అనుకుంటంగానీ..

Over the last few days, some of David Foster Wallace's insights from This is Water have been popping up in my head with increasing regularity; Especially the one about banal platitudes. When put together with the concept of Münchhausen trilemma and Ramarao Kanneganti gari quote, "We are not rational people, Dheeraj. We are rationalising people.", I seem to have gathered the rudimentary components for constructing a metaphysical lattice for the next phase of my life which I have been feeling I've entered in last few months. That somehow there's been a phase transition, that the liminal space of my life from ages 29-33 has finally led to the light at the end of the tunnel.  

Foremost is ofcourse a growing apprehension to accept that there is or will be a silver bullet, a final answer, that one little piece of the puzzle that'll reorient and clear everything up. Most credit for this should go to Nathan. In November, after a few weeks of dipping motivation during which I hardly trained, I created a SWOT chart and called Nathan to discuss how I could plug in the flaws and do better going forward. "I'm not looking for a silver bullet mate, I know that doesn't exist. I'm willing to put in the hard yards but help me with that please", I told him. He responded in no uncertain terms that that plea was the silver bullet I was claiming I didn't want. "There is no answer, Sirish, except getting up in the morning and doing what's on the sheet. I know that doesn't make sense when you're not able to do exactly that, but that is what is to be done. You can't think your way out of this. You just do what's in there. Everything else is just an excuse mate." The harshness hurt but also helped. Its been 6 months since that chat, and while I've had crests and troughs in training and performance, that question of "I'm not motivated, can you do something about it?" has ceased to exist. Like I eat, like I go to office, I train. There are good days, there are bad ones but the activity has got nothing to do with what my mind tells me that morning. I don't want to jinx it but there is hardly any mental wrangling around the question of Why- Why should I train and what are the reasons I can find today not to?  I still ask myself if I want to train, if I'm in the mood, if my body is in the state but there is no attempt at rationalising my way into or out of it. Obviously, I've heard versions of these over the years, Meheranna's "You just write Sirish. It is what you do" being the most exasperatedly endearing, so perhaps the thing about that particular conversation with Nathan had less to do with the matter of the statement than in my exhaustion and reluctance to keep searching for ways around it. I wasn't able to defeat the relentless excuses my mind kept throwing to take me away from the here and the now, so I suppose I found a way to transcend it. Or more uncharitably, ignore it until they just withered away.

Which brings me to the second aspect- a growing understanding that most actions are underwritten by thoughts not too shallow but also not too deep. I once defined emotion as proto-thought and philosophising as extreme-thought with thought itself defined as the most widely used and manipulated mental artefact. Stretching this unscientific, albeit temporarily useful, analogy further, if emotion causes one to commit intense, surprising actions that one might regret or cherish later, and philosophising condemns one to paralysis-by-analysis, the former focused excusively on the present moment and the latter on the widest expanse of space & time one can conceive at that point, then good action is what happens somewhere between those two extremes. In one of their clear, concise essays on Indian Philosophy, Prof. Peter Adamson and Prof. Jonardon Ganeri place the Caravakas and the Advaitis on two ends of a spectrum- one claiming that the world was pure matter and the other that it was pure mind; One advocating pure hedonism and the other pure abstinence. Then they go on to say that the more important, more useful question isn't who's right but that where does one want to stand between those two extremes to lead what to that person is the good life. I spent a large chunk of my youth flitting between the two, craving the purity of picking an extreme. Now, though, I've compromised/ realised/ embraced. Its not that I haven't had this thought before. I had trouble placing myself "somewhere" in the middle. Extremes are more tempting positions to take not just for their purity-signalling capacity but also because they make it easier to orient and move oneself using external markers. Staying in the middle depends on parsing more ambiguous and noisy signals and, in lieu of clear external signboards, a more evolved and stronger internal apparatus.

And that is the third component- a better functioning intuition. In one of his recent posts, Venkatesh Rao talks about moniliths. Put together with his other contention that people are like APIs, it seems to me now that we are, under everyday circumstances, black box monoliths even to ourselves. We might be able to find a rationalisation for every one of our actions, however far-fetched and feeble they might seem even to ourselves, but not only is the opportunity cost high, it is also for the most part pointless. Because once you have a fairly well-functioning advanced software within, the value of constantly refactoring or peering under the hood falls of steeply compared to testing it on the real-world and making changes to parameters if and when required. [Holy fuck, how much of my thinking is so deeply influenced by Studio|Ribbonfarm?]. It still means you need to have spent a lot of time, data and compute in creating the original product (I use it in the sense of a mathematical multiplication of myriad components) but after that until there is an outlier event, it is more optimal to keep it running and tweaking, than spend time questioning the first principles over and over again. 

All of which is a convoluted and pretentious way of saying that I'm turning into the adult I once despised, mocked, and was wary of. One who says that they've decided on a few non-negotiables and will now go through life not having to answer everyone about their choices and decisions with anything more than, "Because that's what I've decided to do". There is something freeing about this mode of living despite the fact that my Black Swan Detector is shrieking. The hope, though, is that I'm able to make the best of both methods- to still be able to confidently act without veering off into obstinancy, egoism, or unquestioning, unimaginative imitation. 

It is also humbling to think that for all my exaltation of language and writing, I have essentially grokked myself into this place. That all the words here, and elsewhere, are for the most part shallower (in both senses of the word) derivatives than the basic datatypes that I insisted they be. I suspect though that this is just another phase and I will change again and then find ways to undermine all that I believe is true now.  Until then though, which for currently unknown reasons will come sooner or later, I will try to be me- whoever that is.

that rite of passage

కిషోర్ అన్న and శారద గారు invited us to their house last evening because it was సోమవారం కార్తీక పౌర్ణమి and they were planning to do a రుద్రాభిషేకం. So we arrived there expecting to find many people, like it was when they did the సత్యనారాయణ వ్రతం, and were surprised to realise it was just us. Because he hadn't started the పూజ yet, అన్నtold me to change into a ధోతి ఉత్తరీయం and sit with him. While changing I realised I wasn't wearing my జంధ్యం and embarassedly informed him. He paused what he was doing and looked at me with barely concealed anger. He handed me a new one, muttering, "జంధ్యం లేకుండా ఏంటి ఆదిత్య", to which I replied, "Sorry" in a low voice, and he said, "నాకెందుకు sorry". Then we spent the next 15 minutes doing the ceremony so that I could wear it at the end of which he said, "I hope I'm not imposing" and I replied, "అయ్యో, లేదండి. దాన్ని ధిక్కరించే స్థాయికి చేరుకోలేదు", and then we started the అభిషేకం.

As I write this, I can see Sravani grimace, at the time of reading, at my easy capitulation. I understand her anger and disappointment. But at some level, what I said is true. In a different context, I would probably have argued and discussed the metaphysical aspects of the ritual itself and his belief. But there I felt more vulnerable because I was invited precisely for being born into a బ్రాహ్మణ household. And I felt like I was pretending to be one without backing it up with learning and experience. The problem was more in the lack of knowledge than in the pretense. Its the equivalent of being the only Indian amongst a group of people from other nationalities, and be stumped at answering the most basic question about India.

During the అభిషేకం itself, I felt inadequate and phony- not because of my lack of belief (not at all, actually, because I was processing it at the level of the ritual itself) nor because of the lack of conviction in my atheism, but because of my inability to learn about and embrace, not either but both, fully. If I had to be stupid, I wanted to be profoundly stupid, not simply stupid. I wanted to have known the శ్రీ  సూక్తం, పురుష సూక్తం, నమకం - చమకం, done the ritual properly, and then sat down to talk about it. తెలిసీ తెలియకుండా ప్రశ్నలు వేయడం ఒక వయసు దాక బాగుంటుంది, చాలా అవసరం కూడా , కానీ ఆ వయసు దాటేసిన తరువాత అది అజ్ఞానం, చేతకాని తనం, మరీ ముఖ్యంగా, నిజంగా తెలుసుకోవాలన్న జిజ్ఞాస కాక ఏదో వాగాలి కాబట్టి వాగే అలవాటు గానే మిగిలిపోతుంది. కుర్రాడికి మగవాడికి అదే తేడా.

While that's what happened last night, during the course of a recent, important conversation, I realised that one of the primary reasons why I feel like and act like a boy, permanently, seems to be because I never learnt how to grow into a man. To rephrase what I said then, "I was born a boy and didn't have to be taught how to behave like one. But to grow into a man, I had to see, learn, emulate, follow someone- which I couldn't. Its usually the father who acts as the template and because that was missing, I sort of never went through the rite of passage." Interestingly, I remember having a few very serious conversations on this topic with friends back in college but I don't think its come up since. I've been thinking over the past few days if that is an excuse but I think it is a genuine reason. Not that everyone with a father either learns or can learn from him, but in my case, and its hit me at the age of 33, that it has been a crisis; I know it is a big word and I'm used to downplaying my confusions and struggles as nothing more than products of immaturity or pigheadedness or affectation, but the last few months have been quite impactful in forcing me to look at these issues without escaping into abstraction or frivolity. 

Again, I don't mean to bring this up as an excuse for my actions or words through my adulthood. Infact, maybe some good has happened by not having that tree to grow in the shade of. Nonetheless, I think the time has come to look at this as objectively as I can- both without arrogance and, more dangerously, an escapist, reflexive kind of self-effacement. Stanley Kubrick once said that talking beautifully about a problem can give the mistaken impression that it has been solved. Similarly, talking openly about one's failings or confusions can give the impression, primarily to oneself, that nothing needs to be done to fix it. I seem to have fallen into that trap. Its like my reflexive sorry to anyone- there you go, I've admitted my mistake. Happy? What more do you want from me- to fix it?.

"Don't hedge your prose with little timidities", writes William Zinsser. In a sense, to be a man is to live upto that dictum. I can't keep kvetching and apologising and backtracking and airing my fucking uncertainities all my life. Or to quote Martin McDonagh from In Bruges, "He's suicidal? I'm suicidal, you're suicidal, everybody's fucking suicidal. We don't all keep going on about it. Has he killed himself yet? So he's not fucking suicidal, is he?". 

