Blogger's Block

One may call it another chic excuse for not having blogged in a long time as against the drab I-was-very-busy and I-was-getting-married-and-honeymooning-in-Switzerland and I-was-trying-to-strike-a-work-life-balance excuses. Or one may dismiss it with the arguement that just because there is a term like that, you'd like to term your inactivity Blogger's block. And that just because you read about a condition like that, you'd condition yourself to being afflicted by it.

The condition of Writer's block, in its originality, doesn't apply to blogging, at least to Rambling Mutterings, but then I need something to mutter and scribble to break this spell of inactivity, and what is a better way of overcoming the Blogger's block by blogging about the Blogger's block. A little off track, here is a good list of tips I found for beating it.

The last time I couldn't blog for a long time I had attributed it to quarter-life-crisis. Things are pretty different now. I am happily married, have enough workload to keep me busy at work, have lots to write and share, especially in the travelogue part of my blog (yes, Switzerland indeed!), experiences of my new life and all; there are a few draft posts sitting in my blogger account that I did not complete and post lest they should have shooed away prospective brides. I had taken resolve in my last post three months ago, that was one after a gap of two months, that I shall try to post at least once a week. Almost all my readers have asked me at least once about my next post. I had many things and lots of reasons and enough time and peace of mind.

I still couldn't write.

If I try to analyse and list down reasons for it (in order to justify it to myself):

• I actually had no time when I was taking nuptial vows and was touring the Alpine land.
• Nocturnal habits die hard. I realized I was more creative in the dark, and now the nights are not that free, not that I complain.
• I used to look forward to a large chunk of time to write a new blogpost: composing, Googling and Wikiing, editing, and then posting all in one go. Drafts remain drafts for ever. Don't get those large chunks now.
• I try to come up with a well-written, complete piece of essay-like post, half-baked, hurriedly written posts are something I don't want to do.
• Didn't watch any movies, thanks to the multiplex-owners' strike and an almost diminished torrent-downloading interest among colleagues, else would have come up with some interesting movie reviews.
• I have too many topics to write upon, so when I pick up the pen, I lose interest by the time I decide which one to begin with.
• Time and again, I have this urge to split up my blog into many, a travelogue, a movie review blog, a personal one, a photography one etc. This thought hinders me from writing under the general Rambling Mutterings umbrella.

and so on and so forth.

Let me wait and see if I am able to produce more posts soon. To start with, this one is an incomplete post ending with an incomplete senten

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Ashes' Rashez

When I analyze the above graph that depicts the number of posts on my blog per month, retrospect on my state of mind, and read my previous posts, it gives, to some extent, an indication of my stress level over the past 21 months. There have been many months when I posted quite frequently, and when I look back, I find that I was stressed, frustrated, or depressed. That I was real busy and not low was only for the months of Feb and April 08. Blogging came as a real help for most of the other times. Writing gives me the kicks and acts as an anti-depressant. Related viral activities like Googling or Wikiing when required also helped keep the devil away from an empty mind.

Q4, 2008 saw me getting inclined towards reviewing movies, which was useful in killing up a huge chunk of my free time in more ways than one. Watch movies, explore IMDB and wiki etc, write reviews, find out more related movies, download them, watch them and review them again, thereby creating a circle I was very happy with. People started liking my reviews and I started getting requests for more reviews, making new friends in the process. Rambling Mutterings was proving to be a friend in need, indeed.

The onset of 2009 saw me giving lesser time for this friend I visited every few hours, and then one fine day, I abruptly didn't feel the need. No time for getting stressed/depressed. Rambling Mutterings did not complain but its readers did. Despite getting multiple reminders from many of you in the forms of comments, emails, and IMs, I didn't keep the friend whose existence depends on me. I had so many plans (ideas to write about) for it but nothing materialized.

There is a beautiful reason called 'rashez' behind the neglect, and I am not at all sorry. It’s a month and a half that I met her for the first time. I still remember the way she turned, bouncing her hair back, when I called from within my car waiting for her at MG Road. She was a bit lost initially but then grew comfortable by the end of our first date and things have never been the same since then.

