Every Creative Writer's Nightmare...

This post is an ode to the words which never took shape, however hard I tried.

This post is for those times, when you desperately wanted to write, but could not.

This post is for those long hours spent on rumination, on the next topic for the post.

This post is for the seven complete deletions that happened before this was accepted by the editor in me.

Writers block, damn him to hell!

After My Beast, There Came Silvester...

Why do I give names to all my possessions?

Why do I call my Nokia 3230 'The Beast'?

Born out of sheer habit, my new laptop, a day old, has been named 'Silvester'.

He is my Noble Fair unicorn.

It wouldn't change the world, nor save it, but for me, the world has just changed.

Holding on to his white mane, I watch the world go by.

Dream two down, many more to go!

Coffee, Tea Or My Me?

Disclaimer – Though a lot of passing years has jaded my memory, I have tried to be as accurate as accurate can be.

I have always had a soft corner for village tea shops. We were truly spoilt for choices at the place where I grew up. We had three shops to choose from and I was a spoilt brat, thanks to my grand dad, who was quite a prominent figure.

Those ancestral-home visits were reserved for the long holidays. Many times have I gone to bed praying for it to start the very next day. But when I woke up, it was still those four white walls, looking and being looked upon.

The tea shops were always the same, the ambience never changed. If in one, the goddess smiled down on you with a shower of gold coins, at the next, it was Jesus Christ with an open wound to his heart, oozing blood and love. It smelled my favourite smell at the third tea-shop – that of freshly squeezed coconut oil.

It was in these shops that the world came together. It was in these shops that the news of the world was gathered and dispelled. It was here that a million 'matches-made-in-heaven' was finalized and it was here that rebellion first came to my little village. It was the place where my father got his strong circle of friends and it was here that I wished I could emulate my father and his close circle.

It was a million things in one, and then some more. It was a million things that many thought would not change, but did. It was a million things that described me, and then became strangers.

I walked those roads recently when I was home. Later, I wished I hadn’t.

The dried palm-leaf roof was gone, hard concrete boiled down on me. The little card-board sign which proclaimed the hotels name was long dead and gone. Plastic coated vinyl sheets glared down at me. The little wooden shelf which displayed the little round snacks were little no more. Nor were they wooden.

It was an 'Impersonal' steel hue everywhere, as long as my tear stained eye went. My old land was gone, to never ever come back. As I walked home, it began to rain, first as a drizzle and then as a torrent. For a fleeting moment, I felt god sharing my pain, for things that had gone horribly wrong.

Maybe one day, I will tell my grand children…'' Before Pepsi and Coke overtook my country, there were these three little tea shops…''

Its NOT About Money, Honey!

I swear, its not about money.

For 23 years, I never provided, I did not have the means.

If my thinking confirms with what god has planned for me, then I believe I will provide for the next 23 years or even much more.

It’s a nice glowing feeling of warmth inside at the start of every month. Sending money home gives you the feeling of doing your Penny's worth - for the trust, the time, the money, and the pains – your parents invested in you.

It may be the 'Mallu-syndrome' at work and if so, I am the happiest man on earth.

I gotta go, I think I can already hear the sweet sound of my next pay cheque arriving.

Tagged A Strange Stranger!

I was tagged for the very first time by a very dear friend. It's eons since I promised to give the tag a thought, and now, eons later, I do. The next few lines could bore you to death or bring a curving smile as your face blossoms in recognition. My duty is to recognise six weird facts about me (easier than I thought it would be) and tag another six of my friends who Blog.
First tings first. Ladies and gentlemen, the Strange Facts Files:

Strange Fact 1 – I can never ever find a topic to write on, it finds me every time. I love to paint pictures with words and the pictures would never be earth shattering. It'd mean a lot to me, but never to the world. I feel weird in deriving pleasure out of describing the tiniest details in my posts, but that’s me, for you!

Strange Fact 2 – I relate incidents in my life to smell and music. It stays with me for ever, coming back to me in flashes and flashbacks. Endless rumination follows and the end result would always be deep sadness or wild exhilaration of joy.

Strange Fact 3 – I still cry when I read the articles on Reader's Digest. I cry for happy endings in movies and wail when it ends the way it should nowadays. I take crying to an entirely different level and everything would have been fine had I not been a guy of 24, with 84 kilos on his more than chubby 170 cm framed body. If that’s not strange, tell me, what is?