Yet there's a part of me that cherishes this openness, honesty, a refreshing lack of pretense. I don't want to lose that. I also don't want to extend my 'extended adoloscence' any further. Don't lose the play but don't trivialise the serious. That is the holy grail. I recently wrote to Sravani that I want to live in a way where I cherish the now, the ephemeral intense short-term without losing the ability to build the more permanent, grander long-term artefacts of life. To use Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan's dichotomy, we need both the interesting and the important. The boyish and the manly. I can see the churn happening inside me, intense and focused, in real-time. Has it happened before? I can't recollect. The bigger question, though, is, Will it lead to transformation?

Thankfully, one good thing is the immutable realisation that any transformation is a sum of innumerable daily actions, not an act of inspiration or blessing. I am trying to inculcate that into my daily life and ofcourse it is slow and hard, but as long as delusions don't cloud my eyes for long, I think I'll keep at it and get there. 

Who'd've thought that Tracy Austin was the genius after all.

talking to about myself

Certain young men¹ seem to go through a phase where they feel so alienated from the world that reality almost bears no resemblance with what's going on in their heads. In his introduction to Dr. Kesava Reddy's City Beautiful, Kasibhatla Venugopal touches on the difference between the literary techniques of Stream of Consciousness and Interior Monologue. I think its a very good dichotomy to explain the difference between 'normal' people and these boy-men. All of us have a certain voice in the head that comments on, elaborates and posits on the events happening outside. But for those boys (I could be wrong- it could be all types of people across all ages but in the popular imagination its almost always young men), the monologue² takes over. It in many ways distorts reality because that is the only way for it to feel powerful and special. Now I call it narcissism, it was once called individuality.

The reason I'm able to declare that with such uncharacteristic confidence is because I was one of those young men once, and ofcourse there are still remnants, and those thoughts have come rushing out since I started reading City Beautiful yesterday. I place it next to JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and Tripuraneni Gopichand's Asmarthuni Jivayatra, and the autobiographical personas created by David Foster Wallace and Geoff Dyer⁶. 

I haven't read Catcher in over a decade but I couldn't stop thinking about it while reading this book³. I still remember the afternoon when Dhruti first told me about it. I think it was during the holidays after Inter (or was it 10th? I think it was inter) and we were returning from CMC in Gaddiannaram. It had just stopped raining but the roads were still damp. I was passionately ranting and whining about something as usual⁴ and we'd just crossed the Kanaka Durga temple near Dilsukh Nagar busstop when she said, "You know my dad gave me this book the other day and that narrator never stops complaining throughout. It reminded me so much of you". I think she gave it to me the next day and I remember reading it in a state of daze that evening. It was like encountering a more articulate but more relentlessly whiny version of myself. I was probably both immeasurably grateful (that someone got me) but also somewhat pissed (hey, I thought I was unique). I remained like that for a very long time. 

Then when I read Asamarthuni in my mid-20s, I recognised him and felt some sympathy to his plight, but I also had grownup a little to judge him a little more harshly. I probably enjoyed it more than I let on but when I gave to to Amma with high recommendations, she said it was exhausting. But I knew that guy- I knew the escapism, the confusion, the cowardice, but also the idealism and the romantic heart. I also recognised the self-centredness and the solipsism. The shallow clarity and deeper confusion that comes from reading/ watching haphazardly before forming a strong moral core⁵.

This book is thematically and tonally very similar; Just that in parts its also laugh-out-loud funny. Devidasu's version of Phony is Imbecile so he compounds that word with Telugu and English cusswords. It now strikes me that Raskolnikov is also a hero cut from the same cloth, so is there a larger tradition of the romantic-loser protagonist in Modern Western(ised) literature? 

I am surprised with how much I loved reading the book when I thought I'd outgrown that phase and didn't have time for self-conceited, ironic young men. So it was all the more bizarre when I was reminded of my own Theory & Practice multiple times. I can see that comparing those works with my own story can come off as unearned and arrogant, but if I'm being honest (I'll leave the qualitative judgement to readers), they did feel closely related. My film Based on a True Story is also part of the same universe in that unwordly young guys have delusions of greatness but are also hamstrung by their clear knowledge of lack of firsthand experience. The difference is that those guys were forced to confront their cluelesness more directly because they were dealing with images and stories, not ideas and opinions.

Like a lot of what I write, T&P too came from a place of strong feeling than any conscious agenda so I wasn't able to recognise then how it too sprung from being that teenager and reading Catcher about a decade-and-a-half ago. For all its iterations and the edits Madhav garu made, I think it is a good story and has some really good bits. I still enjoy reading the climactic epiphany and the monologue on the nature of epiphanies because I managed to capture very closely a feeling that I have and love. 

I'm more worldly now, more evolved and a better person I think. That came from coming out of my head and dealing with reality better, trying to understand the way the world works, genuinely caring and wanting to know about people. But it also comes from compromising more, losing idealism, lowering expectations of myself. If I'm being charitable, I suppose this is growing up. So when I see that there remain shades of that person from all those years ago, it feels good. It feels like I've been on a journey, that I have a history, that I've seen and learnt and experienced and changed, that I'm somewhat interesting, that my life isn't all a worthless illusion. That one day if I go on The Seen and the Unseen, I'll have a bit to talk about my personal history and what led to me being me. It means I have a personality and that does sound nice.

¹I should do a post on my favourite Ebert lines. Top of my head- Certain young men from Into the Wild, definition of Epic from Lawrence of Arabia, Rational Men vs Human line from Searching for Bobby Fisher and the one about the loneliness of priests from To the Wonder

²"It is extremely difficult to stay alert & attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monolog inside your head" -DFW

³A large reason for that was Dr. Kesava Reddy mentioning it as a major influence in the foreword. I should probably stop reading forewords first

⁴I remember a phrase from her Orkut testimonial where she said, after listing a bunch of stuff from films to books to people,"..deni gurinchaina gantalu gantalu mottukuntadu". Bless her soul

⁵The liberal aspect of me assures that that's how it should be. But I've lived long enough to realise that that's not an unequivocal good

⁶Funny enough, even though I adore Meheranna's fiction there isn't a protagonist I relate to as much. Some of the images and mental states he conjures are magical and achingly familiar but not entire characters

if not the self, then what?

Last evening Sravani and I went to see our first professional play- Bell Shakespeare's Macbeth. While the performances were good and we had an enjoyable evening, what affected me most though were the thoughts running in my head throughout the duration of the play. 

My mind was constantly flipping between watching the performance on stage and the thoughts/ ideas/ memories it triggered. Every once in a while I'd go meta and see myself drifting away from the performance infront of my eyes, and either chide myself for being so self-obsessed or chastise myself for being so unfocused. One train of thought took me from Maqbool to Masala Shakespeare to Stephen Greenblatt to making a mental note to check out Will in the World. Another one was so trippy that I felt amazed to have made that leap in almost-realtime, and which catalysed this post. In the second-half of the play on being told about Birnam Wood having to move before he could be slayed, Macbeth cackles with relief because he knows that a wood moving is impossible. Because I knew that the prophecy would come true, it occured to me almost instantaneously that the wood moving is Macbeth's Black Swan event. It is an epistemic fallacy because he conflates knowing something to be an impossibility with it being an impossibility. After a lightning quick homage to Taleb and Popper, a book popped into my head about which I hadn't thought in months, maybe years - Stanley Cavell's Disowning Knowledge. And my mind did a (imaginary?) somersault at the prospect of independently arriving at the same conclusion as Prof. Cavell (who's book I haven't read, so I'm presuming that's what he's going to talk about). 

This is one half of the story. The other half deals with something I've been going through in the last few days. Ever since I gobbled up Tarantino's novel Once upon a time in Hollywood, I've been picking and dropping books, with exasperation and increasing dread, in the hope that something might stick. Till I decided yesterday morning that the reason for my misery was my desire/ addiction to read which stems less from a desire for knowledge than for more nefarious reasons (avoid surprise/ shock, impress others, navigate better etc.), and so decided to read less and learn more from 'life firsthand'. So I literally sat in the train drinking coffee, looking around and feeling pleased with myself for putting an end to my mental gluttony and also warning myself for getting too pleased because I wasn't sure how long I could stay away from my drug fix.

So I was all prepared to watch the play firsthand, let myself be washed over by the sensations and emotions, and to immerse myself in the play. Only that I could do that for maybe 2 minutes before beginning to drift off on the stream of thoughts. Now my question is this- Which is the real/ most genuine me? Is it the one that's taking in the sights and sounds on stage, or the one allowing himself to be triggered by the sensations and going down rabbit holes, or the one who's watching those two and is tired of mediating between the two? Or is it that the first one is an idiot who is being affected by biochemical reactions triggered by those specific sights and sounds, or the second one an off-putting know-it-all who is so enamoured by what he knows that he refuses to see anything without harking back to what he already knows, or the third one a classic example of the modern self-conscious neurotic who is immobilised because he is so unsure of the right thing to do?

My System 1 answer is that ofcourse I'm all three and what I call myself at any point is the aspect which temporarily wins over the other two; There could be more homonculus me-s fighting it out but thankfully last night there were only three strong enough to come to my attention. This hypothesis comes from shallow readings of Prof. Daniel Dennett and Prof. Douglas Hofstadter and Prof. Anil Seth, compounded with the Sante Fe Complexity Podcast and a few other writers, and that I sorta kinda find useful. I don't claim to understand or agree with it but it gives me enough mental tools to deal better with myself. The System 2 answer is something I know even less of but it seems more romantic and more permanent (which also makes me doubt it more). That comes from shallow readings and hearings of Indian Philosophy and Zen, and states that the real you is beyond these thoughts and the only reason you're not able to see it is because you're too attached to these thoughts. I suppose for convenience sake let's call it the Atma. My first question is obviously - why would the atma, presumably calm and intelligent and real, find it so hard to seperate itself from the mind and the body? There is Karma and Vasanas and Buddhis and all that, but that only transfers the question to one of the many previous rebirths when the atma for the first time got entangled with all of this. Without getting too much into that, simply because I've never put in the effort to explore those topics with dedication, I sort of know experientially that there are uses to that philosophical approach. I can clearly see my emotions being in much better check the less I attach myself to them. For instance, the more I question the reason for my anger, the harder it becomes to hold onto it. So to a certain extent, it seems to be useful in managing myself better. So maybe the same is true for my thoughts as well- the less attached I'm to them, the more open I become. Yet, that gives rise to two problems.