Not only are our names similar and our birthdays concur, but our behaviour, likes-dislikes, and tastes match to quite an extent. We even share the same fooding habits; we have exactly similar favorites, though I need to develop in her a taste for Italian food, and teach her using chopsticks. I enjoy spending time with her, teasing her, irritating her, and then going back appeasing her. We love and quarrel, and keep pulling each other’s leg, I over her अशुद्ध हिन्दी, and she over my lots of other things.

Our story is more like an express, things clicked and everything happened so fast, we have already become the closest of friends. We have shared so much, gotten so close, that we often feel we’ve known each other for ages. I know she is The One. The One I can spend the rest of my life happily. I only wish I had met her earlier.

Anyway, I am not going to forget this good friend and would be loyal to it. Shall visit regularly and though I cannot promise, I shall try to write one post a week. Or lets start with three a month.

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The Yearend Post

Reflecting upon the last year, I find that it has been quite a tumultuous one. Things happened. Shit happened. Learnt a lot. Gained a lot. Lost a lot. Made new good friends. Broke up with a very good old friend too. Handled huge responsibilities. Failed at a few. Rose again. Fell again. But then that is life. That happens all the time, but we don't stop and think about them unless it is the turn of the year. We tend to account a lot of things for this largest unit of time. Things and shit keep happening throughout, we never list them otherwise. This fact irks me the same way it irks Dhirendra Kumar of valueresearchonline.com when everybody celebrates the Sensex passing the 13000 or the 16000 mark, or any other thousand. And that is why I was reluctant to write a year-end post.

Come year end and you have all sorts of lists being compiled up from all directions and on all media. As the clock ticks away to the last few moments of 2008, I am thinking about my lists. I had wanted to blog about my favourite movies, my top-ten songs, my most memorable moments, best blogposts I read, coolest photographs I clicked, my resolutions, things I want to improve next year, basically tens of top-ten lists of the departing year and lists of resolutions for the new year in gestation. But I was either short on time or deprived of genuine inclination. Or maybe I could not decide where to begin, what to pick first from amongst the plethora of ideas I had in mind.

Anyway, however hard I might try not to, I cannot stop myself from considering the new year as a fresh start in life. Have many things in mind, haven't listed them though. Listing them and not being able to fulfil them hurts. But sometime or the other, I need to list them down, else I'd forget them. And I'll have to fulfil what I list. Oops...I already listed down the first and the most important resolution. Before I end up listing a few more of my (dark) secrets, let me wish you all a Happy New Year and bid 2008 adieu!

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Cognitive Dissonance

To be or not to be, that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
...

The Shakespearean Prince Hamlet in his soliloquy above talks about his indecisiveness. There are conflicting views among the literary intelligentsia on which one is the to be option and which is the not to be. I feel facing the highs and lows of life seems the more difficult to be option, and the braver option of taking up arms and fighting against and dying is the not to be. Hamlet continues in his monologue and observes that death is not an absolute annihilation and end of problems, you might still dream and God knows what you'll dream about and what dilemmas you might face therein. So the decision-making might never end.

Thoughts flutter. They make you fall in situations you need to make a decision. You have both the choices equally viable, both of them seem right, you have a tough time deciding which way to choose. You have a fight within yourself. You try to logically eliminate one of the options available, but you always have the fear of thoughts quivering and you regretting on The Road Not Taken at a later point in life.

There is another kind of situation you tend to fall in, which is more difficult than to-be-or-not-to-be. That is one after you have made a decision. Thoughts still flutter. You've made a decision but are unable to stick to it. It is not necessarily between the good and the bad, the two options available may be equally right or equally wrong. Correctness is anyway a relative concept. You choose one from the two roads equally travelled, and since there is no one less traveled by, there is nothing that has made all the difference. But two things cannot be the same, and you end up struggling with yourself.

Or, you know you've made a wrong move, but you tend to find excuses to yourself trying to justify your decision. Thoughts flutter again and you have a battle within yourself. Usually it is a tussle between the heart and the head. Invariably the heart wins, and the head ends up helping the heart win by providing excuses to you. A case of induced compliance without sufficient justification. The cognizance of your acts being against your own (and that of others') wellbeing makes you fall to abysmal depths and think very low of you. The moment you try to get up and stand against, something comes up that forces you to give in yet again. The more you give in, the more troubled you feel, the deeper you fall, and more difficult it becomes to emerge from the recesses of depression and self-criticism, and the more prone you become to giving in. A vicious circle follows, the exit from which is visible to you but you are not strong enough to follow the path. All this could have been avoided had you nipped it in the bud. Had you not let the uncomfortable feeling of dissonance come in the first place.

