Demolishing the Block

When people tell you “you are good,” an invisible burden ironically ‘floats in’ from nowhere and rests on your shoulders. The burden being- always being good. As someone who likes penning down thoughts on an extremely random basis , I was jabbed with a writer’s worst low – The Block – for the longest two months of my life. Though many have tried to express in their own words, the actual feeling of being to the most popular vacation spot called the Writer’s Block, it’s still very hard to use words to describe it. Writers need motivation. Each writer has his own muse and his own idea of motivation. Each person is a writer- some are perpetually in a blocked mode; while some slip into it occasionally.

The first signs of hanging out in the Block:
- Every time somebody mentions your writing and your past works, your heart cringes and you sense the discomfort.
- You have opened MS word several times only to type “QWERTY” and backspace it.
- You desperately read through your old pieces seeking some sort of inspiration.
- You turn irritable when somebody reminds you that “it has been a while since the last one”
- You hate being inconsistent with quality. You are never too pleased with what you think or write.

In my case the worst sign was desperation. I turned so desperate that all through the day I tried spotting a feasible “blog post” idea. The bus, the loo, the mirror, the window- all enticed me into brainstorming for a possible cover for the blog. From the birth of this blogspot, posts and words have been effortless and free-flowing. For the first time, it was actually a pain to drag the post-string along (what I thought was) the right track. So I decided to do what they prescribe to block-hit writers.

I wrote a poem to shake away from the tangles of the Block

I want to write,
Get done with the fight,
between my pen and mind;

I told myself,
rake up the old shelf,
for the flash you will find;

No writer should sit;
without the bulb lit
for the muse will yawn in pain

For, to every boon
the writers swoon,
there’s the Block that marks the bane.

Of the hug that I never got

“He hugged her and cried, with the sweetest smile,” said Avinash, describing the man’s wilting health. On the hospital bed, he described the man’s searching eyes were as restless as a baby’s. This was when friends and family around him were heaving with fear, trying hard to smile, not giving away the frustration in their faces after months of tiring, uncertain nights.

The man is his grandfather, fondly known as bhaiji, and the girl - bhaiji’s grand daughter. When people have tales to tell about their grandparents, I feel quite lost. Do I have grand parents? - of course. Am I lucky that I have them? – I think so. Do I have memories I’d like to remember, with them? – this will take some time to dig into. Proud moments, happy moments, loved moments? – still thinking…

Without touching my maternal side, describing the grand parents who were physically close to me – they never quite considered me to be part of the kin. An outspoken, back-answering wench, who never got the point. Most astonishingly, a girl who never got the bigger point that “Men will always be up in the sky, when women are grounded on Earth for life.”
“No,” she’d say. “Which century are these thoughts from? Women are just as high ‘up in the sky’ as men. Why the difference?”
She could never understand the biggest truth of life. Such a difficult child. And a girl child at that.

They abandoned all hopes of making anything out of this girl. Happy with the other grandchildren and their adherence to the golden rule, the girl was more of an outcast. I remember being left with nothing to contribute when friends sat in a circle during lunch breaks, discussing their happiness at having grandparents over during weekends. In my desperation, in the 6th grade I studied all night just to take a good report card back to appuppa. To see some pride in his face. All he said was, “3rd rank? Try to top the next time.”

Nope. It evidently didn’t work.

I don’t think I have hugged appuppa ever. But I yearned to be loved by him. I wanted him to think highly of me, knowing very well that he wouldn’t. Despite that, I still love him.

Best friend?!

Past 3.00 AM. I’m in the middle of a half-yawn, but I know the journey to dreamland will take me a while. Ponder time.

Last week, a friend introduced her friend to me as her first best friend ever. Met around kindergarten days and stuck on to be friends, she said (It is a blessing if one can make such claims. You hardly stay the same with your first best friend throughout. In fact, you hardly remember the person you gave that honour to, mostly). I thought for the name of that first best friend of mine- Hannah Thomas- 1st STD, Choice School. I remember sharing a table with her, fighting for an eraser that was never lost. Waiting for ‘free periods’ so that we could get into our illusionary office, where stenographers (Hannah and I) typed with upturned 15 cm- measurement scales (for the appropriate sound, as our little fingers tapped on each imagined letter). Trying our own strategies, individually, to be the ‘preferred one’ of the class bully- always in competition with each other. Sharing water (sometimes) but never sharing lunch (chocolate wafers and creamy cakes were never spared, so we ate it in hiding). Being a proud owner of ‘foreign’ colour pencils and cussing and bawling when she broke it. Playing ring-a-ring-o’roses, falling at “...we all fall down,” and breaking my front tooth (the one dad warned me would make or break my ‘developing’ beauty [3rd STD by now]), and remaining in utter shock to even cry for the remaining part of the day.

Came 4th standard. With new class came new faces. The brutal axe of class-shuffle had fallen on us. The next conversation was on the school bus. The content I hardly remember, but she was definitely not my best friend then. Asha, I think was the next on the list. Or was it Indu? Not sure.