One, the notion of self seems to be inextricably tied with memories, thoughts, emotions, behaviours etc. and without those there seems to be no self at all. So when I say to myself, "Let go of your thoughts", am I not giving excessive importance to one thought at the cost of all others? What if that thought is a master parasite slowly taking over the forest of multitude ideas. What if it is wilful stupidity? I know that's a provocative thought but that's because I'm roasting the popular caricature of enlightenment. Two, doesn't that distancing mean moving away not only from emotions, memories and desires but also, eventually, thoughts and is it possible to live in the world without recourse to thought? Everything I know about the world, rules of language and math and physicality, are thoughts, aren't they, and moving away from all that fills me more with dread than with the joy of homecoming. Maybe that is a reflection of my immaturity and identifcation with the wrong things but that state seems like wilful death. I get the sentiment and I'm sure I, like others, fall on the spectrum between no thought and overwhelming thought/ emotion but I'm not ready to embrace absolute thoughtlessness, atleast not yet; As if the notion of I would survive that rupture.

I suppose the desire for thoughtlessness comes not from wanting to be devoid of all movement as much as being unable to control extreme churn. Maybe it is true that the place from which the notion of I comes is different from sections responsible for other sensations vying for attention. Or maybe it is that the notion of I is a loosely emergent phenomenon that itself shapes and shifts depending on many subliminal causes. I mean eventually the entity that seeks enlightenment is also the self isn't it? Why would it want itself to be annihilated if not for self-loathing? 

I think there's something deeper at play here. Both sides, the material and the spiritual, have individuals I immensely respect and who're trying to invent and communicate tools for expansion and enrichment of human experience. The idea is not to roll myself up like a rock and live without ideas, thoughts and emotions but find ways to live better with them. If anyone wants to argue otherwise, I'm happy to walk and talk; I've discovered it to be one of the best ways to go about it.

So much to read, so much to learn, so much to walk.

మై బియర్

"He wants something better than he has. I want precisely what he has already.", అంటాడు ఎండ్ ఆఫ్ ద టూర్ లో డేవిడ్ లిప్స్కీ డేవిడ్ ఫాస్టర్ వాలెస్ ని ఉద్దేశిస్తు. మొన్న మెహెరన్నతో వాట్సాప్ చేస్తూ అకస్మాత్తుగా ఒక చిన్న రాంట్ వర్షం కురిపించాను. వన్ లైన్ సారాంశం - మీరు ఇంత అద్భుతమైన కళని ఎలా సృష్టిస్తారు, మీ మెథడ్ ఏంటి, మీ డీమన్స్ ఏవి మీరు వాటిని ఎలా జయిస్తారు. కానీ అంతర్లీనంగా అడగదలుచుకున్నది - నాకూ మీలా రాయలనుంది, భాషలో ఆలోచనలలో మీ స్థాయి చేరుకోవాలనుంది అండ్, మోస్ట్ ఇంపార్టెంట్లీ, మీరు పొందుతున్న లవ్ అండ్ అడ్మిరేషన్ నాకూ పొందాలనుంది, దారి చూపించు సామీ.

పాపం ఆయన ఓపిగ్గ సమాధానమిచ్చారు, ఆయనన్నట్టు ఇవే ప్రశ్నలు నేను 2-3 ఏళ్ళ క్రితం ఒకసారి వేసాను. 'ముక్కు' లో ఒక పాసేజ్ ని ఎక్సాంపుల్ గ తీసుకొని ఆయన ఇచ్చిన సమాధానంలో రెండు థ్రెడ్స్ కనబడ్డాయి నాకు -  నువ్వు చెప్పే విశేషంలో/వస్తువులో/విధానంలో కొంతైనా యునీక్నెస్ ఉంటుంది, అది చెరిష్ చేయటం నేర్చుకో; కళని యుటిలిటీ లెన్స్ తో చూడకు, అది చిక్కదు అని. మోటామోటాగ నాకది తెలుసు, ఐ అండర్స్టాండ్ దెట్ ఇంటలెక్చువల్లీ కానీ మనసుకి ఊరట కలగలేదే. నీ గుడికొచ్చి వరాలు కోరాను, ఇది కావాలి అది కావాలి అని, అవి నెరవేర్చు కోటానికి కావాల్సిన శక్తి నువ్విస్తానన్నా నాకొద్దు. అడిగిందియ్యి చాలు. చికాగ్గ అనిపించింది. తెలుసు నాకు, టీచ్ ఎ మాన్ టు ఫిష్ ప్రావర్బ్, తెలుసు నాకు ఆయన చెప్పిన దాంట్లో నిజం లేక పోలేదని, తెలుసు నాకు కష్టం లేకుండ ప్రతిఫలం కోరుతున్నానని, ఎక్కడో లోపల చిన్న గొంతు చెప్తూనే ఉంది - నీకావ్వాలసింది నువ్ ప్రోజెక్ట్ చేస్తున్నట్టు పాత్వే టు హిరోయిక్ మార్టర్డం కాదు అడ్మిరేషన్ అండ్ ప్లెషర్ అని. కావాల్సింది అలాంటిలాంటి ఆదరణ గౌరవం కాదు, మెహరన్న పట్ల నాకున్న ఆదరణ గౌరవం. ఆయనకి దాస్తోయెవ్స్కీ తోప్ ఏమో కానీ నాకు ఆయనే తోప్. కానీ ఆ ఆడ్మిరేషన్ కూడా ఎప్పుడూ ప్యూర్ కాదు, ఎందుకంటే ఇట్స టెయింటెడ్ బై జెలసీ, లాంగింగ్, ఎ స్ట్రేంజ్ మిక్స్ ఆఫ్ గ్రాటిట్యూడ్ అండ్ ఎన్వీ. నీల టీచరు, ముక్కు, ఒరాంగుటాన్, డిగ్రీ ఫ్రెండ్స్, చేదుపూలు చదివినప్పుడు ఏవో నాకే తెలీని నా అనుభవాల్ని ఆయన దొంగలించి రాసేసి పేరు కొట్టెసాడు అనే ఫీలింగ్. ముక్కైతే మళ్ళీ తీసి చదవాలంటే భయం - "ఇదొక అందమైన జ్ఞాపకంగా మిగిలి పోతుందని అది జరుగుతున్నప్పుడే అనిపించింది", "గుళ్ళో పూజారి, ఎదురుగా అర్చన పళ్ళెం దాంట్లో కొన్ని పూలు లాంటి కనబడని దృశ్యాలు మదిలో కదిలాయి" లాంటి వాక్యాలు ఎదురు పడితే కచ్చ వస్తుంది. అయినా నేను పారాఫ్రేస్ చేస్తున్నా కాబట్టి ఇంత చెప్పగా ఉన్నాయి ఈ వాక్యాలు కానీ ఒరిజినల్ చదివితే ఒళ్ళు జలదరిస్తుంది.

అయితే నా అదృష్టానికి ఆ మెసేజ్ రెండో సారి చదువుతూంటే ఒక విషయం తట్టింది. మెహెరన్న చెప్పిన ఫ్రీడం, ప్లెషర్, డిసైర్ టు ఎక్స్ప్రెస్ నాకు తెలియని అనుభూతులు కావు. బ్లాగ్ చేస్తున్నప్పుడు అలానే ఫీల్ అయ్యేవాణ్ణి. ఇమాజినరీ ఆడియన్స్ లేరు, డిసైర్ ఫర్ ఆకొలేడ్స్ లేవు, పనికొస్తుందా? ఎవరికోసం? లాంటి సందేహాలు లేవు. యే లిఖ్నే కా మన్ కర్రా మేర్కు, ఆకె పడెసో తుమ్హారీ మర్జీ నై తో ఖుదాఫిస్ అన్నట్టె ఉంటుండె. నాకు ఆయన రీచ్ అయిన ఎండ్స్ రీచ్ అయ్యేదుంది కాబట్టి ఆ మీన్స్ ఎమ్యులేట్ చేసేదుంది. కానీ అది చేసినంత మాత్రాన ఆ ఆర్ట్ క్రియేట్ చేయలేను కదా. ఆస్ బెనాల్, క్లీషేడ్ ఆస్ ఇట్ సౌండ్స్, ఐ హావ్ టు సింగ్ మై ట్రూత్. అంతకు మించి చేయగల్గింది ఏం లేదు. క్షణికమైన పబ్లిక్ ఆకొలేడ్స్ బెటరా, లేక క్షణికమైన ఖుల్కే ఖుద్కే లియే రాస్కునే సుకూన్ బెటరా అన్నది ప్రశ్న. ఇది చేస్తే పక్కాగా మొదటిది దక్కుతుంది అన్న గారెంటీ ఉంటే అదే చేస్తనేమో. కానీ అట్ల కాకపోవచ్చు, అయినా సెలౌట్/ ఫ్రాడ్ ఫీలింగ్ అపుడ్ గిన కల్గితే ఇగ బిస్కెట్. దానికన్న గిదే నయంతీ. అసూయ ఉంటది కానీ 'అథెంటిసిటీ' ఉన్నదన్న ఊరట భీ ఉంటది.

హరూకీ మురకామీ ఒక అనెక్డోట్ దొహ్రాయించి తన రాత గురించంటడు, "I’m sorry, but all I have is dark beer." అప్పుడప్పుడ్ అది కాపౌట్ అన్పిస్తది, అప్పుడప్పుడ్ నిజమే కదా, ఒక రచయిత వాడికొచ్చిన దానికన్న ఇంకేం ఆఫర్ చెయగల్తడు అన్పిస్తది. జిందగీల చాలా ఎపిఫనీస్ చూశ్న, గిదీ అంతే. అదొక షార్ట్-లివ్డ్ సుకూన్, మాస్చర్బేటరీ ఆర్గాసం లెక్క. అంతకి మించింది కావాలి, శాశ్వతంగా కావాలి. మొన్న వై బుద్ధిసం ఇస్ ట్రూ గురించి పాడ్కాస్ట్ ల వింటునప్పుడు అతనంటడు, మన బయలాజికల్ మెదళ్ళు ఇవాల్వ్ అయింది మనశ్శాంతి పొందనీకె కాదు, నెక్స్ట్ ఫుడ్, సెక్స్, స్టేటస్ చేస్ చేయనీకె అని. ఐ హియర్ యూ బ్రో అనుకున్న.

