The rains and the coming back.

It rained! and I always love when it does. Everything looks washed clean and full of life. A rain is all it took for me to comeback from this dry spell I've been having (writing wise, on this blog). It rained and it rained too loudly for you to even get your thoughts in place. It was windy, the patter of the rain on the windows was making it difficult for me to even look out.

The rains are here, the rains bring respite, the rains bring hope. The dry summer heat has filled me (and everyone) with irritation, anger, a certain desperation and with the downpour today it looked like the wind and rain had taken all that away.

It started pouring at about 6 in the evening, I had just gotten back from work. I was a little agitated anyway because I was hungry and because some days are just so annoying. I just sat there in my big chair, eyes shut, thinking what I'm doing with myself. And just then, thunder, the light breeze had become a little charged and somewhere in my house a window made a loud thud as it hit the frame. I woke up!

I looked out and I thought it must be pouring, I was disappointed when I looked at the pale blue sky and the light brown dust being carried by the wind. I wanted to make myself a cup of coffee and simply retreat into my bed.

And then magic happened!

It started pouring, the rains were here. They were not the rains that I'd witnessed in the last few days, it was not light showers. These were rains, the hindi film romantic rain, the "barish me cham cham' dance tune rains, the 'peheli baarish' rains. This downpour reminded me of the Shubha Mudgal song ' Ab ke saawan'. It felt apropos. I was out (obviously)

The Leaves and the washed perspective on life!

Just then my overly concerned mother who knows if I do end up having a fever I will be a big cry baby! pointed out that I'm better off inside. But I decided to use the old "5 min sleep' bargain with her. "Yes Maa, 5 min" by this time I'm drenched. She knows there is no point in asking me to come in. But just because she is my mother, she chooses to ignore my countless pleas and demands that I get in that very second.  #Enter savior#

My brother just happened to enter at the end of my 5 min in the rain deadline, he suggests we go out for a walk in the rain! I happily obliged. By this time I had forgotten everything, I was IN THE MOMENT! That was a magical thing for me, considering that in the past few months I've been living in the past or in the future. Worrying, fretting, imagining. Now, there was none of that. No thoughts of the future, no grief from the past. I'm not suggesting it'll not comeback. But just then, it wasn't. If rains could cure the hurt, the worries, the troubles both imaginary and real, the monsoons would be considered anti depressants.

A few drops here, a reminder of a few drops there. 

But something more wonderful happened, I was there, all ears. Wanting to make an attempt. I wanted to stop making an excuse for not doing things. The life in those leaves, the croaking of those frogs, the crickets, the gushing of the waters down the drain, the thunder, the lightning all of that was so full of positive energy!

I was transported back to a self where I was a hopeful teenager, full of zeal! I just wanted to do thing. Just do them! Speaking of being a teenager, I was reminded of making paper boats with my family and floating them, especially with my grandmother. Just one of those things you do because it is one of the things you can do!

Writing -Bits from my lil red book

"You Never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write."

-Saul Bellow

I read this quote and instantly I was awake. It is late in the night and as usual I am sitting and reading through things people say about writing, reading and books. (guilty pleasures). Yes! and I came across this quote and it fit, I picked my little red book and started writing.

I realised how every writer right from a Oscar Wilde to an amateur one feels the same kind of things about their writing. Nobody is looking to sell a million copies. Great writers are not churning out books because they want to sell, they are writing because they want to write, they want to be read.

Writers want to escape from whatever they are seeing and they want to write about it. They want to scream from rooftops about what they feel. Every writer sees something 'tell-able' all the time.

I feel most writers start with the process of wanting to write something different, change their style perhaps, but eventually it gets too much, they have to comeback to their element. It feels like an experiment at best. People who write humour stick to that, people who write crime stick to that. It feels right.

Writers are obsessed with writing something that will change the way the world works. They don't have to have to be the greatest ever, they just believe that everything they are writing is just going to be mind boggling and sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't.

Writers love drama, they can write fiction or non fiction. The soul of the story is highly dramatic, writers see their life and everything around them in HD (High Drama) The glorification is amazing, the exaggerations are pretty unbelievable,  the emotions are on the brim, a writer is never devoid of emotions.  

A writer wants people to identify with the character. They will write twisted characters, very complex and yet beautifully incorporate some emotion because of which every everybody  identifies with the character.

Most often writers don't care about genders, I love that most writers write male and female characters who can very easily be interchanged and the story would still remain the same.These characters can be identified with by people of any or both or either genders.

Writers see beauty in everything, everything they see they want to write something amazing about it, most of the times it is difficult to write about everything and still there is parallel script that is running in their head. Some of it sees the light of the say some of it fizzles out, but people who write generally want to talk about everything.

