Tamil. Pleasantness.

Yedho ondru ennai eerka,
Mookin nuni marmam serka.

Yennodu vaa veedu varaikkum,
Yen veetai paar yennai pidikkum.

[Nenjukul Peindhidum, Vaaranam Aayiram]

Writer’s Block!

Oh. Fuck!

Only yesterday it looked like I had so much to write about. And was content how I am able to come with enough stories to sustain this blog. But today, looks like they are all gone. Just don’t seem to know where. And I already began contemplating writing one of those ’10 movies which you should watch before you die’ or ’12 Favorite movie quotes for everyday usage’ posts. Sigh!

I whined about it to a Mallu footballer friend. And I liked his explanation, though I vaguely remember reading something similar in one of the interviews given by Film Maker Rajeev Menon. Probably its a Mallu way of explaining things, I guess. Both say that there are several occasions when one comes up with stories which seem very interesting at that moment. But after a night’s sleep, the same end up appearing very insignificant and not worth writing about. For no particular reason.

So yeah. All my yesterday stories have weakened out. And my mind refuses to give them any attention, anymore. But don’t lose heart. Smart that I am, shall take the Fellini route. When Fellini ran out of ideas and suffered a creative block, he shrewdly made a movie about it. 8 1/2. And it only become one of the better films the world ever watched. Am quite glad I got something to mimic.

A post about not having anything to write.

Though I don’t have a strong argument to back it, I somehow think that not having talked much with D today is the reason why I lost all my stories. Conversations with her make it possible to come up with unusual narrations without much effort, in detail. Ones I might not even have given a thought otherwise. Oh yes. I asked if she will write a movie with me. She said sure.

Well. Reminding myself that this is a post about Writer’s Block and not about D, if I have to take a closer look at my faded stories, floating aimlessly. Hmm. I can see, A Psychoanalysis on Prof. Sadh, The Art of Peeing, Why neurotic women are the most interesting ones?, Meeting D on a rainy day, Lightness-Fineness-Truffautness, Dummies guide to porn movies, Freelancing in human relations, Su and the world of cinema and Our Orkut pictures always look better than us.

Oh. Wait. That aint too bad. Looks like quite a few things to write about. Should pick one of them the next time around.

In love with my own words.

How easy it becomes to love a piece of writing when the reader is the one who wrote it. Ah! One of my recent realizations is that, I so completely love every random piece I write, however dull or boring they might be. Its been just 2 posts and I have already read and re-read them over a hundred times. Sometimes even aloud. And everytime, I seem to love them a little more than before.

And I have this rushing desire to write one post after another. All the time. Its just my silly sentimental belief that’s been helping me restrain. I am quite convinced that too much obsession during the first few days sends the blog to extinction very soon. I remember most of my friends who started a blog, were too much in love with it, the initial few weeks. Its during this period that the blog is marketed quite shamelessly and tantrums are thrown to get the comments section filled, pretty much like what am doing the past 3 days. I am in fact a worse specimen. I have been refreshing this page every now and then, to check if I have received any new comment to the posts. But that aside. Yeah. I remember Sri writing his first three posts on the same day. T too wrote a post-a day for a while. And eventually, the mad love died out and so did their blog. So yeah. Am trying to save my blog from any such disastrous-syndrome. And curbing those fatal enthusiasm. Or wait. Maybe am just making this long, detailed rationalization as an excuse to my laziness.

Random Ambition: Now that every asshole writes a book these days. Maybe, I could write one too. Publishers these days seem to be hunting for IIT/IIM graduates, who show even the vaguest potential to write any crap. So I could put my IIM tag to that one use atleast. Couple that with my indecisive, cynical, neurotic, dreamy, INFP, unfocused nature. Even an autobiographical attempt should make decent reading, I would like to hope. Am sure the 2 lakh CAT aspirants would be desperately looking for inspiration in any form and size. My book will be strategically released just a month before the CAT/XAT/Some-Shit exam season, to cash in the wannabe-managerial fever. Inspiration, they wouldn’t get any, of course. But all that’s after the 2 lakh plus copies are sold. ‘Young graduate from IIM I says no to The Boston Consulting Group and follows his passion, writing’ would be Rashmi Bansal’s next article, titled in the oh-so-boring Business World. Surely sounds nice. And am positive that the guys at BCG wouldn’t mind or care. So Penguin Books India, take note.

