Something of Myself
Monday, January 16, 2006
Comfortably Numb
A conversation sparked this off in my mind:
How long can we avoid situations? Situations that are not pleasant. Situations that can ONLY be resolved by communication. Situations where both parties involved feel that sense of uncomfortability. Situations where you perhaps know that you got to face that person at some point of time. So why wait? Why not take the bull by its horns?
Silence breeds misunderstanding. Silence allows room for interpretation.
Why can't we take the first step?
Why can't we put the past behind and make an effort?
Why can't we try and restore normalcy?
Where exactly does the hitch lie?
What does it take to go upto the other person and say - "Look, shit happened. You and I are both to be blamed. Others interfered. Made it worse. But hey, you never asked me and I never asked you. We assumed. And things got worse. I have come here, to you, not to make things fine, not to submit my ego, but to tell you the truth. To let you know that what happened was a sheer, careless, orchestrated misrepresentation for which I am sorry."
Yet, we don't do it. We leave it for the future. We leave it for the day when things become worse and we lose control; when loss is irrepairable. Whatever little hope that remains, is ashamedly lost in (what seems to me as) the ego battles. Little battles that we fight everyday, with loads of ego and huge proportions of pride.
My only fear is this: that I don't want the passage of time to ruin what could have been a resurrecting process. How many times have we lost relationships, emotions, passions, faces, voices, touches, wishes...just because we waited...because we didn't take the first step...waiting too long...for the other to come forward.
P.S. Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups.
A conversation sparked this off in my mind:
How long can we avoid situations? Situations that are not pleasant. Situations that can ONLY be resolved by communication. Situations where both parties involved feel that sense of uncomfortability. Situations where you perhaps know that you got to face that person at some point of time. So why wait? Why not take the bull by its horns?
Silence breeds misunderstanding. Silence allows room for interpretation.
Why can't we take the first step?
Why can't we put the past behind and make an effort?
Why can't we try and restore normalcy?
Where exactly does the hitch lie?
What does it take to go upto the other person and say - "Look, shit happened. You and I are both to be blamed. Others interfered. Made it worse. But hey, you never asked me and I never asked you. We assumed. And things got worse. I have come here, to you, not to make things fine, not to submit my ego, but to tell you the truth. To let you know that what happened was a sheer, careless, orchestrated misrepresentation for which I am sorry."
Yet, we don't do it. We leave it for the future. We leave it for the day when things become worse and we lose control; when loss is irrepairable. Whatever little hope that remains, is ashamedly lost in (what seems to me as) the ego battles. Little battles that we fight everyday, with loads of ego and huge proportions of pride.
My only fear is this: that I don't want the passage of time to ruin what could have been a resurrecting process. How many times have we lost relationships, emotions, passions, faces, voices, touches, wishes...just because we waited...because we didn't take the first step...waiting too long...for the other to come forward.
P.S. Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Ah, Shantaram...the magic goes on!
Gregory David Roberts. Author of Shantaram. Convict. Fugitive. Smuggler. And now, an acclaimed writer. Was reading one of his interviews. Mind-zapping…
Q. Going by the Arthur Road section of ‘Shantaram,’ I find it hard to credit that you’re still walking around as a functioning human being. How does a person recover from the trauma of being tortured?
GDR: Art is a critical component, but I think that love is a very important aspect. I’ve always had my mother’s love, and even though I had a very conflicted relationship with my father, my relationship with my mother was always sound. I’ve known a lot of men in a lot of prisons around the world and most of them are sad men, not bad men. The vast majority don’t have that sense of certainty that no matter how damned they become or how profoundly they damn themselves, there is someone there who will always love them no matter what. In my case I always had that. In those moments when the blood is running out of your body and you think you’re going to die, it’s that love that stays with you and keeps your heart going and says don’t give up. I’ve seen soldiers dying and heard the other people around them saying, “I love you, I love you” and they don’t love the guy, they just know instinctively this is what’s gonna keep them going.
Q: It’s funny that writers often get portrayed as decadent, flaky individuals rather than some guy digging a ditch with a pen.
