The Twenty First Birth.

"Sometimes the hard times won't leave me alone...."

Reality checks are painful for me. If they weren't, I would've checked how long ago it was that I stopped writing.My hazy memory places it to around two years back.I could probably tell you why. A faulty internet connection, leading on to loss of habit, unwillingness to make an effort and finally and painfully, a loss of motivation. Along the way I was even convinced I'd run out of topics to write on. And for sometime, I had. Then after a log period of guilt-laced hibernation, random observations would come to me, observations that would normally have a found coherent form at the end of the day in another blog-post. But now nothing. I'd forgotten to write, as far as such things can be forgotten.

I could tell you a million things about these two years. About how it feels to be sucked in a quagmire of frustrated ambitions, hopelessness and eventually, a shattering loss of self-worth.A loss that was not so much of self-worth, as the perception of it . I could also tell you about looking into the future, only to be able to see, more clearly than ever, a future of ruins even more desolate than the present I've been living in.

A couple of years, spent so ruthlessly driven by cruel circumstances that, harking back to the song I quoted at the beginning of this post,

' Now the face that I see in my mirror
More and more is a stranger to me
More and more I can see there's a danger
In becoming what I never thought I'd be '

You cannot be wholly responsible for what you are, and I've been tossed and turned ruthlessly till I can scarcely compare myself to the Child I once was. Brishti'r bhejar bhoy hoi na, by becoming evil you no longer suffer evil, and by becoming insensitive you no longer feel the sharp pains that once threatened to bleed you out. But even then, there cannot be a loss of the awareness of the past, and the loss felt, though camouflaged, is deep.

But then, somewhere in the course of writing my now almost forgotten blog I learnt, from an infinitely more talented person, that whining never helps, and true to my thirst of bettering myself, I kept it to a minimum there as I hope to do here.

You see I'm merely building up to the renewal of my writing phase, a prologue of sorts trying to fill in a gaping hole in what I initially meant to be my chronicle more than anything else. I feel compelled to start anew, afresh, continuing my chronicle in another  private domain, my readers( if any ;) ) chosen by me. And hence, The Twenty First Birth.

I send up a prayer, hoping that this is more lasting effort than the last, a chronicle that continues, as I reach the end of the first of the innumerable efforts I must make, building a sense of worth.

(Lyrics courtsey John Denver.)

No Poetry Is Poetry Enough.

What I concieve is poetry, what I write is a poem and between them falls a shadow so dark that it seems enough to plunge one into cynicism; A shadow so large that you seem to never reach its edges.

Writing.

Just through a blessed Easter weekend, it hit me.I've hardly taken out  an hour over the past two months for something that had transformed into a love: blogging. With my PC out of order, I had a ready excuse, but then again, I could have used the one at the library. It 's been a mad, mad time, but I haven't complained even one of the very, very, many days I've woken up with a throbbing pain in my body. "A body as young as mine can adapt"- I told myself every such morning, but there must be something wrong with work that consumes you so that it has started weaning you away from what you love.

It's heartbreaking that I no longer find an inspiration to write, and the few vague thoughts that cry for expression don't find willing hands. I've always believed that fatigue at the end of the day is awesome. It gives you sleep that is therapeutic.I'm not too sure anymore.

I'm not particularly gifted. My posts often come out garbled at the end of the day, but its a release. But glancing behind I  realised  something else too- my posts form a pattern: A pattern of growth.
Its amazing how starkly obvious this pattern was. In the one and a half year of journey this blog  has seen me through, it has amazingly chronicled personal growth.

And with that realisation, came another: You take a large credit for it.
For all my strong belief that I write for myself and my knowledge that I would continue writing even if  there was no one who read it, as indeed I did for almost the first eight months of my blogging, I know that you reading pushes me on to put an effort to make my words readable. And I know that you reading compels me to draw from a reservoir I didn't even know existed, in times such as these.

Someday, I'll find the courage to write as if no one is reading. To strip to an ugliness that's me. But before that I must continue writing what I write, in the process sketching out my imperfections.

And before that someday comes, I'll keep returning, to this lost corner of the cyberspace,drawing comfort even in its imperfections.

Realisations.

I wish I could call my blog a Happy blog too, but it isn't and if I tried to make it so, I would be being a hypocrite.

All the last two months I was literally leading a 7 am to 12 midnight existence, I finally realised why I write what I write. I love writing. It's as simple as that. And strange too, coming from the only writer in an entire family of Doctors. I'm a kind of a black sheep in that sense, but that's totally by the point.

I write out of compulsion. What I write maybe senseless unorganised crap, but writing it shall be. And besides, very sadly enough, there's little, too little scope for me to indulge in all the things that I think are wonderful. Painting, photography.

And there was also another realization. If you deliberately concentrate on the better parts of your dreary life ( yes, they will be there no matter how dead you are), If you consciously make an effort not to let your lows spill into places you keep returning to every few nights and is invariably the last thing you see before you hit the bed, then you still have hope.

My posts had taken on a monotonous shade of grey, and I don't think I like that anymore.

Because, if there's something you love, its always worth the effort to make it happy, isn't it?

The Beaten Road.

Let's just say I'd lost my way. And life can lead you to strange paths. The roads I traversed are not worth documenting but I just felt like announcing, "I'm Home".

A crashed hard drive and lack of time and energy made me almost forget the look of my blog, but the writing couldn't be forgotten and though most of my scribblings would seem sadly out of context, I might publish some of them.

To newer ways.
Cheers mate.

Of Careless Decisions.

This day, a year back, I became a blogger.

It was a carelessly made decision, and it showed. I didn't care, there was no one to read it and I definitely intended to keep it that way. Then I realised that other blogs existed in the blogosphere too and I started to read. Reading made me comment and somewhere down the line my blog started being read too. The initial comments made me wonder. Comments were commented on the readable. So I tried my hand at better expression, and to another wonder, I was not as inarticulate as I considered myself to be.

This blog has seen me through a terrible year, and after a brief high of April-June, the slide has seemingly begun again. So it is only fitting that I remember its first Birthday. (Ah! the selfish alter-ego intervenes: you need it to see you through another long time.)

Happy Birthday, dear blog, and may you live for evermore.

"Through language we explore experience, emotions, the very essence of our existence. Unless all that we think and feel can find expression in natural, coherent words, we have not come of age."

All the growing up that is left, I'll do it with you.