Being a writer

Do you think that people who major in literature go on to become great writers? I know a lot of them don't. A lot of them who have the potential of becoming great writers. They know too much about literature. They're made to read about the 1000 years of literary geniuses that the world has produced. And inevitably, they'll compare themselves to these great writers. I mean that's just plain unfair. They're comparing themselves to the greatest writers and that too over a huge period of time. A person like me reads a book like, say The Cather in the Rye and it strikes me as something which even I could've written. When a literature student reads that, he knows the history. He knows how revolutionary the book was and how fresh it was for its time. All the time when they write something, they're comparing themselves to the Dostoevskys and Eliots of the world. Sometimes in life, you just have to start writing. All that you have to produce is something that you can like. It doesn't have to be perfect, it never will be. Know that and the pen will start moving. If you can write something that you are very pleased with, chances are you will find people in the world who will like it. It may not be a literary masterpiece. You can't know for sure how anything you write will be received by certain people who have degrees from fancy colleges and call themselves to be the judges of what is good writing and what is not. So I suggest you stop worrying about that.

P.S. - Written in my Literature class today

The point of it all

The feeling has strengthened. I’m a man now. I read a story ‘Hema and Kaushik’ by Jhumpa Lahiri and I think it might be the best piece of writing that I’ve ever read, along with The Catcher in the Rye. That’s when I realized that it doesn’t matter what the world thinks of it. To me, what matters is that I like it. I have an identity now. I can decide what I like and what I don’t like, irrespective of whether it's supposed to be liked or not. And I liked this story for a reason which may not be universal. It can be a personal reason, and that makes it all the more better. It feels like it has been written for me. It does not matter if the story is not in the list of best stories of the decade. I loved it and it changed my world in a way.

Why even be

Afraid to think of you
I lay in darkness
Surrounded by mystery,
Surrounded by fear.
Surrounded by something,
So unclear.

That rattling sound
Those lashing waves
Fighting hard
To keep my sane
No more violence, no more pain
No more heart, only brain.

The enigma of life
The things I see
Make me question
Why even be?
Why even be, when all I see
Is hollowness and opacity
Why even be, when all I see
Is reality, so phony

On Love

Sitting with me under a tree
Near a field of Rye.
Her pretty eyes looked at me,
Was she about to cry?

Those lovely lips, a warm sigh
And then I smelt her breath.
Godliness, I felt for sure;
Days away from death.

That day with her, the beautiful her
Just the perfect bliss.
And all I thought of, as I died
Was her parting kiss.

I don't know

Hi. It's been a while since I've blogged now. I feel like writing today, maybe because I don't feel like studying and the weather is quite good. What do I want to write? Anything that I feel like writing about. It's just a beautiful day and I feel like expressing myself. Exams in IIT have been a very weird time for me. I have felt very introspective and have thought about what I'm doing in IIT and with my life. That's changed a little bit. I've become quite relaxed about the minors and I don't have much courses this time so I don't think they are going to be a problem this time. There's a high probability that I don't end up studying today, but that's ok.

Well, I'm not done with my rambling. The weather is beautiful. I thought I'd tell you about a depressing discussion I had with my friends today about our careers but it's gonna get boring so I'll just skip it. It's a beautiful night. There's stuff happening all around the city, all around the world right now in this single moment that my mid-IIT crisis suddenly seems less important to me. So many people are experiencing happiness right now. As I write this, some people are experiencing the birth of their child and these newborn children are experiencing life for the very first time. What it must feel like! To experience something suddenly when before this you've just never experienced anything. How does life start? It must be in a single instant, either you are alive or you are not. I don't think you can be partly alive. So why did we not feel this transition when we were born? Maybe it's because our brains were too small. Or it's because since we've never really experienced anything before we are born, it's not possible to sense the change. Yes, that must be it.

So anyway, I was just thinking about how many people must be experiencing very strong emotions at this time all around the city. People are having sex, people are being beaten up or have experienced the death of someone very close, people are riding their motorcycles at 100 kmph and having the time of their life. It's just energy all around. This is why a city feels so alive.

I want to experience romantic love. I haven't had that feeling for a really long time and I want it real bad. I don't want to think about the minors. I want to think about how I would be so happy after the minors. :). And I'll write stuff after the minors, it'll be really good. I'll probably do my creative writing final assignment in the mid-sem break after the minors.

Ok, that's enough rambling I think. Comment if you are not doing anything. It feels good to read your comments.

Success, fame, etc

I bet you've read in a lot of articles or self help books or have been told by some gurus on T.V. that sucess and fame are overrated and if we want to be happy we shouldn't be mindlessly running the rat race. So today, I had a question in my mind. The people who write these books, the people who give these little speeches, aren't they all famous and successful themselves? Some of them are only famous because they're telling the world not to run after fame. What an irony! Who are these people to tell us not to strive for fame when they are themselves everything that they tell you not to be?

And you only listen to these people because they're famous and successful! Why in the world would you listen to anyone who has done nothing special, someone who is just a common man?

P.S. - I'm not trying to make any point here. I just had this thought today and felt like sharing it

An introduction

‘Who am I?’
This is a very tough question which inevitably bothers everyone. The answer to this question is everchanging. Who I am is actually a very transient concept and is also a function of time. I realize now how tough this whole ‘writing an introduction about myself’ thing is. Where do I start? What do I write about? What is that thing which is so central to my character that I would choose to tell if I had to be really honest and I only had a few words to do so?

And then it strikes me. It brings a smile to my face as I realize it. I’m nihilistic. It’s 1:30 am on Monday right now and that’s when I have started writing this. Nihilism is the one thing that has defined me since the past couple of days and procrastination is what I have been doing since then. Most of it stems from a general hatred towards IIT classes. The same thing happens at the start of every semester. I start hating IIT classes, I sleep in classes and all I do after classes is relax because the classes were so goddamn boring and I need a break after them. It has barely been two weeks since college started and I have already missed a lot of classes. That doesn’t worry me a lot but my not-doing-anything does. It’s that time of the year when I develop a dislike for any type of organized work and it is wrong. I can say with certainty that it is wrong because there are certain things which make me happy and there are certain things which don’t. Doing nothing is one of the things that makes me very unhappy in the long run. When I realize this, I start to come out of my laziness. That makes me happy. That makes me write this. I know its not the first time that this is happening and its definitely not the last but it feels good to beat the lazy bastard who takes over me every now and then.

Who am I? I am someone who wants to be happy. That pretty much sums it up. This is the only constant in me. This does not mean that I am just one step away from my goal, now I just have to find the things which make me happy. Those things are ever changing and that becomes a source of great confusion. I am confused. Confused about what I want to do after IIT and what I want to do for a living. It’s the third year of college. The time when people around me are starting to decide what they want to do after college and are starting to work towards it. A little fraction of those people have realized what they want to do. Notice the two things are different. I hold realizing what you want to do much above deciding what you want to do. I’m starting to realize what I want to do but I’m still not there. I really believe that I can find something which I’m really passionate about and still make a living out of it. I know about a lot of things that I don’t want to do.

What do I know right now about what I want? I want to do something in which I can be creative... It’s definitely a start.


P.S. - This is part of an assignment of a Creative writing course which I'm doing. It was supposed to be titled 'An Introduction', we had to write about ourselves and we had to be "brutally honest".