic life, where everyday is a Sunday. Then certain expectations from distant quarters of the globe just crawl their way into your space, that carefully constructed comfort zone of absolute anarchy. Of course, the last nail in the coffin is the obnoxious label - 'jobless'. And the rest of the regrets just follow, one after the other, like a continuous line of resolute ants.

Lately, I have been at my wits end for no particular reason, except for a bunch of unsolicited destinies that have tumbled down my way. Perhaps we all tread this autumnal path, only some must endure it for a longer period. We drift along with the tides unwarily and attach ourselves to a whole new existence, one that must always walk as a shadow behind us. There is a tacit beauty in namelessness, in the terrible truths that certain revelations carry. They ensnare you in a world where one is left with very little of one's own, except for a futile bunch of 'what ifs' and the obvious layer by layer of emotional corrosion.

Words have always comforted me during such moments of utter despair, both the spoken and the written form. They work like an emollient on my fractured hopes. But of late, each time I have tried to give voice to my woes, (and mind you, I choose my people well) the content as well as the context just melt away into a clumsy - "Oh, I'm good. And you?" The moment I try to scribble something sane they disappear, back into the riotous corridors of my mind. I have realised my vulnerability, that arrant disappointment that crushes you when you have a whole kingdom of raging thoughts inside that just refuse to cascade out. And by the time I am done unhinging them, there is an impatient nascent batch waiting to join the pandemonium.

I have been struggling to keep up to the one promise that I had quite nonchalantly made to myself on the day I had created this blog - to at least publish one tolerable post every month. Now, howsoever perfect a procrastinator I might be, this is one thing that I have tried to stick to in spite of my reputation. In spite of the fact that promises are darn fragile.

November, faithfully yours.

Forgotten blossoms

This trifle of a post springs from an assignment where we were asked to compose our own little stories in a true Austenesque style. No matter how we fared, the exercise surely brought forth the novelist in all of us!

She stopped to smell the wilted flowers on her way and wondered what it would be like to drown in their nostalgic scent, to be able to hope, live and laugh again. If only she could feel the throb of that once ticklish ache of life in the fragile petals. Couldn't she, of all people, understand beauty anymore?

She had wiled away many a summer on this river bank, lying under the spread of an azure sky, breathing in the verdure as the elfish clouds fluttered past her languid gaze. When she was a wild child, she would wear a straggly crown of these very flowers and dance under a pagan sun, one that did not judge her every carefree step. These flowers, must have been their scores of ancestors then, had been her mainstay to reconnect with life and faith. They had been her moral that guided her back to a fearless world where she could stand undaunted by the demons of society, and a few others that lived in the lair of her own soul. What happened to them, the lessons that she had learnt and spurned alike?

That's it.

Will they come my way? I am tired of this wait, for the words. I can't write. I have been trying, trying rather hard, to write a few simple words that make sense, as a result of which I have five incomplete, badly scribbled posts. And I have this dreadful feeling that I won't be able to finish them anytime soon. All I have are thoughts, a chaos of clumsily jumbled thoughts which disappear the moment I start to type or pick up a pen. It's not only with words, but with everything I love. I can barely read a page before I get all restless and edgy; I am tired listening to the same songs again and again; and there is nothing exciting about this place that inspires me to grab my camera and go shot after shot till I'm happy. I feel a strange loss. Probably it's plain boredom. Or just the jitters of a new place. Whatever...

I remember holding on to One Art by Elizabeth Bishop six years back, after I had read it for the first time, when 'losing' had seemed my way of life. Perhaps I must do so now.

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.