One Day For Myself

I’ve always wondered as to the specialty of mankind in a philosophical way. There is this whole sea of us, but there seems to be nothing to set each one of us apart except our actions and our appearances. And appearances have already been discarded as a criterion in favor of deeds, but when behind every deed there seems to be a purpose and a solid reason as to why he or she did that and not something else, even they will tend to decline. So, I sat down and thought with a cup of tea in my hand (tea helps me think, you see!). What came first to my mind was the way each one of us responded to the events around us, how we said different things to different people even though they all seemed to be the same. How we smile at some and how we frown at others; how some get neither a smile nor a frown but just a plain and simple stare that speaks of a fading recollection that couldn’t span the gap between your history and your present with the clarity you’re looking for. So anyway, getting back to my wonderings and ponderings. And if you ask me what my ideal solution will be, I will turn to Mother Nature. I, for one, would like to have one full day just for myself. I will want the climate/weather to alter dynamically according to my moods. I will have the environments I feel like having around me at every moment.

The onset of winter in Dubai has been quick this year, with a visible change in the climatic patterns over a matter of a few days. Today morning, when I got out of bed and realised I had nothing to do for the day, I was plunged into a bit of gloom: I was far away from home, and the corridors outside my room were silent, making me feel as though I was alone in this world. Then, I opened the curtains. There was a fairly good cloud cover in the skies. The sun was blocked from view once every 5 or so minutes for a span of 5 or so minutes – there was something of a sinusoidal variation of brightness in the room. For 5 minutes, it would be pleasantly dark, and for the next 5, it would be cheerily bright. I got bored after some time of watching this, so I had a bath, put on some freshener in the room, and settled back into my bed to watch some movie.

Even as a person who has only a sliver of a belief in God and godliness (which is enough for a guy like me, actually!), in times of distress or an imbalance of emotions, I have always turned to the natural presence of life around me to inspire me to move on through life as it is to me. When I’m oh-so-terribly-bored, I just sit and watch what’s going on outside. I can’t say there’s a not-to-be-missed scenery set outside my window, but there is the sun, there are the clouds, there is the sleeping desert. In trying to fathom the monotonous existence of the desert life, for example, I realise how these creatures establish a life for themselves and even sans a conscious realisation of what their purpose could actually be, they invariably come to live that way. Mankind, with his mind that purportedly sets him apart, has today evolved into more of a mess than what it could have been. By trying to span the reason behind the existence of every other phenomena around him, he has left himself behind. And I do NOT think this was his purpose. You might ask me why I am bothered so much with the purpose. I will tell you: even if you don’t bother yourself, you will notice that every individual on this planet will live in a way that reflects a broader pattern. Every man born and every man dead will always tell the same story. No matter what he does, no matter how he responds to the infinitely different stimuli in his life, he will always recount the same morals, he will always recollect the same moments. Haven’t you ever wondered why that never changes?

And how is all this encompassed in the One Day for Myself? The ‘one day for myself’ will obviously reflect the indulgence I or you will wish to have. On the other hand, living in a day for yourself will also show you what your purpose could have been. In asking the natural phenomena to follow you, you should also expect Mother Nature herself to guide you through your ways via subtle indications. Paganism had a meaning in itself when its followers went behind animals and birds looking for favours, for that is how mankind would have survived and evolved if men had not inculcated that sense – that sense which told them that the mind set them apart from everyone else. You are born sans that sense, you die sans that sense. But what of your journeys in between?