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The Glass Wall

This Saint-Gobain advertisement always used to make me smile. This and this are more amusing Saint Gobain ads that end up embarrassing people. Yours truly had a similar experience with such a clear glass last fortnight. However, it was more than just embarrassment I had to endure because I failed to see a glass wall. I had wanted to write this since the incident but typing with just three fingers of the left hand is much more pain than I had imagined. Here is how it happened:

Saturday Night Fever. It was one of the those Saturdays when I keep sleeping the entire day and spend most of the conscious time with my beloved I am typing on right now. 18th October 2008 was one such lazy Saturday when at 8:11 in the evening popped up an IM window titled Kushagra, asking me to come to the paani-batashe-waala exactly midway our apartment complexes. Now I am not a big fan of gol-gappe but my sister definitely is, and we decided to go out. After all it was Saturday night.

We teleported there in a minute, and after sis and Kush had their fill and Pawan and I tasted a few paani-puris, the question of what next on Saturday eve arose again. I suggested tea and junta readily agreed. There were numerous options thrown at me: the Day Fresh bakery behind where we were standing, the tea stall beside Spencer's, mom-made tea at my and self-made at Pawan and Kush's house, MSRIT Canteens, Freska, CCD, and Barista.

Final Destination. The two smaller joints were ruled out because they do not have good tea. Going back home was out of question. We wanted good tea and not coffee hence CCD and Barista were eliminated. Pawan and Kush had been to Freska the day before and had good basil tea, so we narrowed upon the MSRIT canteen. Kush picked up his car and we went out in an expedition to the Engineering College canteen I had been to once, five years ago when I had visited Bangalore on a college project. Despite walking around half an hour, and thanks to some really helpful and knowledgeable security guards, and my brilliant memory, we could not locate the canteen. Almost giving in, we went to the Food Court, but they did not have tea. Similar was the answer at the doors of four other canteens in the campus we knocked.

Someone suggested we go back, but how could we accept defeat after wasting an hour in the quest of tea on a Saturday eve? We decided to (or were destined to) visit Freska, a small but nice Continental restaurant on 80-feet Road, Dollar's Colony.

The Happening. We park. Freska looks crowded. Now this place is like a boutique restaurant with different compartments. There is a huge table seating almost a dozen people in the front room. I, leading the group, see the passage to the other room beside the overcrowded table and move my rudder towards that vacant passway.

I had not even entered the place when I stopped in my tracks. For almost three seconds I did not know what happened. Ruhi later tells me I stood there in shock and exclaimed "Abe!" thrice. The door was in front of the table, and I had walked into the very clear glass wall beside it. The whole glass had come crashing down. I looked down and cursed aloud when I saw blood gushing out of a one-and-a-half inch deep and equally wide wedge in my right forearm.

Rush Hour. No sooner had I exclaimed than everyone realised the gravity of the situation. Kush swung the car into a quick U, and we headed back towards the Ramaiah Campus, which was luckily only 200 meters away. We were stopped by a gang of four cops in this small distance, but they easily let us go without even seeing my arm that soaked the car seat completely. Ruhi had started crying though I had absolutely no sensation of pain, maybe the shock was higher than pain.

Pawan and I were dropped at the hospital gate and Kush and Ruhi went to park. They later followed my blood trail on the tiled floor to locate us in the emergency. A team of three doctors greeted me and went to action on my arm. They asked me not to look but I rather took this photo. (Disclaimer: Click at your own risk.) I was xrayed and cleaned and administered local antihaemorrhagic agents, and later sutured.

The Others. There is a wound on the little finger of the left hand, and I refused taking a suture there. There are at least six scratches and bruises on the right wrist. And there is a huge slash on the dorsal side of the right forearm that I noticed when the doc was about to stitch the deep one, over an hour later. This slash led to a flap of the skin bent up, which was put back and required more stitches than the deep one. This flap has necrosed now, and a thick, hard clot has formed over and beneath it, and doctors and I are still worried about it.