GDR: It took me five years to write this book, it took me a year and a half to edit it. The first two drafts were destroyed. In that time, if you’re not dedicated to what you’re doing, you are gonna let it go. The amount of focus you need is the diametrical opposite of being flaky. And of course it took me a long time to realise that. I couldn’t write without a bottle of scotch and an ashtray and a packet of cigarettes, and by the time I finished a few pages work the bottle was half empty, the ashtray was half full, and that’s how I wrote. I don’t smoke now, I don’t drink and I don’t take drugs, and the work that’s coming from me is the best work I’ve ever done. And I’d never take any substance of any kind that might jeopardise the flow of work. There’s a coherence and an ability to focus, a clear-headedness that is directly connected to sobriety. But I did have that quasi-romantic view once. I spent my life as a writer preventing myself from being able to write. I was being published when I was at university, and I had every chance, everyone said you have a stellar career ahead of you as a writer and then I lost it all, threw it all away.
Q: I've read that your first drafts were destroyed in prison—how did you overcome what must have been tremendously depressing obstacles?
GDR: I think there are two kinds of writers in the world: those who write because they think it's a good idea, and those who have no choice but to write. I'm the second kind. I wrote in solitary confinement without a pen or paper by memorizing the 3,000 words of a new short story, one repeated sentence at a time, day after day and week after week. It's always my first instinct to write, and I've always written my world, no matter what my circumstances.
When I was chained to a wall in an Indian prison and being tortured, there was a moment when it seemed to me that I was going to die. I was chained face down. My body was stripped bare. The razor-sharp bamboo canes were whistling scars onto my shaved head, my back, my legs, and the bare soles of my feet. In the constant struggle to lift my face from the bleeding, red puddle of sweat and tears, I was choked by the fear that I would drown in my own blood. But in that terror, in that clamp-jawed defiance, I heard the clear, indomitable writer's voice in the deepest part of my mind: "Damn, this is good material! If you live through this, you've got to write it down!"
Gregory David Roberts. Author of Shantaram. Convict. Fugitive. Smuggler. And now, an acclaimed writer. Was reading one of his interviews. Mind-zapping…
Q. Going by the Arthur Road section of ‘Shantaram,’ I find it hard to credit that you’re still walking around as a functioning human being. How does a person recover from the trauma of being tortured?
GDR: Art is a critical component, but I think that love is a very important aspect. I’ve always had my mother’s love, and even though I had a very conflicted relationship with my father, my relationship with my mother was always sound. I’ve known a lot of men in a lot of prisons around the world and most of them are sad men, not bad men. The vast majority don’t have that sense of certainty that no matter how damned they become or how profoundly they damn themselves, there is someone there who will always love them no matter what. In my case I always had that. In those moments when the blood is running out of your body and you think you’re going to die, it’s that love that stays with you and keeps your heart going and says don’t give up. I’ve seen soldiers dying and heard the other people around them saying, “I love you, I love you” and they don’t love the guy, they just know instinctively this is what’s gonna keep them going.
Q: It’s funny that writers often get portrayed as decadent, flaky individuals rather than some guy digging a ditch with a pen.
GDR: It took me five years to write this book, it took me a year and a half to edit it. The first two drafts were destroyed. In that time, if you’re not dedicated to what you’re doing, you are gonna let it go. The amount of focus you need is the diametrical opposite of being flaky. And of course it took me a long time to realise that. I couldn’t write without a bottle of scotch and an ashtray and a packet of cigarettes, and by the time I finished a few pages work the bottle was half empty, the ashtray was half full, and that’s how I wrote. I don’t smoke now, I don’t drink and I don’t take drugs, and the work that’s coming from me is the best work I’ve ever done. And I’d never take any substance of any kind that might jeopardise the flow of work. There’s a coherence and an ability to focus, a clear-headedness that is directly connected to sobriety. But I did have that quasi-romantic view once. I spent my life as a writer preventing myself from being able to write. I was being published when I was at university, and I had every chance, everyone said you have a stellar career ahead of you as a writer and then I lost it all, threw it all away.
Q: I've read that your first drafts were destroyed in prison—how did you overcome what must have been tremendously depressing obstacles?
GDR: I think there are two kinds of writers in the world: those who write because they think it's a good idea, and those who have no choice but to write. I'm the second kind. I wrote in solitary confinement without a pen or paper by memorizing the 3,000 words of a new short story, one repeated sentence at a time, day after day and week after week. It's always my first instinct to write, and I've always written my world, no matter what my circumstances.