A Museum For Memories

After having blogged for some 2 1/2 years with considerable success (in terms of viewers and comments), I finally reached a point where my blog was part of my life as it was. Just like I would wake up, brush, bather and head for college as though I was born to do those things, I would sit and write for an hour in the evening. And I wrote on whatsoever popped into my head, whether at tea-time when I drank my tea in complete silence while watching some kids play cricket in the nearby field, or be it when I picked my keyboard up from its place under the bed and onto my lap. Also, I don’t tend to write when there is a silence around me. It seems as though I’m sitting in an auditorium, surrounded by irritatingly curious people trying to see what I am doing. I like to be in the midst of a crowd of people, but each one minding his or her own business. That way, it feels like I am part of a bigger world around me, a world that has content waiting to be blogged(!), while at the same time a world which has been good enough to promise one of its dwellers the privacy to do his work. And so, I turn on some music (which is usually Danger – Keep Away by Slipknot). And ever since my laptop keyboard stopped functioning, I haven’t been able to write in the dark. I use this new plug-in pad to type, and as a compensation for the glaring light of the tubelights, the keys are nice and bouncy! So here we are: I write for an hour everyday in my own little customised environment. And in doing so, I’ve learnt more about writing and all its nuances. The little intricacies, the ways in which you can twist the whole thing without distorting its meanings, the ways in which you can use words to enforce a tiring session of reading-between-the-lines on the reader, and then have the whole passage smile innocently with a bit of subtle humour. But that’s only as far as writing goes. But what about the blog?

It becomes a close relative. I mean, c’mon, IT listens to everything I have to say, and I’ve used it more than once to wreak havoc in the minds of my friends 😛 (like some instrument of chaos!). Of late, however, my writer’s block reached a peak and became a period of its own. The look and feel of my blog weren’t somehow inspiring me enough, and looking back and through all my older posts, I felt as though I had exhausted all my topics and options of things to write about. If I looked for inspiration somewhere, it was though whatever I could have managed to come up with was already there. I even picked up a whole lot of books form the library in order to keep my own novel-in-the-making moving, but nope. Everywhere I went, through every page I crawled, there was only a wall in the end, and whatever I did to look for that special, secret brick in the wall, it was just another brick. Being the same as everyone else never felt so depressing. I did the same things everyday as everyone else, but when the time came in the evenings when I do nothing but sit and sate at my laptop screen, I was worse than everyone else. I was exhausted when I should have been gearing up for something bigger later on. I couldn’t plagiarise in peace! Every time I used some words of Churchill to keep me going, it felt as though Sir C was looking down at me from heaven or hell (where ever he is) and daring me to continue. I have never plagiarised before, but the intention to even begin anew has been defeated. So what did I do?

I deleted my blog on a whim! I don’t know which jackass does that, but by doing so, I felt fresh. Don’t ask me how. Maybe it’s the feeling you get when you have a break up, can’t get over your girlfriend, but see the difference when you burn her picture and flush it down the toilet. It was as though I was taking revenge on a biologically existent being capable of feelings. I have no idea as to how my blog must have felt, but being a page that received some 300 viewers daily, it should have felt pretty bad that it received only such an unceremoniously drab end after such a good run. A blog of 2 years and gone in a flash! Well, I can’t say I started writing furiously and passionately after that. Being WordPress, I couldn’t get the name of the blog back and I had to look for something else. Something that would be neutral enough entice me into forcing it to take sides in each one of my posts that would come up under it. And finally, after a lot of jumping around and Importing and Exporting, I landed on The MV Journal. M V are my initials. After all this, what’s the moral of the story?

Regardless of whatever I do, whatever I write, where ever I write it, the feelings I have towards my work seems to matter the most. I’ve always cherished writing, and not just as a form of art. I’ve used it with great effect to relieve the pent up energy I feel within me at times, I’ve used it with even greater effect to unblock my head of unwanted and walling thoughts. Once, when I had the writer’s block, I wrote about it and then tore down the wall. To a man who loves his work, it will never seem as though he is working to get what he wants. It will always seem as though it was something he was born to do, and that’s how I feel. I could keep writing forever, but if only for myself. In trying to place the blame of your block and of your monotonous rhetoric on the same topics over and over again on the look and feel of your creation, you are betraying the trust of the text on you. If only you can make the words feel like you do when you pen them down, then you will know that beyond merely being a form of communication, those patterns on the paper are your trails on the face of the world. Be it a blog for self-expression, be it a newspaper for information, be it a letter to a loved one for affection, all these things will let people know of hidden dramas, the tragedy and the comedy tucked away in their folds if only you choose to look for them. Your words are your brush strokes on the canvas of the world, to be hung one fine day in a museum built for memories.