కొన్నేళ్ళ క్రితం వశిష్ఠ తన బ్లాగ్ ల నా పోస్ట్నొకదాన్ని ప్రస్తావిస్తూ అన్నడు నేను రాసిన పదాలు తను ఫీల్ అయ్యే విషయాలకి రూపానిచ్చినయని. అప్పుడు కాలౌట్ అయినందుకు జర ఎంబారసింగా అనిపించినా, ఇపుడు దాన్ని ఆబ్జెక్టివ్ గా చూస్తే కాస్త లోతుగ అర్థమైతాంది. నేను మెహెరన్న లా రాయలేను, వెస్ ఆండర్సన్ లా సినిమా తీయలేను - కాల్తది పర్ క్యా కరూ. జర ఉపశమనం ఇచ్చే ఆలోచనేందంటె మెహెరన్నకి, వెస్ కి కూడా ఏ దాస్తోయెవ్స్కీ నో, సాలింజర్ నో చూస్తే గట్లే అన్పిస్తదేమో. బికస్ వైల్ వాట్ దే క్రియేట్ మే ఫీల్ లైక్ మై థాట్స్ అండ్ ఫీలింగ్స్, దే ఆర్ ఆక్చువల్లీ దైర్స్. అండ్ నా బుర్రల అవి పర్ఫెక్ట్ కాబట్టి నేను చేసేదెది డెఫినెట్ గ ఆ స్థాయికి చేరుకోదు. నావి అనెందుకు అనిపిస్తున్నయంటే అవి ఒక షేర్డ్ హ్యుమన్ ఎక్స్పీరియన్స్ నే టాప్ చేస్తున్నాయి. రాగం లీలగా తెలిసిందే అయినా పాట వాళ్ళది. వాళ్ళ పాట మస్త్ నచ్చింది కాబట్టి షేక్ హాండ్ ఇస్త, గలె మిలాయిస్త, రోడ్ మీద నడుస్తున్నప్పుడు హం చేస్కుంట పోత. కానీ గదే పాట నేను రాయాలె, పాడాలె అంటె కుదరదేమో. మేరె ధున్ మె మెర్కొయీచ్ ఎక్ ఎక్ లఫ్జ్ జోడ్ కె, ధున్ సంభాల్తే హుయె గానా బనాన పడ్త. అబ్ ఖుద్ కా గానా కమ్సెకం ఖుద్ కో తు అచ్చ లగ్న నై. ఔర్ జిత్త భీ దునియా భర్ కే గానె సున్లో, ఉన్కో కిత్తా రట్ట మార్నా హై తో మార్లో, ఖుద్ కే గానే కా సుకూన్ తో అలగ్ హీ హై.    

read, write, write, read

Many of us live by scripts. Our life goals, aspirations, disappointments, perceived insults, escapisms, for that matter almost everything we do after waking up everyday are defined by scripts. Scripts that have been handed down to us by our family, our social circle, the religion and the country we're born in, most importantly the century and decade we're born in among others.

They're like the railtracks of our lives. I think its a useful metaphor. We stop at various stations, travel parallelly with others for times long and short, our reality is defined by what space of the world we're traversing through and who's cordoning us. Infact, when someone's life takes a turn for, what we assume is, the worse, we say that they have been derailed. I suppose the purpose of experience and education is to grow more conscious of those tracks and figure out if we want to head the way the tracks are guiding us.

--

I've been trying to get this blogpost out for over two months now. There are a few notes scribbled here and there on what I wanted to write about: primarily around Amitav Ghosh's deeply insightful The Great Derangement, Mike Elias' post Wittgenstein's Revenge on Ribbonfarm, Prof. Mehta's phenomenal SeenUnseen episode, Sean Illing's essay Flood the zone with shit and, maybe, a bit of Drew Austin.

My constant affectation of saying that I'm unable to write, that I have nothing to write about, that I don't really want to write because I'm afraid it'll only show my incompetence has turned into a curse. I haven't been able to write since the past many weeks. And ofcourse when I don't write, it means I'm not thinking (because this is the only avenue where I let my thoughts unspool) and that's bloody terrifying. I haven't also been able to read much (not just books but even essays and online articles) and what's worse, haven't been able to listen to the more intensive podcasts (specifically The Seen and the Unseen). I only have been listening diligently to NL Hafta and the only reason is because its almost entertainment with a whiff of news to elude the guilt gene.

Damn I need to write. And often. Albeit the imperfect, confusing, inconsistent, meandering, self-indulgent stuff I write. It is my primary tether to reality without which I'm forever scrambling to stay afloat in the vigorous flow of information bits I consume. And I need to keep reading, abandoning books, essays, Wikipedia articles as I do, without which my mind seems to disintegrate and chip-off in medium-sized chunks while its looking at itself.

<Fit in the Geoff Dyer quote from Out of Sheer Rage that I read recently and which is perfectly apt here but I can't seem to remember what its exactly or where I read it. I think its got something do with surety being always just-elusive but not in such a crass language.>

While I can't seem to find that quote, I will leave you with these ones. They perfectly illustrate why I find it incredibly hard to read Dyer: Because he gives voice to my deepest anxieties in gorgeous, lilting prose which creates in me shame for appropriating his words, and envy at his ability to hold onto feelings I am unable to even look at and force them into definite, sharply boundaried words which then makes my skin tingle with electrifying humiliation.
 

“I am always on the edge of what I am doing. I do everything badly, sloppily, to get it over with so that I can get on to the next thing that I will do badly and sloppily so that I can then do nothing - which I do anxiously, distractedly, wondering all the time if there isn't something else I should be getting on with.”― Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence

“The sea: you watch it for a while, lose interest, and then, because there is nothing else to look at, go back to watching it. It fills you with great thoughts which, leading nowhere and having nothing to focus on except the unfocused mass of the sea, dissolve into a vacancy which in turn, for want of any other defining characteristic, you feel content to term 'awe'.”― Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence

for the pleasure of living

I've spent the last few months in a deep struggle. What I realised today could be a false dawn but right now I feel I've reached some shore. Some place where I'm not afraid that I'm lost in the open seas. The struggle has not been material, emotional and only, even if, intellectual. It has been, for lack of a better word, spiritual. What to do? How to live? I've obsessed over this question, worryingly so, flailing my arms, trying to swim now in this direction, now in that, afraid of sinking, of being eaten, of staying like this for a long time, surrounded by infinite water but unable to gulp a mouthful. It has been a horrendous time, and despite the regularity of other things, love, friendship, joys, new trials, it has gnawed at me, bit by bit, in the background, like a nightmare that resumes every night. I have even placated myself by telling that this pain, confusion, fear is a good thing because it still means I've not become numb to feeling, that I'm still sensitive enough to worry about 'great' things.

So what exactly has bothered me: It is, like I said, the question of what do I do with my life. I'm thirty now, so many people I idolised had already done something noteworthy by the time they were thirty. So either I'm a late bloomer or I'm going to live out my life not having done something that I value, something I take pride in, find something doing which I can repeatedly find joy while gaining mastery. I can find only two ways to think of it: Either there is something called destiny, that each of us find out what we're supposed to do, not because it's dictated by society or circumstance, but because we find that voice deep in our hearts, or we transcend circumstance and the dictates of our immediate society to do something that makes us respect ourselves, that makes us feel we've made a sizeable dent in the world we were born into. And no matter which worldview I took as my axiom, I couldn't shake off the feeling that I was doing the wrong thing with my life. Neither does the voice inside me tell me nor do I want to be a middling data analyst in a bank. Then why do I do it? Because of circumstance? Not entirely because some of the decisions I took lead me here. It's not even necessity because I don't have a debt to pay-off, or am in some other desperate need of this money. So why? I don't know. And this uncertainty gave me the chills. This is not good uncertainty, like the time your brain is trying to fathom why it appreciates a film but can't get to love it. This is uncertainty that tells you you're doing something wrong but refuses to give you an explanation or an alternative.

Let me say the word out; I searched for a goal. What is my goal? To what destination am I walking? Writer, filmmaker, teacher, public intellectual, for that matter even Indian or Australian? Once I had that goal, it would help me decide the route, what equipment I'd need to pick up, people I'd need to read, watch, meet. Everything hinged on that single answer. But the answer was never forthcoming. When I was younger, the answer was temporary but atleast as long as it was there, it seemed set. The change-of-mind was frequent but correspondingly, the period of indecisiveness or confusion was shorter. The epiphanies were bright and short-lived but they came in a thick stream. This time around, it seemed to have completely dried up. And for a human surviving, rightly or wrongly, on dopamine inducing epiphanies, the starvation was painful. The withdrawal symptoms were acute. 

I really, really tried to find a solution to this. A rational understanding of myself that would help me design my life for efficiency of some sort (I still don't know what parameter to improve). I thought incessantly, scouring knowledge nuggets in that hope that I'd find an answer somewhere. I even tried tricking my mind into believing that I'd given up, watching mindless entertainment, in the hope that it would unblock some sort of a subconscious volcano. I felt guilty all the time, unable to read or watch anything with full involvement, convinced that I was living in some wrong way. Not that I was miserable all the time, I still functioned normally, to a certain extent, and genuinely had fun in conversations and events. But I would soon be overcome by this nagging feeling and the more I worried about it, the more I felt like crap because I have never wanted to be a calculative person trying to find the optimum solution. My archetype of myself has been that of a wanderer, someone who travels not because he is in search of a treasure but because the journey is the treasure. Somewhere along this path, I guess I wanted to wring out as much out of the journey, instead of letting it come to me, because I started believing that I needed to get the value of this treasure. To extend the metaphor further, I started second-guessing every stray path or every plant that piqued my curiosity to ensure that I was getting as much worth, forgetting that I didn't want to seek a treasure in the first place precisely because I wanted to wander to places where my curiosity led me.

I wanted to know my place in the world, maybe a part of me still does. I wanted to be someone, known for something, easy to remember. I wanted to be some type despite some essential part of me wanting to transcend all types. I wanted to be a good son, a good husband, a good human, a great artist despite not knowing what it really meant, despite trying to know what it meant. I looked at myself through the eyes of what I thought the world is like and see someone successful, polished and and sparkling. It seems ridiculous thinking of it like that now but as long as I craved that sort of an impossible validation, I became calculative in everything I did and got irritable when things didn't pan out in ways I thought. I've never been smart but the desperate need to crack the algorithm of life placed an uncarriable burden that made the journey seem not worth it. I read with trepidation, in an attempt to impress and afraid that I'd be identified as a fraud, instead of letting the material absorb me and knowledge give me pleasure.