When I was chained to a wall in an Indian prison and being tortured, there was a moment when it seemed to me that I was going to die. I was chained face down. My body was stripped bare. The razor-sharp bamboo canes were whistling scars onto my shaved head, my back, my legs, and the bare soles of my feet. In the constant struggle to lift my face from the bleeding, red puddle of sweat and tears, I was choked by the fear that I would drown in my own blood. But in that terror, in that clamp-jawed defiance, I heard the clear, indomitable writer's voice in the deepest part of my mind: "Damn, this is good material! If you live through this, you've got to write it down!"
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Ruins of the day
That’s what happened. You didn’t need me anymore. You had people around you. People who had ditched you earlier. People whom you hated. People whom I made you love. People whom you said you’d never forgive. I made you forgive them. And then?
You just walked away.
That’s what happened. You just reduced everything to money. You had it. I didn’t. So?
You just walked away.
That’s what happened. You needed space. I gave you so. So much so that you got lost in the wilderness of it all. They took you in, flashing fancy cars and expensive wine. Me? I had some scribbled notes, some old ideals, cheap dreams and some unknown lines of some unknown poem of an unknown poet. I was just ordinary. They weren’t. That’s why
You just walked away.
That’s what happened. You had had enough of me. I had nothing new to give. You sold my dreams. For a few pennies. You dumped the promises. At the Roman city. By the great site. In the clean gutter. Tourists wouldn’t notice. I did. Just didn’t realize it then. And then when I did, it was too late cause
You just walked away.
I keep telling myself every now and then that there was more than that…that it was NOT that…
Somewhere in my body, somewhere in my soul, you left such a deep cut that the scars still show.
I let you go. Just like that.
That’s what happened.
That’s what happened. You didn’t need me anymore. You had people around you. People who had ditched you earlier. People whom you hated. People whom I made you love. People whom you said you’d never forgive. I made you forgive them. And then?
You just walked away.
That’s what happened. You just reduced everything to money. You had it. I didn’t. So?
You just walked away.
That’s what happened. You needed space. I gave you so. So much so that you got lost in the wilderness of it all. They took you in, flashing fancy cars and expensive wine. Me? I had some scribbled notes, some old ideals, cheap dreams and some unknown lines of some unknown poem of an unknown poet. I was just ordinary. They weren’t. That’s why
You just walked away.
That’s what happened. You had had enough of me. I had nothing new to give. You sold my dreams. For a few pennies. You dumped the promises. At the Roman city. By the great site. In the clean gutter. Tourists wouldn’t notice. I did. Just didn’t realize it then. And then when I did, it was too late cause
You just walked away.
I keep telling myself every now and then that there was more than that…that it was NOT that…
Somewhere in my body, somewhere in my soul, you left such a deep cut that the scars still show.
I let you go. Just like that.
That’s what happened.
Things I'd do if I win a $250,00,000 lottery
1. Kill that Doctorate degree (in English) and then go for another Master's (preferably in Philosophy)
2. Buy a BMW
3. Set up a scholarship (in my dad's name) at a British University for Indian students who want to study English
4. Gift cash to the few who have always stood by me unconditionally
5. Clear my loans (now, I am surprised that this comes so late in the list)
6. Donate a good amount to an Indian NGO (and get Percy to track the finances)
7. Build a 3 storey library for myself
8. Buy a solitaire ring (for someone special)
9. Sponsor mum's world tour
10. Put the rest of the money in the bank and study for the rest of my life
p.s. Oh I forgot, I'd also ask those credit card companies to f.o. :-) What a day that'd be!
1. Kill that Doctorate degree (in English) and then go for another Master's (preferably in Philosophy)
2. Buy a BMW
3. Set up a scholarship (in my dad's name) at a British University for Indian students who want to study English
4. Gift cash to the few who have always stood by me unconditionally
5. Clear my loans (now, I am surprised that this comes so late in the list)
6. Donate a good amount to an Indian NGO (and get Percy to track the finances)
7. Build a 3 storey library for myself
8. Buy a solitaire ring (for someone special)
9. Sponsor mum's world tour
10. Put the rest of the money in the bank and study for the rest of my life
p.s. Oh I forgot, I'd also ask those credit card companies to f.o. :-) What a day that'd be!
