Hyderabad 9

After I typed in the roman numeral you see above, I had to wait a day before I could continue. It happens to all writers. Ok, I'm not a writer, but humour me. All writers feel like they want to say something once in a while. There's this feeling inside, like thumping a metal tank from the inside, with the flat of your palm. Imagine your ribcage is that metal tank. You just have to sit and get it out. You're almighty eager to find out what glorious insight into human nature that you will unveil and you sit down and start typing. It's too big to be a continuation of something, so you type in a brand new Roman numeral. And…bzt. For those who came in late, that's the sound of a television being shut off. You're looking at the screen like a hypnotised jersey cow, waiting for the picture to appear, but some guy switched off the TV with a remote control and is sniggering uncontrollably in a corner. Just another day in the life of a writer. Now this is where a poet has an advantage. The poet is full of feeling. That's what he lives on. Hey, maybe that's why so many poets are intellectually starved. That was logical and mean. Anyway, the poet can record his feelings, paint such a beautiful picture of it, without actually having to tell you anything. The writer, poor fool, has to spill his guts and tell the world what is happening, if he wants top feel any lighter. Poetry, such an expressive art, still has the luxury of mystery. A poem can skip, skirt and dance around its theme, tantalize or caress or mesmerise the reader. It can throw you a crumb or it could give you a feast. It can make you love, it can make you hate, and it can make you indifferent, but the poem will always touch you. You will feel it, no matter what. But prose, poor, boring, regular, systematic, dull, obedient, good old prose, it has to work so very hard to reach your heart. Words become neat little pawns in a paragraph. They impress you no individually, but in the way they are arranged. They have no identity. But in poetry, perch one little word on the ledge of one line of a couplet, and you have no better snare for the gullible human heart anywhere else.


Still, still. I want to be a writer. Why? Hmm, let me see… a poem flows after and sometimes before it is written. But the process in between is a piteous struggle for the poet. The poem plays its most merciless games with the poet. It teases him, jibes him, pricks and prods him, plays a million tunes with his emotions, takes him on unbelievable flights of fantasy and drops him into nadirs of mediocrity. Most heartbreaking of all is when it disappears altogether. The poet is left in abject desolation, he pines more for the poem than for the love of his life it is on. And after all this, the poet is never happy with his work. The poem always holds back a part of itself from the poet. Now that is why I cant be a poet. Why do I want to be a writer? There is a rhythm to writing, like a massage on your head. No matter what you write, even when you pause in between for a short while, there is this delicate, steady, unwavering hum in your thoughts. It lasts as long as you write. There is no abruptness when you begin to write, even when you stop abruptly. The feet of a writer are invariably on the ground, even when he writes fantasy. The simple rules that run through the veins of a paragraph pump order into the writer himself. The writer hence remains on a track, so what if the track runs over a few clouds and under a bottomless ocean. 'Limited resources, unlimited scope' is a favourite quote of any art that has discipline. Too much freedom can spoil a written word. You let a word go, and it will want to change itself, make itself important or insignificant and it will go and place itself wherever it wishes. It might work from time to time, but the mischief of a child is liked only for a short while. The word soon loses its respect and its place. There are other reasons too. Poets, lets face it aren't taken too seriously. They convey the emotion, but the writer has the facts. The ring of truth is clearer and sharper when a writer tolls the bell. And that is why I want to be a writer. When I ring a bell, I want it to be loud, I want it to be clear. When I write, I do not want to be plagued by the fear that my words will desert me. I will write, as and when the words come to me. When they do not come, I will wait patiently. I know they will not desert me, my beautiful pawns, which will come together and make magic so wondrous that a poem would have to written to applaud them. I am a writer. I love writing; to write is part of my life. I am a writer because writing is how I express myself, to see myself.

Hmm, that was satisfying. I have had a nice day so far, in spite of a long walk and the bus rides. For a while, I wanted to write about how fickle the mind is. I'm not talking about its jumping from one thought to another, but the way it jumps from one emotion to another, with such a short trigger. Well, I'll save it for later.

-Ananda