I've removed the burden atleast for now. As long as this realisation lasts, I will happily read what finds my fancy, watch great film, enjoy music and poetry, and have long, meandering conversations without worrying what I'll find at the end of it. This seems zen, yogic. I don't know if it is, and if it is, if it is coming from a shallow place. It seems to come deep from inside and the only thing I can really do is trust and take the leap. I don't want this meandering, carefree-ness to again turn into a quest and become miserable for not being carefree enough. It's probably more ridiculous than it sounds. I've been obsessing over finding my place in the world without realising that the only fixed place is the tomb. I hope to enjoy the surroundings and keep walking wherever my curiosity leads me.

in the business of being liked

A large part of the reason I keep deleting my social media accounts frequently is because of Murakami's quote- " If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking"¹. But the reason I keep coming back to the platforms is because it gets very lonely very fast when you're walking the solitary path. "కవి అనేవాడు గుంపుకి సరిగ్గా నాలుగడుల ముందుండాలి. మరీ ముందుకెళితె వాళ్ళేం మాట్లాడుతున్నారో వినబడదు, వారిలో కలిసి పోతే ఆ గోలలో పనికొచ్చే విషయం కనబడదు"² -Someone, imaginary or real

If external stimuli alter the biochemicals in my mind and that in turn immensely affects the way I⁵ act in the world, why don't all of us ingest chemicals that turn us into wonderful, happy people⁶ and the world would be a wonderful place⁷, because that's what all of us seem to want. A world with no suffering⁸, untimely death, disease or hunger. A world where all existence is in perfect harmony, the Rama Rajyam. Of course utopias are boring by definition but then a true utopia would have enough excitement to satiate adventurism without toppling the delicate balance⁹.

Yet I think humans are never happy with the world they live in no matter how perfect by "objective" standards. I've only read bits and pieces (duh) of Joseph Campbell but I've convinced myself into believing that every story is the same story¹⁰- a hero living in a society is forced to go into a dark world, confront the villain (and his fears), fight and defeat the evil lord, and come back with the treasure (knowledge) to claim the heroine, win accolades and share the treasure with the world. JBP banally¹¹ exposits it as imposing order on intimidating chaos, finding something useful¹² from seeming clutter and that is the story of every story.

What am I trying to say? Like quote, "If I could tell you what the film is about, why would I make it?" ¹⁴, the post is what is; the maze exists to preserve the gem and the gem is valuable only because the seeker deserves it for having reached it when others have given up. Social acceptance is the only truth^15,16.

I don't know what I've been blabbering about. But if I want to become at least an average writer/ filmmaker, I have to find ways to assimilate this unintelligible, chaotic stream of reality into already patterned models¹⁸. And I don't know how I'm going to do that, or if I even have the capacity to learn and present it. It is challenging because any half-ambitious maker wants to present previously unnoticed or un-mapable phenomenon and to do that is to precisely walk past the illuminated area, gain knowledge and remain "sane"¹⁹ enough to come back and communicate.

That will only happen²⁰ if I walk through doors my immediate society is discouraging me from entering, either because of fear or jealousy. And the biggest force blocking my path is the need to be liked, from which stems the need to be approved. To walk out of the group is to risk being talked about²¹- adulation and envy if successful, pity and condescension otherwise²².

To talk out is to attract unnecessary attention, to stay low is a provocation to the ego. What to do?

¹ A complementary quote is Nassim Taleb's, "Read nothing from the past one hundred years; eat no fruits from the past one thousand years; drink nothing from the past four thousand years (just wine and water); but talk to no ordinary man over forty." The paradox is obvious- To follow or not follow contemporary advice exhorting to follow only ancient advice. I could also get extremely pedantic about it and skim books I really am interested in because I discovered them via recommendation lists
² Herzog's distinction between accountant's truth and ecstatic truth^3
3 When I made Based on a True Story, I was obsessed with capturing the fidelity of unexciting reality. I suppose I didn't, and don't yet, have the imagination or courage to comment on the character's lives in a much larger sociocultural context, so had to make do with and emphasise, as if it was truly original or insightful⁴, on the "mundanity" of everyday being as if it was highly poetic. Of course, a part of me still argues that there is poetry in it a la Jarmusch's Paterson or Linklater's Boyhood
⁴ There is still someone inside me who thinks that doing what I'm doing, without making a conscious effort towards improvement, since all improvement is stipulated by the specific sociocultural context and therefore not necessarily helpful in the pursuit of capital 't' truth, is valuable, or at least inevitable in the sense that someone could and would learn from the notes I'm writing while walking towards the dead-end, in building this repository of human knowledge ("నేను సైతం ప్రపంచాగ్నికి సమిధనొక్కటి ఆహుతిచ్చాను"). That I suppose is the residue of a long-held belief that the universe is teleological
⁵ "consciousness is like being the CEO of a large corporation" -[purpotedly] Minsky
⁶ Is this what the marijuana loyalists are after?
⁷ "America, like any realised utopia, is boring" -Baudrillard
⁸ Like many things in life, this seems to be elastic too in the sense that as long as pain is part of the emotional pie, people will find more and more trivial ways to embrace suffering while also rationalising its utility
⁹ Our world?
¹⁰ Actually, I picked this up from Jordan B Peterson's podcasts which I was listening to reverentially early last year
¹¹ An easy argument is that it is banal because it's true and so time hasn't filtered it out but what if Lindy Effect is self-fulfilling and so any idea proposed first drives out all novel ideas only by the virtue of being first
¹² Useful¹³ again is so spacetime specific and obviously dependent on the state of mind of the person taking it in
¹³ "..words and signs can never fully summon forth what they mean, but can only be defined through appeal to additional words, from which they differ. Thus, meaning is forever 'deferred' or postponed through an endless chain of signifiers" -[Wikipedia] Derrida
¹⁴ I thought this was a Beckett quote when someone asked him about Godot but I'm unable to find a reference now
¹⁵ This comes from reading about the nature of money from Blockchain tutorials and David Graeber's ridiculously readable Debt
¹⁶ I'm about to go have dinner now and I'm trying to document as much as I can before that break because I'm afraid all that's supposed to come now will be lost forever if I take that detour^17
17 To put it more memorably, "हग के बजाओगे तो एक तरह से बजता हैं, बिना हग के तोह दूसरी तरह से" [non-sic], from Jaideep Varma's Leaving Home: The Longer Trip, which I can't be thankful enough for
¹⁸ If analogy is the core of cognition, then all narratives are maps of some sort
¹⁹ Sane, here, ofcourse means being able to understand and speak the language of the audience
²⁰ And here is the fundamental paradox in my nature. I'm fatalist enough to believe that things happen to me and I'm forced to respond a certain way, yet ambitious, and vain, enough to want to transcend that imposition of fate and 'create my destiny'
²¹ I suppose evolution has taught has to stay at the centre of the group, preferring individual low-risk, low-reward and transferring the duty of finding new knowledge (usually an asset) to other entities within the group without which the entire group may fail
²² "You'll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do." -DFW

standing on zero

My new hero is, or is it already was, Cory Doctorow. I don't remember how I rediscovered him sometime in the last few weeks though I've had a copy of Information Doesn't Want To Be Free in my reading list for years. Then I read his How I work interview and I realized I wanted to work like that. Be a self-driven, independent, scholar/ writer who knew a lot of things, learnt more everyday, communicated effectively on important matters, attend conferences and had public discussions. More than that, I too wanted to swim daily to cure my crippling backache. The clincher was seeing this photo of his workspace.

The question that cropped up, again, is what do I want to do with my weekdays. On days when I'm obsessed, more than usual, with my own narrative from a third person POV, I appreciate the irony that for a person who publicly abhors work I spend a large part of my life trying to decide what work I'd like to be remembered for. I want to write about technology, the cyberpunk aesthetic, existential crises, end of civilization, historic grand narratives, truth, reality, agency. I also want to write about growing up in Hyderabad in the 90s, want to cover India's general election from the ground, make a refreshingly good masala film with excellent background score and colour splattered visuals. I want to write a serious book analysing and giving a map on the world now, and do a book tour. I want to learn, study, recite and teach classical telugu poetry. I want to learn urdu and memorize beautiful love poems. I want to write a book like Suitable Boy in Telugu set in the 1980s by reading newspapers and periodicals of the day to have a glimpse of how people lived.

I want to read, write, watch, make, listen, talk, taste, travel and learn. It used to be because I thought I could understand the world better and thus deal with it better. Now I'm not so ambitious, not so arrogant. I want to do all these things because they, while admittedly satiate my ego, expand my notions of what it means to be alive and what entails a good life. At this point, I think there is never a time when I'll have 'cracked' the puzzle of life. All knowledge, including Truth, seems spacetime bound. I don't want to transcend life anymore, even though fantasizing about my legacy from an imagined post-death perspective has become a habit really hard to break out of. I just want to soak into life, like slipping into a hot bath, and savour the effect.


Everything we know is an extreme, a stereotype of itself. Every colour in the spectrum can be the last in an arbitrary range. There is happiness beyond the happiest I've ever been, sorrow and despair beyond what I'll ever know. There are those who are worse than me in many things and many who will be better than me in everything. There is hunger and opulence, disgrace and adulation. Mind-boggling ignorance and crystal clear clarity. Gut-wrenching ugliness and breathtaking beauty. And I stand smack in the middle of this, between negative and positive infinities. I stand on zero. To live well is to never forget that.

Write to share, not to impress

How do some people enjoy working? The software corporate folks, and I only know what they have to say because I've spent most of my working life with them, call it play or fun and yet I think it is work they're doing. Maybe if it was Linus Torvalds that I met everyday when he was building Linux, I'd have believed the play part. Yes, that too might look like work to me (I have never understood how people spend their spare time writing software to build tools) but I can see what he means when he calls it fun. But when a colleague whom I'm working with, calls designing the database and writing scripts and building zeppelin notebooks fun, I'm totally lost. His actual words: "I'm doing pre-sales right now and I'd shoot myself in the face. I love doing this: writing code, building models; doing something of value". And I go, why the fuck can't I feel the same about my employer/ customer/ stakeholder. Is the reason for all my suffering? That I can't stand to think of anything other than my comfort and greed.

