I’m writing a book. So, I’m on a break from blogging.

Maybe, if anything really important turns up… I’ll be back here.

The title has nothing to do with the writing. But, does it matter in a world, where a lot of things are metaphorical and everyone has the freedom to read personal meanings  into everything and approach each thing with presumption; I guess it’s normal, and more human enough to do that.

This again has the subtext of random braindrop running parallel through: I’m not sure if many would share a same feeling! Okay, there’ll be a random few. I’m keeping a dollop of presumption, because I’ve had loneliness of standing among people and seeing absolutely no passion for life, at all from them. I remember Suraj Mani from Motherjane asking on Rosebowl (Rockumentary) that,

“A lot of people have asked me ‘how do you manage to do this and make a living at the same time?’ …All of us are sharing a passion. All of us are living a passion. I have a question to ask you, ‘How is it that you can live without having a passion?’”

Writing about this actually made me dig up the video and share it. Enjoy the video!

That’s the feeling you discover that something is your calling. That something will make meaning out of your trifle life, that you’ve thought till then, pointless.

We ended up talking occasionally on chats after he added me on Yahoo! Messenger and it was fun. He talked of all the interesting stuff on the web, it was occasional, limited to tech talks and small talks if it all they popped up, …and gradually came a phase we didn’t talk for months, and that we didn’t talk slipped both our minds. But, then again, we started talking, on some computer issue after a while.

I can’t remember for sure, when we got “really” talking when we started on with all the fun stuff again: web, more web, gags, comics, cartoons, web stuff, people, relationships and we’ve never stopped, unless we get too tired and need some sleep or someone rather important turns up/calls.

These talks I’ve had are among the most productive of things I’ve done in recent times. For no reason why, I’ve not been writing much: so that’s no serious writing of any kind – be it poetry (which I love madly) and stories (which to me plotting doom and playing “god”, both is fun); so with these lacking the graph favored the “talks” in the larger framework of creative things.

I’ve a feeling looming from deep inside me that we’d be rather more than just talkers, we’re bound to create something that’d change both our lives forever. I don’t wish to wait. Let the things fall into place assisted by its own volition and surprise me in the face like the events before them never happened.

I’ve been doing: a lot of stuff, in fact together through the day, through life, and randomly they were creative. I decided that I’ll revisit each love in person: have a one-on-one talk and not make a decision, and open my eyes. So, the decision of where to focus on and “dedicating my whole life to”: should I settle for being a writer, filmmaker, blogger, photographer, copywriter or a creative person who still hasn’t found his calling? Now, just as the “serious” writing phase was about to take shape for the second abrupt time (first, being in school; the college being a dull chasm) my HDD crashed taking with it, a draft of the novel I started. Now, I’ve to start afresh, since I was stupid enough to overlook the importance of backup even after reliability of digital data on a HDD was tested a few months back with the whole set of photos that I’d shot on my mobile (which really is a lot; oh, that was a heartbreak). Life drops in scary free-fall when you move into assess the damage that’s been done mode.

Fresh, is a new sign. Maybe, it’ll do me and my story good.

Most of this is a mood-swing, the rest is regurgitated crap from past creative-times: yes, that reminds me of how I have been. Yes, I’ve been good to the point where I’d my takers. I wrote and people read. Then, comes a point where you stop. Start again, you look around and you don’t know how it will be: this has become more than a game of show and tell. It itself has moved on. How crazy is that, something deep inside you taking a life of its own, packing its baggage without your notice and just leaving.

Okay, I’m concluding that you’ve either come to decide that, “I’m never stepping my soiled foot on this forsaken blog again.” or “That, this guy must be a higher form of life that skipped evolutionary paradigms and evolved in superior cortex.” Thank you for allowing to make my two cents. Yes, I was actually not paid to say this. But then, I paid myself: in human eccentricity!

I can’t wait long for good things to happen, since I’m selfish. Since I’m selfish, I need fodder to keep that same instinct intact.

This makes things harder for me: life isn’t like a dream, (though it’s possible) except that this isn’t a point where I can wish for a big bar of chocolate and buy it without going through “if-I-do-this-now-will-I-have-money-for-something-else-tomorrow?”

And so, I’ve to wait. Not just for the chocolate.

But… we do nothing about the way people around us, people on whom you can subject change upon, are left to learn things the hard way, go through the rigorous factory-like setup of churning out “high school grads” and “grads” until they realize they’ve wasted their years on something they don’t root by the heart for.

We acknowledge the fact that each of us, that each child is an individual, the individuality ceases to be within those lines themselves as we put them through school and college and let them be creatively and collectively tormented out of their natural inclinations. While we’re subjected to a new “…where else, but school? There’s nowhere else to be” we feel the urgent need to look for a better plan.

We talk on length on the need for change while we go through the recursice process that we hate so much and yet send our children through the same hula hoops again and make their brains work like a cuckoo clock.

