Scribble You Fool, Just Scribble!

 

Reviving the dead isn’t easy, its impossible right? Same goes for a dead blog. It’s been almost 5 years since I posted something. Did I stop writing? I did not, but I have not been writing much as well. Blame it on timing issues, corporate life, people’s opinion, writer’s block or merely procrastination. I have a dump of write ups that I feel isn’t good enough to be shared. Then there are drafts that are still waiting to be completed.

Few months back I came across a small notebook named as AK’s Stories with ugly duckling picture as the cover page. The seven year old me wrote a story book. I read all the six seven stories that were written by me. I couldn’t help noticing the change in handwriting with every story, from round shaped letters to cursive. I wrote about people I never met, places I never visited, kings and paupers, weather, food and intoxicating drinks as well. So I believe I was a smart kid capable of imagining anything. I didn’t have had to go to Japan to write about cherry blossoms in details or get drunk to explain the effect of alcohol. I wonder how I could write about things I had never seen, felt or experienced before. Any wild guesses? Right, I was an avid reader. I devoured stories. This is exactly how my journey with writing started. I was a very irritating, unmanageable kid when it came to feeding me with food. Eating was a task. Feed me with stories, then only my mouth would open for a morsel of food. My grandmother did her best and came up with stories of all kinds, mostly animal stories. But for someone who took an hour or two to finish her lunch, one story per day was not enough. With time she ran out of stories, but repetition was not allowed. I could easily remember if a story was being repeated. I wanted new stories everyday. She started reading children’s books as well. But nothing was enough. I just wanted fresh new stories every day, and mostly about rabbits. I was so obsessed with rabbit stories. Then came the stage where the stories were manipulated. One day the rabbit ran to the moon, other day flew to the moon and somedays rabbit didn’t bother about the moon. My grandmother started weaving stories. First part of the story would be extracted from Monday story, second part from Tuesday and ending from Thursday and I will have a new story on Saturday. She did a good job with mixing up stories to fool me with a new one. But I was able to figure out what she did. Finally, when everyone was tired of my daily new stories tantrum, I think Dad asked me to start reading new stories on my own rather than driving my Grandmother nuts. Then came a stage, no book was enough. I mean I was not exactly reading comics, but I started with Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. Finally, at the age of nine I was given three books to complete, three fat books. My experiments with truth, Sherlock Holmes and Tales from O. Henry and of course a dictionary to help me read these. For a pretty long time I didn’t ask for new books, I found it difficult to read these. Though years later I totally believe O. Henry was the best thing that happened to me back then I still do read O. Henry! I gave up on My experiments with truth, glad I did. Sherlock is sherlock anyway! At the age of 10 I had access to the school library, then started the journey of Jane Austen, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, The Famous Five, Sweet Valley twins, Sidney Sheldon and so on.

At the age of seven I started writing random stories. I continued writing for a year or more, poetry (that had to rhyme anyhow, not anymore), stories and essays. Gradually amidst school homework and reading new books I stopped writing for myself. But I had definitely learnt the art of weaving new tales by mixing up old ones. My write ups were then limited to school work or maybe to the last pages of my notebooks. I have lost many drafts, stories, poems because of scribbling them on the last page of my notebooks. At times I shared it with couple of close friends via email. A friend suggested I should start writing it all on a blog page. At 12^th grade I started blogging. Initially I started off with simple posts and poems. I didn’t bother who read and who didn’t, I just had this group of close knit friends who definitely read it and that’s what mattered. With time I got more readers. The write ups which most people didn’t understand would be categorized as the best ones. Complicated words and metaphors made good reads. But imagine I see a dark tunnel and some see a black hole? A school senior who is also a writer asked me to try different genres and to think from the reader’s perspective. I started trying different writing styles and different genres. And perhaps stopped using heavy words. Then I got suggestions on editing the drafts multiple number of times before posting. And frankly with time I got too many over loaded suggestions on how to write something to present it to readers. Somedays I felt I wasn’t writing for myself. The weekly posts became monthly and then gradually once in a blue moon I could manage to post something. Because ten years later I didn’t like posting any raw draft blindly. And then the blog died. The shift then moved to tiny tales, poems and short stories. The type which you can just read off while scrolling down your Instagram page. We really don’t have time to sit and read long posts, or books. We are all busy. I also got into writing tiny tales and quotes. But amidst that I wrote for anthologies and got published. Did that make me happy? Of course, it should, but it felt like being given a topic for school writing contest and then winning the same. What about the stories I really wanted to tell? Most of them are in drafts waiting to be alive. Somedays my thoughts wander around, they don’t stick to one place. I stare at the blank doc page for hours. I type less and use the backspace more. Other days it feels like I am not good enough. And sometimes it is a loop. And somedays right in the middle of a warm shower you strike the right chord, the right word but not at the right time. Nevertheless you hope someday right in the middle of nowhere you will find the perfect ending to all the flawed drafts.

The tragedies I wrote often touched people more than humor. But with it came a truckload of assumptions, I am depressed, my heart got broken, I lost someone, I had a break up, I got raped, I am already dead and my ghost is communicating, basically. It’s the stereotypical Bollywood movies that tell you an artist can only be born post a devastating heartbreak. Jordan never could be a Rockstar had he not been in love or got his heart broken. Sigh! In “The Forty Rules of Love” Shams of Tabriz left Rumi so that the pain of separation could make him a poet. You become a better artist if you can romanticize pain and create work of art out of it. Maybe singers do sing happy songs without jamming guitar in frustration and we do hear that kind of music but we don’t really listen to it. Maybe poets write about sparkling streams, blue skies, red roses, and forever after love stories that we read but don’t remember. Maybe it is not pain that makes a creative person a better artist, performer or a poet. Maybe it is the reader or listener’s ability to connect and relate to pain better that makes the tragedies more realistic than humor. It’s grief that connects people better than happiness, maybe because it is universal. While happiness is a relative term. Our definition of happiness might vary. But loss, pain, heartbreak is common to everyone. Yet people asked me how it is possible you could write about it unless you experience it, well the seven year old me hadn’t tasted alcohol till she turned eighteen but could manage to write a story centered around alcohol. The dark contents were often misunderstood, the tragedies were appreciated with a sympathy as if I am going through it and the happy content were just read.

And then there are days you write just like that, basically you scribble but not on the last page of notebook. You don’t care about the readers, you don’t care about the words, how they resonate, you don’t bother about genre or interpretation. You scribble just to breath some oxygen into the dead, just like this post.