I've never done anything for anyone. Sure, I do stuff for the people I love if I know it'll make them happy. I help strangers a bit when I can. You know, the simple stuff, giving directions, helping with suitcases. When money becomes part of the transaction though, I can't stand it. If you love it so much, why do you do it for the money? It's not just money too. I've been a volunteer for causes that I feel deeply about and I think I do a very lousy job. I just turn up, no homework, no planning, no design. In my defence, that's how I live my life. From whim to action to retrospection to more whims. I've never been able to stick to anything in my life that involves conscious work and dedication. What is progress if not making a goal and walking towards it, correcting and learning on the way nevertheless but eventually trying to reach the preordained goal. I've never, ever been able to do that at a level that cannot be understood by a monkey. I can do the physical stuff but find it almost impossible to make my mind do something I want to. Though who this I is and why he can't control his mind I don't really know.

Last week, I went to an Actors and Filmmakers meetup. I've been dissatisfied with the software jobs that I've done and a part of me persistently tells me to move to find jobs as a writer in film, theatre, videogames etc. So I said, sure ,let me meet these people, get a couple of contacts and see if I have the chops to be hired without pay so that I could start off by working on weekends. But after having hearing them describe their lives and their problems, I realised that I didn't want to be a filmmaker. I have trouble writing and directing and I went there hoping I could learn the craft and find a discipline. My problems weren't monetary, they were artistic. These people, by their own words, were actors and writers who did the work they wanted to but were desperate for more opportunities, and thereby money. They claimed to be skilled at their craft and their problem was not of inspiration but that of existence. They weren't able to eke out a living. Comparatively, no matter how much I crib and cry at my sinful corporate job, I at the least am making good money (good enough for me to live a comfortable life, buy things I want, go to places without too much fuss and have the ability to take care of my loved ones). It was a real shocker, seeing all these talented people learning about Social Media Marketing and trying to find newer avenues on the internet to gain some popularity and money. Walking back home, quite shaken, I felt blessed for having a market-friendly degree. Hate my job as much as I could, I had the luxury of hating it from a warm and secure place.

Anyway, actually going there was a great thing because all these years, in my head, I thought becoming an artist meant freedom to pursue interests, ask important questions, have great conversations, and most importantly not be worried about expending mental energy for earning a living. To live like Montaigne, like the character who sings అవధిలేని ప్రతి అనుభూతికి ఆత్మానందమే పరమార్ధం. Of course I realize that people like that have their own set of problems, that great art comes out of overcoming great obstacles blah blah although that's a different discussion. So I'm having these thoughts and then it hit me that I don't want to be an artist as much as an aristocrat and it was a bit of a shock because I always considered myself to be left leaning. I thought I wanted work abolished; I now realize I want to be in a place where I don't want to do it. Of course I love these fancy gadgets, wonderful architecture, complex software platforms, access to excellent healthcare and education, and none of this would be possible without smart, dedicated people putting in efforts. For all my mockery of the working class, I see clearly now how I'm feeding off them. You leave me in a jungle for a day and I couldn't survive. I need the society for safety, pleasure, companionship, learning and yet I persistently mock the ones who grease its wheels albeit in an imperfect manner.

Freedom, the pedestrian connotation of it, is overrated. To be free from the surprises and shocks of life is to be dead. Real love is our inability to stop doing what we want to despite the innumerable obstacles we face. The stars align themselves in beautiful shapes every now and then. At all other times, it is love for the act that helps us swim through. To be a writer is not to complain about how life does not make it easy for me to write great things. To be a writer is to keep writing because I love writing. To write is not to write the one Truth after all the struggles. To write is to be in a constant, evolving relationship with life and using writing as a witness to that. Writing is not the panacea to all the problems in my life. It is the constant background music of my life, my companion with who I can have discussions and arguments at all times, and who helps me engage with life deeply.

For beauty and honesty against bloody selling out

I want to watch #Pellichoopulu. I don't want to watch #Pellichoopulu. I want to watch it because of the rave reviews, because of the word-of-mouth publicity, because of the love and personal pride with which people are endorsing it, because of Tharun's astounding Sainma, because of Sravani's review, because of Dheeraj's succinct homage in this message he sent me: "hit anna hituuu. . 100 days iga . . House full". But I don't want to watch it because I'm afraid it'll be better than all the hype, better than everything people have exaggerated about it, better than Sainma even. Because if it is, a part of me will die.

The day I saw Sainma, I knew if I was able to reach half of what Tharun'd been able to do, I could dream of a career as a filmmaker. It is a film I admire, adore, love and keep getting back to. When I first wrote about it all those months ago, I called it a "not perfect" film. If you'd asked me then what was missing, I wouldn't know what to say. I guess that review was was a refraction of my jealousy. I knew what I'd seen was a masterpiece. I also knew this guy was no Kubrick or Herzog. I actually once stumbled upon a blogpost which raved about Tharun the man. One man couldn't be all that. He couldn't be fun and humble and successful and a visionary and dedicated and passionate. That would be, in some strange way, pretty Ashok-esque. And I couldn't let that thought sit in my head. I knew this man, sort of. I reviewed his film (which, funnily, is how I unashamedly bask in his reflected glory now). I would allow him to be good, not great. Yet when I sat down to watch the film again recently with two first-time viewers, I couldn't help but love his work. They laughed and hooted, paused and repeated, remembered lines and loved characters. What else could any artist ask for? If my one short film experience could be counted for anything, I would like to believe I understand the genius in conception and passion in execution of that two-and-a-half minute eloping scene right before the 'Sainma' title.

I meet a lot of people who want to make films. My flatmate regularly makes short films. These folks don't lack passion or conviction. Or sometimes, even discipline. Craft can be learnt as well. Right from Journey, through Anukokunda till Sainma, even if he's lacked sometimes in something, Tharun's film's have been driven by an inner voice. I'm sure he must've put in hours of learning behind being able to choose a certain shot, or a particular casting choice to even picking locations. But I'd like to believe they're the work of a natural filmmaker. Quentin Tarantino is a natural filmmaker, Woody Allen not so much. Anyway, that's a discussion for another day.

Now to the point I have to confront. Why do I feel an inexplicable jealousy for him and not, say, Binny Bansal who I see quite regularly at work. I know he makes a lot of money and that he was incredibly successful at 28. Yet I feel nothing because of him. What could be the reasons for my grudging admiration for Tharun's work- the fact that cinema was an early love, or that his life right now was my dream a few years ago, or just because filmmaking is a more romantic idea of a life than entrepreneurship, or simply because somewhere deep inside I believe I can be him if I choose to. All of them, definitely, contributes to my feelings. But as an undercurrent to all that is the feeling that I seem to be selling out while he's still holding to his ideals/ dreams tightly. Mind you, this isn't about Tharun in the real objective world, more about the mythos I've created around his career in my head. Not so long ago, like Amma reminded me so recently, I was standing-still and asking a lot of Whys. These days, I'm running as fast as I can without asking any questions at all. I can't believe how, last week, I was worried, if for only a few seconds, about losing my job. When did a job I do for the money become so all encompassing?

Agreed, all boys should grow to be mature, sorted men but at what cost? I don't read anymore, I hardly write anything unconvoluted, gave up dreams of filmmaking, find time to learn fuckin Python and spend all weekdays doing jobs I care nothing about. Again, I'm not saying it isn't right to grow out of fanciful, unrealistic daydreams but I'm afraid to know what's at the other end of the spectrum. Vasishta sent me this amazing, marathon interview and in it, Bharani says that artist's shouldn't be all that calculative. I don't know if you can consciously choose to do something about it, stop the corruption of the soul if I may, but that's a brilliant explanation for why most people, in most dreary jobs become so mean and petty. Where's the innocence to marvel if you're obsessed with keeping scores. Where's the imagination to appreciate poetry if you've drawn such rigid boundaries. Where's the ability to bask in glory if you're so hellbent on getting the upperhand.

I hope I haven't turned petty, yet. I hope I have enough purity and goodness to truly appreciate things I love. I hope that soon I do work I believe in and enjoy, and leave the rewards to the 'Creator of the Cosmos'. I'm so bloody confused right now that I can't even state if the confusion's a good thing. Tharun's had a dream debut and I hope to watch the film soon. But, more than that, I hope I will have the courage and strength to appreciate with all my heart when I see something truly luminous.

Into the darkness

How long has it been since I saw a film without reading its critical reviews? How long has it been since I read a book without searching for signature styles, narrative leitmotifs or unusual phrases that I could somehow use as material or guidance for a story I'm trying to write? How long has it been since I heard a song, truly listened, without trying to see how it could fit into various scenes and the kind of emotion that would evoke from the audience? The answer to all those questions is the same- a long time.

I can't pinpoint to the exact moment but sometime in the recent past, I stopped enjoying art. Enjoying as not in the frivolous, inattentive way but as a fun activity, as something that engaged, invigorated and inspired me. In my quest, I wouldn't even call it a quest but a fancy, to be an auteur and a critically appreciated filmmaker, to be known as someone who makes deep, philosophical cinema, I have neglected the most important thing any art should do. Entertain. I forcefully watch boring cinema and claim to understand and appreciate it when deep inside, I really haven't caught its essence or understood why so few people like it so much. I have come to equate reading about a film and its analysis as watching, understanding and enjoying it. I tried watching Tree of Life thrice but fell asleep each time but I tell people its visually arresting and deeply artistic. Maybe people who loved it saw something in it I couldn't. Connected with it for reasons beyond my comprehension. My problem is not that Terrence Mallick made incomprehensibly obtuse cinema but that I feign getting it when in reality, I don't think I do.  The same goes with Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal. I am a huge fan of Woody Allen because I genuinely enjoy his comic genius. But when I read somewhere that the best way to learn filmmaking is by watching the work of masters, I took to it that I could be the next Allen just by watching Bergman. My hard disk is full of highly critically acclaimed movies that I am afraid to watch because of their languid pace, incomprehensible plot, my inability to connect to its time and setting, and most importantly, because I think I should watch those classics by giving them the respect they deserve. Revering cinema is one thing. Placing my belief in some critics' opinions and analyses just because they've been publicly lauded is superstition. It is pretty ironic that precisely the reasons that make me wary of organised religion is the way in which I treat cinema. All those art films, works of genius, are stifling my love and passion for the artform so much that I stopped watching films. It's a real pity.