Writers are romantics! Writers want to write a world where everything somehow sorts itself out for better or worse. They want to see a solution, they want an end. They want their characters to find some closure. 

They love their characters, good, bad or ugly they love their characters and want only good things to happen to them. 

The depressed poet!

Ah! my head is exploding!! Like actually exploding with stuff. I hate to admit it, while I enjoy the process of knowing about myself, It is painstakingly tedious and most of the time I feel like I am losing myself.  Everything about Me; may be it is a good thing, may be I am evolving?

 For a very long time I tried my hand at poetry and wrote quite decently as well, but today I realized that I don't write poetry when I am happy, I have a major writers block when I am happy. I am kinda creeped out by that. My poetry writing skills directly reflect my state of mind.  It's funny. If i like what i have written it means I am pathetic and sad with life, if I hate it, I am happy. My poetry writing is like a litmus test for my emotions then?

I had the same discussion a few weeks ago, does pain really bring out the best in us? if it does, isn't it too big a price to pay? I think I get the hang of it now. May be it means that pain brings out the best in you, even when you don't intend for it to. All the work you do when you are upset, sad or gloomy is a distraction and is a product of 100% dedication of wanting to get away from whatever is bothering us. We increase the complexities in our art or work or running only because we want to get away from whatever is bothering us. May be that is why our work becomes better, that is probably why the more gloomy the person the better his work. Van Gogh to Emily Dickinson or Marilyn Monroe were in a dark place when they delivered some of their memorable works. Then there are few more examples like JKR who were in a really bad place in her life when she started off, she was a single mother, unemployed, going through life. Walt Disney was a failure when he made Mickey.

Again back to my poetry writing; I have written a few, none of which are on this blog, Those poems are really an escape. I would never go back to reading them again. They are proofs of the lowest, bitterest, saddest I have felt. Don't want to revisit those dark places again now, do we?

The story of why i need to scribble :)

Here is a rather small reasons of why i 'need' to write.

Writing is more than a passion, it is an escape. I begin wondering why I even started writing, and I am constantly led to the fact that everyone in the family has been a good with words (yes! grandparents and all). I feel like it must be them, however I don't think my writing has genetic origins, so I have been thinking of the reasons I feel reading or writing

1 ) Its an escape :The world is full of shit! My life feels like it sucks... but a book gives me hope, it fills me with a weird sunshine sorta thing.  I see that life will get better 

2) I write and read to keep myself "literate" :I believe that one must keep atleast his literacy alive and not by reading sign posts. Writing is a great outlet to use my education, its not like education helps any other way. ;)

3) I write and read to help myself  : I need to write to tell myself I'm doing something that is important to myself, I have something and I have an opinion and I have a platform, I could not have asked for more. I think i should use it.

4) I write and read to have great conversations : I have met people like me, I have had fun conversation with them the only reason being that I write/read and them too. It draws attention away from the gossip, the "outer" self image and all that. It sounds selfish, but yes, I think when people have an hobby, it makes life better because they understand why you are passionate, crazy and hopefully connect to you.

5) I write and read to keep myself sane :The insanity in a book engrosses you to the extent that you come to terms with your own insanity and make peace with it.

6) I write and read to keep my imagination alive : I believe that when you read and write, it gives your imagination wings, and beautiful wings! . In a world so lack lustre,I get to read somebody elses life that I am inspired by.

7) I live by the quote "you can't make all the mistakes yourself so you learn from others" : Reading gets me to see that in the characters and extend the same to the people I meet. I don't have to become a Harry Potter or Hermione Granger to know that kindness and bravery can take you a long way!

8) I get to add traits to my personality : when you read, you draw from the book (very subconsciously). I became the cold(awesome) in-your-face Howard Roark... ofcourse I was threatened  to give it up or been thrown out off class! But Roark lives in me.. :P

9) I  am not a better judge of a person, infact a book tells you never to judge : Everybody  has a back story, I don't feel like judging because I get it. It is difficult to comply and fit in, when you actually don't.

10) It gives me better things to invest my time in :There are issues in the world and yes one must be interested them. A article or book that speaks about an issue or a great life makes you want to do something spectacular with yourself. Its a big thing! If a book can push you towards being a good person or atleast make you have the desire to become a nice person, its a job well done.

11) Most importantly reading gives me a sense of humour : A person without a sense of humour draws pity from me... I feel sorry for people who cannot laugh or see the beauty of the laughing. A book presents me with ample laughter sometimes with joy, sometimes with sadistic pleasure and sometimes simply because of its simplicity.

This post is about reading and writing... I think both of them in my case can be used interchangeably considering that I love writing as much as i like to read... and writing does the same things as reading (to me)