Office Space. The ensuing two weeks saw turning my room into office and my bed into workstation. The crucial release made me work with three gauche fingers. Office was manageable, but everything else is hindered, from brushing the teeth to eating to bathing. Clumsily, gauche'ly in the literal sense, struggling like a toddler, I've been doing everything with the left hand till today, when I can move the mouse around and press backspace and delete with the right. Now the right hand is behaving like an infant and I'll have to teach it many things.

The Great Escape. I am really thankful the glass did not cut any tendons/veins/arteries. The glass did not hit my face/head/eyes. Or the chest or neck. The outcomes are unimaginable. Worse could have been had it fallen a few inches north and slit my wrist. I shudder to think how vulnerable I was during those few seconds.

The storm is now over. Me back to blogging makes me feel things are falling back in place. I shall be back in full action very soon.

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Another late-night post

Everything was so calm and tranquil. There was almost no wind; the sky was overcast but there was a certain coolness in the air, quite cooler than indoors. Things looked so different and beautiful in the night. After an average day at work and a not-so-good evening just before leaving, I had come home, had dinner, and after my parents had retired to sleep, had gone down to the park in the apartment. It was well past midnight, and the park was completely deserted, which is otherwise full of children playing around on seesaws and slides and monkeytraps, older children playing basketball and badminton, and people on their evening walks. After strolling along for some while in the park, I had sat down by the side of the swimming pool. I just hung out there, quietly, connecting...

The water and I.

A striking contrast at the moment, I still somehow liked it being there. Wanted to draw some inspiration. I don't know how long did I stay there--it was one of those times when I did not want to think anything but could not help thinking. One of those times when I was doing exactly what I was trying very hard not to. The evening's incidents revisited in my head. I was trying to analyse the (f)utility of everything...debating with myself, admonishing myself, getting angry at myself, and so on and so forth. I wished I could get drunk. And on my side lay the waterbody, so calm, still, serene, and unagitated, as if complementing me.

The tranquility and the turbulence.

The Urge

As I read one of my favourite blogs in bed this morning, I had this peculiar urge: to work for a company whose office is located in the other end of city. I generally like riding any distances preferred to being time-bound with an office cab/bus, but today I felt I'd really like it, when I could sit down with my laptop, or a book, and enjoy my time up and down. The probability of a book, however, is much lesser, although that is what I used to do when I was in Delhi and used to travel back to my hometown on weekends.

View from my balcony.

Later (when I was completely awake): I realize this is quite a mammoth task to accomplish. Can't do that in one year. Too many strings attached.

My First Scratch

While reversing the car out of my parking, the bent right front wheel got stuck at the basement pillar. Shifting the gear to first, I inched ahead, but did not get the calculation right and the front of the car kissed another pillar. I did not feel the impact, but the security guard told me, and I got down to see four horizontal, small but visible lines at the corner of the bumper.

This happened barely a minute after I sat down for the first time at the steering wheel without someone who knew driving beside me. I bought a car last week, and this was meant to be a surprise birthday gift for Mom. My parents had been out for a month and had returned early morning last Thursday, and the car was delivered the same day in the evening. When I asked Mom and Dad to come down to the basement, they had thought I had wanted them to meet the girl I had finalized, and she had been shy and hesitant to come up home. Even after they reached the basement, it took them a couple of seconds to realize it were wheels and not heels.

So, the ten-day-old car has a minor scratch thanks to the overconfidence gained through three hours of driving lessons. Just because I did not want to argue, the other day I agreed with a friend otherwise, but driving a car is more difficult than riding a bike, for the simple reason it adds an extra dimension. On the road, a bike can be considered to be one-dimensional, and you don't have to bother about the far left edge scraping something.

Also, a bike is completely integrated with your body once you alight, and you can do everything without lifting either of the hands or feet, unlike in a car, when you have to constantly shift your extremities. Due to the linear nature of a bike, it is much easier to manoeuvre small gaps between vehicles and switch lanes. Of course a car is more comfortable, and poses lesser risk for you (and more for others) on the road.

Well, a four- and a two-wheeler are meant to serve different purposes, and have their own sets of comforts and discomforts. I could ride a geared two wheeler around eleven years ago, even though I had my own only last year. But never started learning driving a four wheeler till I bought one. And now that I have put my money into it, I'll have to learn driving, and no level of listing the problems of a car against the merits of a bike can really help.