And its not just the movies too. Similar thing's happening with literature and music. I started reading stories because they transported me, fueled my day dreams and broadened my horizons. I longed to go to Hogwarts, to go on adventures with The Famous Five, to live an exciting and adventurous life like Shantaram, to be engulfed into Macondo. I appreciated it that someone like me existed when I first heard Holden talk, convinced myself that I could solve mysteries like Sherlock, wanted to be as idealistic and upright as Roark, to have a love story like in 2 States. It might not have been great art but it was stuff that I could relate to it, my imagination could take flight in it, world's I could live in. I read a book simply because I enjoyed reading it. Not because I was supposed to as dictated by the bourgeoisie, or that I could pretend to be smarter or more knowledgeable than I was or because I wanted to create something like that and so could use it to create my art. The last point offers an interesting insight. I assumed it was because I wanted to create such art. It had to do more with wanting to be as successful and acclaimed as that artist. In my quest to be a star, I presumed I wanted to be an actor. By observing and emulating the life of that artist, I thought I could create something like his art. It's taken all this time for me to realise that every artist is haunted by his own demons, protected by his own angels and is driven to create art that is unique to him. Like my short film so wonderfully illustrates my weakness, I took to dropping names and acting as if I had grasped the essence of their art. I should have been influenced; Instead, all I was doing was refer.

"I understood fairly early in life the difference between knowing something and knowing the name of something", said Feynman. It's taken me a long time. Or maybe I still haven't understood it but am reckoning I have.

The photo that you see, up there, is a still from the Francois Truffaut film Jules and Jim. I haven't seen any Truffaut film or for that matter any French New Wave film apart for Jean Luc-Godard's Breathless. But I can tell you about how the movement started, or how Bazin influenced them, or the signature elements of those films, or how they directly influenced New Hollywood and eventually Movie Brats. Despite all that, the fact will still be that I have seen only one French New Wave film and not really enjoyed it. I can talk about Kubrick's attention to detail, Antonioni's obsessiveness, Bergman's despairing tone, Eisenstein's montage theory, Tarkovsky's poetic narratives and Kurosowa's ability to elevate B-grade schlock to pure art. Yet I have to be honest with myself and the truth is that of all the films of so-called masters quoted earlier, I have seen only one Kubrick and one Bergman film. Everything else, I have read about. My behaviour is both demeaning and amusing. I can't believe how I could be so stupid to have missed the point of watching a film totally and that I could fool myself so convincingly as having gained mastery over the form.

Anyway, I saw that above picture today and it filled me with joy. And hope. And longing. It has affected me as deeply as few things have recently. It is pure, unadulterated art. Nothing else. I want to be sucked into art, to be engaged, to be energised. Why do I keep at reading essays on droll philosophical topics even though they suck all the energy and liveliness out of me? Why do I force myself to listen to Carnatic Music just because some people claim it to be the pinnacle of the artform? Listening to Himesh Reshammiya makes me happy, and I'm not even kidding. What, or who, is preventing me from enjoying it without feeling guilty or stupid apart from myself?

This post needs a follow-up though I'm not sure I'm going to write it. Off I go now, to read the very readable Paul Hoffman's The King's Gambit.

isn't living a verb?

What we are and What we want to be- there is a constant conflict between those two things. And we are truly happy in those fleeting moments, when both those things align. But what if you grown into a wreck who does not care about wanting to be anything? Zen says journey is the reward. It might have helped all those who had turned into nervous wrecks because no matter how much they tried, they couldn't be what they wanted to be. But what if you are so scared of failure that you don't try to be anything. What if you don't set yourself a goal because you might never reach it. What if, under the pretext that you are enjoying the journey,  you wile away a lifetime not going anywhere. I have spent the last one year doing almost nothing, and have been able to justify it. If you are smart, are you smart enough to know you are not that smart?

Today, thanks to Sravani, I came across a website called zenpencils and it contains such powerful, inspiring quotes that I'm actually sitting down to finish this post despite the fact that I feel really rusty doing it. Maybe Sam Harris is right, free will does not exist. Maybe the world is deterministic, or maybe what I should be vying for is enlightenment. But despite admitting that those ideals might be true, I am still not an happy man. Because I have never believed in anything enough to see it to the end. Which is a pity because under the pretext of trying things, I haven't really tried anything. A suicide bomber is probably a happier man than a mid-management executive in United Nations because only one of them truly believes and has the conviction to stick to it to his end. I was doing a mental checklist of things I've started in life but never took them till the end, or atleast a checkpoint. Apart from very few things, though I start things with much zest and clamour, I haven't taken them far enough to understand what they mean. Passion is like love, it is transient. It is like inspiration, that eureka moment. It is what introduces us to something but it is not enough to drive us. The goal we envision turns hazy just after a few miles. We get distracted, the learning curve turns really steep, the sacrifices seem too much and atleast in my case, I feel I'm letting go of life in pursuit of a vision. But I'm beginning to understand, atleast hoping, that discipline and commitment are far more important. Now, the Zen koan is coming to life. In my journey towards a certain destination, I will learn about myself. In a way, all this has been a journey too, to a destination I did not foresee. In the last one year, I've learnt a few things about myself, that now I'm able to retrospect. But it's just that I never wanted to be here. Like Chris Hadfield says, " Don't let life randomly kick you into the adult you don't want to become."

I do not like so many things about myself. And I want to change. Prior experience tells me that it is going to be tough but it is also going to be revelatory. that there will be so many moments when I'd want to quit but that I should not, that an imperfect life truly lived in pursuit of excellence is much better than a life spent making a perfect plan. I have always been invigorated by details to think about the bigger picture. Like someone vying for the perfect beginning and dies not going past thousands of beginnings. Maybe that is the way I am, or that I've taught myself to think that way, but I convince myself not to push too far because my body does not agree/ it is the wrong thing/ resistance means not following you heart. Even right now, as I write this, there is a constant tug-of-war between what I want myself to believe in and what my habits ask me to. How do you differentiate between barriers life does not want you to cross because it is leading you in the right way and obstacles that life wants you to overcome to become stronger? If I want to be something now and start working towards it, when the process changes me and my mind tells me I do not want that anymore, is that my being not wanting to go out of its comfort zone or truly a divine correspondence guiding me onto my Karma path? My problem, unlike a lot of others, is not that I'm doing something I don't want to. It's just that in my process of finding the love of my life, thanks to Steve Jobs Mania leftovers, I'm not doing anything else.

Or it's just that maybe they're right. I have never been able to hear the whispers of my heart because of the outside noise that I create. But like Maitreya says in Ship of Theseus, if all judgements are to be taken in the isolation of conveniences and prejudices, will my heart, influenced by myriad things ever be able to tell me what I truly ought to be. Is it all just poetic drivel that Steve uttered to get hoorays from the crowd or does art truly tell us what we are destined to be? If I can be anything I want to be, why can't I become someone who believes that I can be anything I want to be? If I should do what I truly believe in, and not care about others' opinion, will I be inspired enough to do what I want to?

-Why do you still do it?
-I do it for the beauty of the act.
-But they say beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.
-Yes, but what if there is no more beholder?
                -Holy Motors, French, 2012

I reek of half-baked philosophical bullshit. Doing is such a relief, after all the thinking; it gives a certain meaning to life, a sense of accomplishment. What do we have to show for after we have reached the dusk of our lives; apart from the things we've done. I might imagine the greatest of stories but if they don't transform into a physical manifestations that others can experience, are they worth anything? Our identities are shaped by memories, ours and others'. Ours might revolve around our thoughts and dreams but others' do only around our actions. And if we don't have others to validate what we've been through, what would be the difference between a dream and reality? Some nights, when I can't sleep, I think what my motivations are to go on living. Should my driving force be a fear of oblivion or adulation while I'm alive? Neither of them seem satisfactory enough. The only reason I want to do anything is to feel fully alive. Everything else, for experience, for entertainment, for pushing my boundaries, for the sake of humanity seems trivial. And the only way I've ever felt alive is when my mind is totally occupied, when what I do so captivates me that I don't mind the rest of the world crumbling into pieces; that in pursuit of that one word, one 'I love you', one perfect frame, I can spend a lifetime and discover all that I can about myself. For me to know what I am, I have to go and rule out all that I'm not.

questions and answers

How is it that we don't ask questions, the big ones like what is the meaning of life, what does love mean, how do we fit into the bigger scheme of things, when things are going fine? When we are laughing with friends, or when we are totally invigorated in working on something, or when we are spending a very memorable day with the loved one, we are so involved with life, lost in the moment that we don't stop back, look at ourselves and think where we are heading. Living turns into such a huge pleasure that questioning it seems futile. Why do I have to care what anything means as long as I'm having a blast. Like when you are totally enamoured by your girlfriend that you don't even care to ask yourself if you are going to keep any of those promises; or when the other guy turns into such a great listener that you go on and on and don't even remember those days when you hated him so much. How does it work? If I was successful right now, looked up by friends, pampered by loved ones, would I even spend the time here, searching for the right words to get the meaning across? Is that why most philosophers, monks, scientists and artists have had such painful pasts that the only way they could be happy was to look inwards and shun the world away? Is the quest for truth, ethics and aesthetics more about escapism than liberation?

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the olfactory genius in Suskind's Perfume, is so enveloped in the pleasure of smell that he walks away from all civilization to a dark, dank place at the bottom of an extinct volcano where no life thrives, just so that he can summon various smells from his mental repository, mix them around and become ecstatic. Now, that is art for the sake of it. He asks for no appreciation, no reconfirmation of his gifts, has no need to change the world, demands no respect from his peers, requires no acclaim. If only all of us could find immense pleasure simply in the prospect of living, would we go through these phases of happiness and misery- making adjustments to ourselves just so that others would change for us, trying to adjust expectations so that those we want to love can fit in. I came across this phenomenal line a few days back, "Despite knowing that life would never go according to our plans, why do we continue making them". I think that when we make plans, we see ourselves living through them like we are now. What we do not take into consideration that living through a plan changes us and so we are not as happy as we thought we would be even if we reached a prior decided destination. I sometimes wish that instead of running, I could stop, get a sense of my bearings and decide on my course of action. But like Dheeraj's film trailer says, to live is to run, I simply can't stop. Which is probably why monks move away from civilization, to create a sense of suspension. How can you know if time has passed if you're living every moment the same way? Maybe that is what they call the ripple-less pond where they can see their true reflections.

