The writer's block..the first random interactions between the pen and paper

I have been contemplating the thought of putting down the memoirs, no matter how irrelevant in a form. Any form. Colours, stories, music or maybe a combination of all. It may be a useless stuff for everyone else but for me a heady mix that can drive me to a great high.

I have always been selfish. Like this. Maybe selfish is a small word. Maybe obsessed, a part narcissist. I say a part narcissist because I’m not obsessed with physical beauty. I’m obsessed with behavior patterns…how people react, what they wish to do, to themselves or me, what they want from me and how can I get what I want, without hurting the senses and the sensibilities. All and all its an “I” thing.

I’m not assessing as to what “the” people would say, because that counts as one reason for the discontinuation of the work I have so earnestly taken up from time to time. From time to time I have been inspired by people who had the courage to write biographies, maybe, theirs or others. It does need a great amount of courage to confront the demons of the past. The first time the demon comes across you just live through it waiting for the sunshine to come out of the ominous clouds, thinking this is life. But a second time?? Giving a chance to the world to raise fingers, to splash shit on you for a past that cannot be undone. Too bad for you. Too good for the world. Too good because the world like hurting u on old wounds, where it aches the most...like an old toothache. Too good, because the world never forgives. Too good because the world forgets, its memory is short lived. It feels great to pick out an old scandal and fill up the sensibilities with juicy details. It gives the devil’s numerous arms of chatterboxes and innumerable tongue of gossip mongers the same pleasure an old lover gets in discovering a long thought- to- be lost letter from a sweetheart.

But still I want to write. Because the flip side of the devil stands an angel. I don’t know what the angel has to say to this, but I’m more concerned about the vast majority that lives on the sides …torn between the devil and the angel. Torn between the high and low. Between the past and the present. Between the rich and the poor. Between living an empty life and dying a full death. Mediocre people. Common Man. Bright people, who since their childhood are told that they would be “someone” some distinct day. The distinct day never arrives, because the devil knows the art of putting it out as bait, so that the day seems only as distinct as it was when you first opened your eyes. The donkey and the carrot. People who cannot please and are easy to please. People who have the money but no life. People who have a life but no money. People who are nowhere or everywhere, if you look a wee bit carefully. People who started climbing the ladder but are still stuck in the middle, maybe because of someone’s leg shoving in their face. Maybe because of a traffic jam. Maybe because of the black cat just crossed their path. Maybe because the polythene of neighbour ‘s household waste actually aimed for the community dustbin landed on them Maybe because it’s the weekend and they just want to relax for a while. Maybe because it’s a workday and they are caught in the grindstone. Innumerable reasons. But all sane and produced out of experience and logic. Comfortable enough excuses to put the destination of your life on hold till you are on death bed, regretting about the right things lost, the wrong things found, about the done and the not done.

You know what I love most? Meeting people. Getting to know them. Finding them in me. Finding me in them. Finding the past in the future and the present in the future continuous. The experience intoxicates me. Those first meetings…with someone from office with whom you never went beyond official talks. A guy you met on Orkut and have talked on phone innumerable times. A school mate whom you remember as a scrawny kid or a bright all rounder. Some one who looks all different than what you imagined and thought. First meetings always guarantee that you do not get in any kinds of scraps because it’s the first time and both the parties are at their polite best. But that is there where it ends. God gave me the art of drawing out people, sticking to them and the genuine curiosity to know them. Beyond that I, the mean of the medians, hardly know what to do. The silence hangs like a scorching about to burst volcano whose heat threatens to annihilate the speaker and the spoken. T he said and the unsaid .Not that I hate silences. But because I love them. Because it’s the most beautiful gift that god gave. Not to be shared with everyone. It’s the sanctum sanatorium for the lovers’ .For kindred souls. For you and God .For you talking to you. For two people who sleep together, comfortably in the knowledge that the silence of the night makes their skins talk to one another and their hearts settle in an equal rhythm Not strangers whom you have met for the very first time. Why does this happen? Because I have been a loner all my life. A loner with a genuine interest in people. In quietining their troubled minds. In being a balm to their souls. The irony is that the balm has no ingredients to keep a relationship going. It shouts for a new person. And stores the memory of the one just met to be used from time to time like a rose kept in a book. Not that I lose touch…but I come only when the balm is needed for the soul, or for the body. Never before the balm is needed, nor after the cure has been given. The healer with magical fingers and dancing eyes who finds cure for lost hearts and withered souls but can’t find a medicine for her own wounds.

I once read somewhere that just before we come in the world, the great power above places his hand on our heads and gives us a path to follow. To some he gives great riches, others a life time happiness, still others the art of making love. A curse and a boon combined into one. Poor Riches and richly poor. The art of making love and never be loved fully loved in return. To be able to give any guy a hard on within seconds and be called a whore. To me he gave the “talking silence”. Silence that listens, empathizes, builds dreams, make s heart meet but is unable to find a silence that talks. Partners. Equals. A measure for a measure.

Not that I’m angry or unhappy with the gift. No if given a chance I wouldn’t redeem it for anything else…Because with another gift will come another curse. So it’s better to live the one that the master chose. At least that ways I do not have to take the trouble of thinking for a gift. Ya I’m a coward, scared to make my own decisions. But then whatever way you take trouble is sure to follow. There is nothing as an all rosy and all thorny path. Just that the roses and thorns coexist, like siblings.

Sometimes I wonder why I am writing this. Maybe its absolute nonsense. But my only hope is our growing population. Someone will read this and will like it. Someone. Oh I’m fine with just one person reading this and thinking, she did a good job. Thinking genuinely, not out of pity.