Strange Fact 4 – Has a fascination for all eye-balls other than my colour, Black. Green mesmerises me, Blue dumbfounds. While Grey never ceases to amaze, Brown roots me to the spot. Fiery Orange is what I have looked out for and Black is what has looked back at me most. Stranger than fiction, yet truer than the truth!

Strange Fact 5 – In a web-site named Orkut lives my dear pals of time and beyond. I know of their existence, but never have added them. They took pains to add me and I have always welcomed them. It's strange to know that I am acting pricey (although it's not in my character), but its stranger to know that I continue doing so despite risking a snub.

Strange Fact 6 – Its feels so strange to know that I sat with this post for the past three hours, assessing my strangeness quotient. So much for the thought of me being the strangest human to have walked the earth.

Friends I feel are strange enough to have a tag on them…

Shivangi
Ajoy Philip Babu
Sherry
Sharan Sharma
Rajasree Ray
GBU

(Please do what I have done and tag six of your friends, for more info, just send a screamer my way.)

It Rained!

Patience is a very good ally. It might rain down peacefully in here in a day or two.

Jade Eyes!

This picture of the Afghan girl, whose rags were her only riches, is almost as old as me. I was two when this photo which mesmerised the world was taken. She stared right into the world's conscience and became its silent ache. 14 years ago, a girl from Kuwait, looked at me like this, and she became to me, what this snapshot became to the world.

I can never forget my sixth grade in 1991. Iraq invaded oil rich Kuwait and my many relatives headed back home, as paupers. In the middle of that turbulent term, to my class came a malayalee girl, scarred by war, terrified of the world. She was alien to us, for we never knew what war meant, though we played it every other day.

She sat in a corner, green eyes peering cautiously over glasses with a thick transparent frame, aware of every movement in the classroom. My female classmates tried to make her feel at home. For us boys, wrongly, she was the perfect alien, different from us and the way we grew up.

Our school was a strict vegetarian institution. It was sacrilege to even mention meat. On her second day at school, she brought an egg roll to class, neatly packed in her little pink Tiffin box, and all hell broke loose. Boys surrounded her and started chanting that she had committed a grave sin. The little face, with fear already writ large on it, swelled up with tears, but bravely, held.

All the while, I sat there, little and stunned and stupid, unable to move. Her eyes looked for an escape from within the growing, chanting circle. She looked at me for help with eyes I will never ever forget - It truly held the pathos of a hunted animal. I changed school soon after, completely losing track of her. Her eyes kept returning to me, on and off, for the next 14 years, reminding me of what I should have done, but never did.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006 was like any other day, except that I met her on the net unexpectedly. The sad, unsure young girl had grown into a confident young woman. It gives me strength to apologise, for being the scared young boy that I was, who could not help her when she really needed help. That said and done, god knows - tonight, I will sleep the most peaceful man on earth.

The Moment Of Truth!

12-05-2006,
8.03 P.M,
Qatar Sports Club,
Doha,
Qatar.

He ran with his heart and his legs carried him like the wind on the trees.

9.76 seconds later, he ran into my arms and he ran into history.

Justin was the subject of my first World Scoop and hence is the closest to my heart. I ran to him and jumped up to hug him. He looked at me, smiled and hugged me right back.

Justin Gatlin, fastest man on the planet, biggest gentleman i have ever come across!

Land of Black Gold, Yellow Sand And A Thousand Screaming Throats!

When thousands of white paper squares crash against you accompanied by the wild beat of drums and sheer magnitude of a hundred powerful throats, you cannot help but look heavenwards at the thick mass of people lining the top edge of the gallery, leaning down and making their pleasure known.

The first time this happened, it took a little while to register that the Arabs who were doing this were actually celebrating their team's victory. It was the final of the Qatar Football league and the leading team had just won the tournament. What followed that day is one of the reasons why I love sports so much.

No matter who it is by your side, you invariably hug him/her when your team wins. It could be a person you have grown up with, or someone whom you didn’t even know existed ninety minutes ago. There is no age, caste, creed, sex or any other constraints of society when it comes to two people sharing the common joy of their team's victory.

It is into this joy that I have flown down into. It is into this feeling of sharing that I have to go each time to find a new story. It is this feeling on oneness I feel each time I go to report an event.

What else could be more sweeter than the anticipation to a referees long whistle at the end of a particularly tense football match? Nothing, my friend, absolutely nothing!