Philosophers and evolutionary biologists say that humans are a restless species and that is what separates us from animals which are content to lie around and do nothing until they're forced to, either because of danger or hunger. Restlessness is what kindles our imagination and imagination is the source of everything any of us do. They say when a person's body decides for him, he turns into an animal and lives only for pleasure. He lacks the moral or aesthetic conscience to differentiate between right and wrong, beautiful and ugly. He is a slave to his bodily whims. And evolutionarily speaking, art, science and philosophy turned into our pursuits only after we started taking our daily need for food and pleasure for granted. The body was satiated, now the mind needed to be engaged. And that is when, apparently, our brain's structured changed from those of apes and our imagination started showing us things that didn't exist. Devdutt Pattanaik, in this brilliant speech, argues how our imagination has a phenomenal power over all our decisions. Almost all our mental pursuits are triggered by the idea of pleasure or pain and those are creations of our brain. We go out of our way to accommodate others, work long hours or adjust ourselves for a loved one simply because we are hoping it is going to give us pleasure later on and all this hardship is going to be worth it or because we are so scared of losing something, that we do whatever it takes just to keep it in our sight. We suffer heartbreak because we imagined someone to be a certain way and they did not end up being that. Like I was just asking Kishore, can I hate someone just because they did not behave according to my expectations? Which is probably why even a totally unexpected good thing is more a shock than a surprise.

Why do we ask questions if not to be entertained? Isn't curiosity just another form of indulgence? There is a little anecdote about Sadhguru which I absolutely love. During one of his discourses, one of his disciples asked him,  "Sadhguru, what is the meaning of life? Why am I alive?" to which Sadhguru smiled, paused, and replied, "One day God was playing with marbles. One marble turned into Earth, another into Sun etc." He then laughed at the incredulous expression on the face of his disciples and said, "You don't believe the story because it is too immature. But if I tell you a more sophisticated story, you will believe it. But how is it going to help you in any way? All you want to be is entertained." I have stopped believing when people say they create art to unravel the truth, or to find the nature of existence. It has now become fashionable to ask the big questions, to seem like an intellectual. I know, that is why I do it too. If I really wanted answers, why would I spend money marketing the film and my time explaining people what I've wanted to achieve. If prancing around naked on streets would give me as much adulation as talking about the meaning of existence does, wouldn't I be doing that? I don't know, maybe all this is wrong. But I know one thing; it is that I don't have to post this, I can keep this draft or even delete this piece because writing it has calmed me down, it has served its purpose. And despite that, I'll post this. To put forth my views, start a discussion, share, improve our knowledge and broaden our horizons. Or simply because I want to tell myself and the world that I'm not wasting away my life. That when my relationships and experiments fail, I have successfully learned a little more about myself. But have I?

straight from the gut

Everyone falls off but it is one's ability to dust it off, get up and prove himself and the world that he's back is what defines a man. A rather romantic notion but not as easy as it may seem. No, dusting off and getting up is the easier part. The harder part is to concede that you've fallen down, to admit that you're not living but waiting for life to happen, to acknowledge the passivity that seeped in, to accept the fact that you're getting so irritated and depressed with the behaviour of people not because they're changing but because you're not able to. Life is so much fun when things are happening. Your confidence is high, people find you charming and funny, your girl admires you and the relationship blossoms, you mother is proud of her prodigious son, you can state your ideas emphatically, your friends love you and you thank god for giving you such a wonderful life. But then, somehow you grow complacent, and things stall. Not in jerks and splutters, unfortunately, but with whines. You think this is temporary, that things will get back to being normal, but they don't. And soon a sense of dread starts to seep in. You find your friends and family unsympathetic. You think they don't understand you, they don't empathize with you. Your work suffers and as guilt seeps in, you can't do what you've always loved doing. You turn self-pitying, sleep for phenomenally long periods. You contemplate on the worthlessness of life, you mock people for going forward, telling them that all this is temporary, that all of us are going to die one day soon. You pretend you don't care what people say about you. You turn away from your girl when she tries to help you, to tell you that things are wrong with you, that you have to change. You have nightmares of her deserting you for a more successful man, of not sticking to you when you needed her most. You feel like the burden of existence is upon you, like you are alone and desolate in the expanse of the world. You cut off whoever is trying to help you. Your family drifts away from you because you don't let them near. You attempt to change things. You start doing things. But none of them work. You're doing all that you can, putting in all your efforts like they told you to, like they promised things would look up when you do. You believe in it, grit your teeth and work hard. But soon enough, the resolve fails. You go back to being a drifter, you try to carve a different career path for yourself. Then you realise that that is hard work too. Your family backs you hoping you'd stick to it. But when you don't, they are disappointed. They don't even show their hurt or anger anymore. They just let you exist. Do not really pay attention. At this point, you don't feel anger too. You know that to earn their respect, to earn your girl's admiration and love, you have to work hard. Prove them that you aren't a loser. But the will to fight already disappeared. Things get only worse and then you get used to it. You don't care about life anymore. You don't revel in small achievements, you don't laugh, you don't mingle, you don't experience. And you begrudge others for doing so. Insecurity and jealousy rule you. You grow cynical. You don't care about the promises you make, you don't trust yourself. Life loses its meaning. It just turns into one day dissolving into the next. You don't remember dates, or events, or anniversaries. People stop talking to you because you make their lives uninteresting. And then you hit the bottom. Pure dullness. You cocoon yourself, like she put it, in your laziness and complacency. Nothing affects you anymore. You think of giving it all up and turning into a Sadhu. Maybe that would bring some meaning to your life, give you a reason to exist. After all, aren't we here to be liberated.

And then one day, in one moment, the smoke clears. One phone call, one post, one look. It changes everything. The smoke seems to be clearing. You start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. The darkest one you've ever been in. Warmth starts to seep back into you. You don't want to let this moment pass. Your family, your girl are giving you one last chance. You don't want to disappoint them anymore. You muster all your energy and you start running. Its easier than it seems. Now that the will to live, inspire, love and be loved, to change the world have been reignited, things seem to be falling into place. You are not going to let this moment pass. You think of all those who tried to tie you down, who told you that you wouldn't amount to much anyway. You want to prove them wrong. But more than that, you want to prove your mother, your girl that their belief in you was never meaningless. That the man they loved had the guts to reclaim himself. Now is the time to prove them right.

"I put myself in the script"

"I would rather lose playing good football than win playing mediocre stuff."

- Tele Santana

The one thing common between mediocre and great is playing in the first place. To play mediocre stuff, I have to play. To try playing great stuff, I have to play. How could I have missed that. Lots of unfinished business. Been a long time since I've been here. Scribbling down notes, jotting down inspiration but finding excuses not to be converting them into posts. Anyway, why should I post? Why should I publish? That's one thing I've pondered over and over again since I've started posting. Initially, readers' response was a huge motivating factor. When people told me I wrote well, I tried writing better. Though the need to impress superseded the need to improve. But then later on, that oozed away. Especially during the dark days when I wrote with so much more conviction than I can muster now. When all doors closed shut, this turned into my pathway of expression. Like the light at the end of the tunnel. The opening was the only direction in which I could run. Run, I did. And when I look back now, I'm surprised at what I've achieved during those days. Not much of an achievement maybe but something I'll look back to, when I turn 60.

"When somebody tells you something is wrong with your piece, they are mostly right. But when they tell you what exactly it is, they are mostly wrong."

That brings me right back onto the tracks. Why do I write now? Preserving thoughts and ideas is one explanation. And it is mostly true. I like memories. Looking back at life is at once a curse and a boon but then like Garcia Marquez said, "Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it." That is what exactly art does. Everything that I've ever considered art is something that transports me through time. Like my girl's smile. Genius. But this post isn't about all this. This post is just a reminder that I write. A medley of quotes I've remembered now and again when I'm riding back from office. 

I like writing. More often than not. Sometimes the noun becomes far too important than the verb. I like looking at myself as one of those purists who quote "art for art's sake" but I think if somebody truly believed in that credo, they wouldn't be telling it to people. They'd be far too happy pursuing the art. It's an important question to ask. And probably one the oldest ones. When I'm reading a book, am I doing it because I want to read a book or because I want to know a story? There's quite some difference between the two. But why do I ask these questions? I don't know. Maybe because I'm wired this way. Whatever.

अगर बच्चे काबिल हो,समझदार हो तो कमाके क्या फ़ायदा? और अगर बच्चे काबिल नहीं हो, समझदार नहीं हो तो फिर कमाके क्या फ़ायदा? 

-Amitabh Bachchan in Sharaabi

I fell in love with that line the only time I heard it. Nothing much left to say. Apart from that I should write more often. I don't want to stay rusty like this forever. Its a real pain having to push myself because I've been away this long. But I'm planning to publish a fiction piece every month. That's not much of a goal and I've never really written fiction but I want to give it a shot. Lots of unfinished pieces. Lots of ideas in my head, in my notepad. I just want to get them out of my system so that I can move onto other ideas. Hoping I'll write more regularly. Guitar's stuck and I'm trying my hand at C++/Linux now. Lots of things pending in my to-do list and I've been playing fifa all weekend. Maybe I should try Leo Babauta's idea of not trying to change too many habits at once. 

"It is important to work on your weaknesses but more so to work on your strengths."

-Javagal Srinath?

So why do I publish? The above reasons are valid enough, yes, but again that's not it. I believe all of us create art, anything that we truly believe in, because we want to change the world. In any small way that we can. We put forth ideas so that we can validate them with what the world thinks about it. The world in our heads is differently calibrated from worlds in every other head. And the fact that we put forth ideas, in any form, is just a small effort in trying to tell the world what exactly is going on inside this brilliant mess. I publish because I want to be read, to be commented on, to be corrected, to be challenged, to be accepted and to rejuvenate. And because I want to tell the world what goes on in that fuzzy head of mine.