Each morning, 30 minutes after leaving the bed, I am usually found in one of those DMRC beasts either fantasizing a seat, a women, sulking with an IPod plugged in to my ears or most commonly... reading. Finally out of existent stock and wary of going somewhere to purchase newer books, I finally picked up a Novel called "Zero Percentile" and started reading it today. This novel, written by a quassi-chetan bhagat author in a sami-chetan bhagat style with a fully chetan bhagat marketing plan was nowhere comparable to (at least) best selling Bhagat. The narrative was unorganised, unplanned, unedited and unthoughtful. It was like a news article done by the cameraperson because the journalist was on leave. However, the 40 pages of this novel resurrected in me something that even Ayn Rand, Lawrence and Rushdie failed to... my own dream of writing a Novel.
I kept 'Zero Percentile' down after reading 40 pages to enjoy the trance and nostalgia that it gave me, trance of my own first novel. Starting 3 years ago on this unplanned voyage of writing a novel, I (immature and unexposed) played safe and romantic by picking up a Delhi based love story as my plot. With my limited knowledge of vocabulary, art of expression and usage of words to their true potential, I wrote about 150 pages in MS Word(I still remember that old Sahara laptop). Those standards of yesteryear are but a source of mockery now. Those plane expressions, underutilized idioms, pointless sarcasms, careless satires, disparaging euphemisms and short vocabulary were anything but tamed and timid. But today, when I have made a career out of writing and I'm by my standards a decently read man with viable knowledge of language and its usage as a tool... today, when my pen is, if not sword, at least a sickle of verbiage, I am too messed up in my grooming to pen out my aspirations. The madness has died and the magic could never grow. All dreams of boundless creativity are broken each morning by the alarm clock. The trance of imagination is broken by the assaults of deadlines. The ship has met it's fate even before its first journey. It will soon be sunk in the white-collar-whirlwind. The death has already happened in me much longer, but I realized it today after reading another budding author, who at least wrote. Zero Percentile will continue to be my most-haunting and disparaging novel for long. But I never-the-less-never-the-more need to start from page 41 tomorrow...
Mar 15, 2010
Mar 3, 2010
Training for taming
Post placement-the wetting dream of all management students-life has been spiralling, twisting and intimidating. The society and civility are no more like before. The blood-brotherhood promises are growing stale. The commitments to oneself, the oath of disciplines, the fantasies of luxury and the utopian perfection have ceased even before their creation. Let alone eclectic growth, some of us are probably diminishing from inside.
How so ever occupied I be or pretend to be, some fragments of past do visit me each day. Remembering my first year in that obscenely built lavish triangular dwelling, I recall the emotional voyage of absurdity, aloofness, confusion, numbness, friendship, politics, bacchanalianism, mockery, bigotry, accidents, nudity, extremity, incapability and atrophy. While yet, another side of me contemporarily recalls freshness, rejuvenation, attachment, charm, belongingness and insecurity. Till the speciality of pursuing higher education became a necessity: a socio-emotional dose, we were through with the confused half of our MBA.
Following the 3 month break in our redeeming Sabbath I, with some chosen and imposed friends moved to another accommodation. Now this one reminds me of laughter, potpourri, happy high, sad high, only high, high-high, neighbour nagging, pre dawn whacking, perverseness, madness, fear, frolic, frenzy, fame, sense, logic, untangling and relief. Correspondingly, the not so egoist alter ego remembers mirth, bliss, strife, derelicts, homecoming, extrapolation, vision, pacification, belief, humour, commitment and oneness.
Having said all this, I must mention that it is not merely the spasms of nostalgia or fits of chagrin that haunt us, it is the crowded and rowdy outside world that upsets us by not being as we shaped it inside. You might not like to pardon my frankness, but the vainness of MBA is more intense than its best reminiscence. Even if you see that the road to future is bright and sunny, prepare for a rain or sunburn, and for some of us, even for an eclipse.
How so ever occupied I be or pretend to be, some fragments of past do visit me each day. Remembering my first year in that obscenely built lavish triangular dwelling, I recall the emotional voyage of absurdity, aloofness, confusion, numbness, friendship, politics, bacchanalianism, mockery, bigotry, accidents, nudity, extremity, incapability and atrophy. While yet, another side of me contemporarily recalls freshness, rejuvenation, attachment, charm, belongingness and insecurity. Till the speciality of pursuing higher education became a necessity: a socio-emotional dose, we were through with the confused half of our MBA.
Following the 3 month break in our redeeming Sabbath I, with some chosen and imposed friends moved to another accommodation. Now this one reminds me of laughter, potpourri, happy high, sad high, only high, high-high, neighbour nagging, pre dawn whacking, perverseness, madness, fear, frolic, frenzy, fame, sense, logic, untangling and relief. Correspondingly, the not so egoist alter ego remembers mirth, bliss, strife, derelicts, homecoming, extrapolation, vision, pacification, belief, humour, commitment and oneness.
Having said all this, I must mention that it is not merely the spasms of nostalgia or fits of chagrin that haunt us, it is the crowded and rowdy outside world that upsets us by not being as we shaped it inside. You might not like to pardon my frankness, but the vainness of MBA is more intense than its best reminiscence. Even if you see that the road to future is bright and sunny, prepare for a rain or sunburn, and for some of us, even for an eclipse.
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