Ah. So where were we.

My writing. Well. I remembered having started two blogs. Long, long ago. With all permutation and combination of their possible blog addresses, finally found both today. One of them had a Tamil movie review, which I originally sent to Su, when she was in London. I remember her mentioning that she found it funny. But only today did I realize that she was just being a sweetheart. The review sucked, very badly. Annoyingly corny and a desperate attempt at humor, are the nicest things I could say about it. The other blog had no posts. Just an ‘About me’ section filled, where I have tried vainly to appear ‘cool’. Only sounding unbearably fake and loser like.

The first blog’s entry reminded me of the long mails I used to write, to Su. Even though we lived in the same city until she left to London and were just a telephone call away, we used to write long mails to each other. Or to be factually more accurate, she forced me to write those long mails. I remember my initial few mails being not more than 4-5 sentences long. And then she unleashed her frightening tantrums and set the mail size standard to 5k. I found her very adorable and even if not, wouldn’t have said a no. After she left to London, the mails only got longer. Sure, all this gave me an opportunity to try my bit with writing. I even tried poetry, but lets discuss that some other time. And. None of the other women were the letter/mail type. So. Hmm. I think I should add this paragraph to my Random Ambition book’s ‘Straight from the author’s heart’ section, as a thank-you note to Su.

Now that I forgot how I planned to end this post. And since its painfully too long, already. It deserves an abrupt end. Like this.

My obsession with post scripts continue but.

Post script: This post’s title is not original. M used it in a conversation recently. ‘Because you are in love with your own words’. Liked the sound of it. Nice observation too. So, thanks M.

Because Cinema has more life than real life.

While talking to D the other day, I realized how much I take movies more seriously than real life. Not that I wasn’t aware of the feeling before. Its just the feeling became more pronounced. And I guess I was able to understand it better after the conversation.

Like, how I am increasingly becoming quite insensitive and indifferent to people in real life. But ironically, how people in movies still move me. Somehow, they seem more real than those I meet everyday.

I remember, when my grandfather passed away a few years ago. Well. I was never quite attached to him. He was a nice guy, I believe. But still, I wasn’t fond of him or anything. Everyone gathered for his last ceremony, were weeping hard, particularly the women and they were expecting me to weep or to appear depressed, at least. I only surprised and shocked them with my bored, bland face. I didn’t really feel anything. No feeling of loss, nothing. To be blunt, it wasn’t anything different from attending a boring Brand Management session. Hmm. I might be exaggerating it a little bit here, though.

But while watching this Chinese movie called ‘Happy times’ last month, I cried so fucking badly. The friendship between the blind girl and the old guy were more genuine than what it can be in real. And it was absolutely nice to believe that something like it can be possible. Like how people, even when their life is at a very sad state, can give their best to make someone else happy. Well. Yeah. The old cliched movie talk. But it sure was inspiring. I somehow would want to believe that the movie made me a nicer person than what I was, before I watched it.

Post script:

Yeah. This is my first post. I am hoping I get to write more often this time. I should say that, in a way, D helped me start with this blog, though she wouldn’t know about it. In the past few months, I have been narrating several stories from my life to her. With little exaggeration here and there, for amusement purpose. And I guess I figured that I do a decent job of narrating incidents. She seems to like them, at least.

So I was wondering if I could make an account of all those narrations and more. Of course, while conversing with her, the fact that I am telling a story to a pretty girl is a very kick-ass thing. And her chuckles sure inspire me to make the story more interesting. And so I try to make her chuckle louder and more often. But sadly, while writing for a blog, all this is absent. So, I might not be as good. Though, am planning to make a few pretty, quirky girls read this blog. That way, I will have some incentive.