We know everything yet we don’t want to do it ourselves. How the first step remains never taken and the road untrodden. How we let every generation succumb to great creative damage as it passes by us, when we particularly have the duty of “caring enough”.

I close with my pick of The Best Videos of Sir Ken Robinson, creativity expert; my personal hero.

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

“Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.”

Sir Ken Robinson, Hammer Lectures

“Ken Robinson has written numerous books, most recently “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything.” This talk explores ways to connect peoples’ natural aptitudes with their personal passions to achieve at their highest levels in education and business. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 for his outstanding achievements in education and the arts.”

Do Schools Destroy Creativity? – Ken Robinson

“Sir Ken Robinson says a schismatic view of the mind has marginalized many people’s talents, creating a crisis of human resources. “Human dysfunction…is a bounty for all kinds of corporations and institutions,” says Robinson.”

Sometimes I feel that, this is totally about me. How I look inward and with that insight how I look outward. With a changed outlook. I’ve pawned every lyrical and poetic quality to life that’d been with me sometime after I started writing poetry. Life isn’t anymore poetical. The blueness of the sky doesn’t matter when you can’t just write.

We have greater worries to claim our own. Some of us have been scared to crap of running into a point wherein we should say, “Oh, this is mediocre. This shouldn’t happen with me. Atleast with me.” Because we are all selfish. Selfishness has been so humanized and we’re all led to believe that it’s a part of us that we can’t remove.

I don’t want to accuse you or me in this; let’s just say that, that’s the way we are (and brush it under the carpet, in silence).

What rings in my ears is the line from the Jaagore ad: “Har subah sirf utho math. Jaago re!.”

To be around similar-minded people is among the happier things. I felt like a young kid on a big lawn, fresh on the grass. I kept jumping higher and still higher and it kept making me feel so good.

Back to the Theatre

Bhramaram (2009)

“Ini ee vandi nirthaane povunnilla!”

Went to see Bhramaram at the Soorya Fest (it was the inaugural film) with Soda*, Dee* and Ra*. SMSd everyone with words shamelessly salvaged from a JR*-original (The ones he send out thinking that they would scare the crap out of “friends” who’re on a “secret mission” to steal his ID and “misuse” it). That, he needs medical help is a closely contested fact. Let’s leave that to Infoscions in Mysore, to where he’s packing his bags to soon.

About Bhramaram: it’s too much Mohanlal; yes, you can’t argue about his acting prowess. Something still felt amiss at places (To me Blessy’s best was Thanmatra). So, what could’ve been a great movie stays back behind at the fence where it’s “just good” or “okay”. If I could blame it on the bad projector (and bad speaker-facility) at the Tagore theatre, I didn’t get the point where people raved about the cinematography.

Delhi-6 (2009)

“Zarre zarre mein usi ka noor hai

Jhaank khud mein wo na tujhse door hai

Ishq hai usse to sabse ishq kar

Ishq hai usse to sabse ishq kar

Is ibaadat ka yahi dastoor hai

Is mein us mein aur us mein hai wohi

Is mein us mein aur us mein hai wohi

Yaar mera har taraf bharpoor hai”

Saw Delhi-6 again (with Soda*); this time at the Theatre. I liked it again. I guess, Mehra’s movie was way over the head for some people who wrote the reviews and for the commoner, it was unlike his diet of masala. But incidentally, the “intelligent” crowd at the Tagore Theatre seemed to take a liking! There were occasional applause, that too from an audience of mostly over-40ers. Spotted Mrs. Lily Tharoor, mother of MP from Trivandrum, Shashi Tharoor on our way out.

*: Classmates

I’ve done it too. I’m a restless person. If something needs to be done, I need it done. No, now don’t get me wrong; my life has been the biggest example (for me at least) that I’ve not been doing my things properly. I’ve set things for later, before.

But among the biggest realizations while I’ve been at life (and living) that I’ve made is just one word. “Now.” It’s one of the most powerful words ever! If you think that something needs to be done. Why not start NOW? No, I don’t mean to say that you should get it over with (if you can, you’re one awesome person, trust me!) but starting does the trick for me. It makes me return to it later. There will be the constant nagging that may or may not die off, but… if you don’t return anytime soon is also good, but that’s my personal mantra. Sometime later, some days or years later, when you return it’ll at least remind you of the magic that was then. It may work the catalytic way and make you go on to create things more magical.

So, here is it for you wrapped in no sugar.

“Start Now.”

Go take back your life with just two words. Work on what you love.

Imagine, a time when you were just starting out. The baby-steps that you took at ease in your domain of work, or life: just because you weren’t accustomed to the consequences and you were without any presumptions.

To harbor a fresh mind, a fresher approach every time, while you’ve known the lines and walked the ways is important. Staying hungry and staying foolish all the while, we’ll cut a different path.