Diary - Day 13

I went out for the usual post-lunch smoke. Having contracted cold for a few days now, the taste a drag induces in the mouth has more to it than the taste of brushing teeth with coal (I did brush with coal, very infrequently, when my age was a single digit, in my father's under-equipped village, which was habitable then).

That taste took me back to those lonesome afternoons, spent in that hut, right outside that college's premises. Being a student full of loathing & distaste for everything that was associated with that institution, I used to sit and smoke and feel repugnant about the cigarette's taste in my mouth & my teenage life's inability to grit through the loathsome program in that college.

That taste also took me back to tepid afternoons of 2012, when everything was so clueless. I was young, had an overachieving girlfriend and a disproportionate career. Same taste used to trail around in my mouth, which used to be slightly opened, wondering if I'd ever be able to swim ashore with all my portions unscathed.

The same tasted stirred in my mouth today. But the repugnance towards my life wasn't that stark as it had been once. Perhaps, in the perennial process of goofing up and trying to repair the goof-ups, somewhere I may have learnt forgiving myself. From blaming everything around me for my failures to accepting the reality (which mostly has involved as the main culprit in all the twisted fucks of my life) and try not to repeat them.

Yes, I know this is getting a tad self-indulgent. I will try find a thing or two to write about, by tomorrow.

Diary - Day 12

Just a few minutes short of calling it a week. Another one starts in those very few minutes. Made a handful of stops at the cafe today. Alone first, with a buddy next and with the old bunch thereafter. Fully coherent words out of mouths only sounded like sputters - all credit to the noisiest day of the year. 

When I say the noisiest day of the year, I remember referring to it as the glorious day too, a few years ago. There was a queer sense of joy to this festival. Those celebrations that took the shape of a full moon by the eve began only were embryonic. From stealthy sessions of fire-cracking to approved hours under parental vigilance. New clothes and sweets with no healthy-yet-hard slaps on the shoulder from the mother. 

The above paragraph could be totally misleading in its tone - for it may concede an illusion that I miss this festival. Actually, I don't. It's just one of those nameless days - leisure enough in their passing to allow me while away without looking at the clock for lunchtime.

I can totally relate to the annoyed uncle johns of the neighborhood; whose irritation only grows with time as night gets deeper, yet the sky gets brighter; one firecracker at a time. It discomfits me that one blaring, long night among relatively calmer days of a year sets us off to a great extent. It's only at the nib of my thought - I may want to give this more thought and time to think further. You can expect more on this in one of the posts in future.

I've been typing this small piece for as long as 30 minutes now. Which is surprisingly long for my diary pieces. Maybe that's what leisure allows one to do - whiling away. 

Diary: Day 11

Okay. Recorded absenteeism on Days 9 & 10. Blame the corporate. Not getting into much details of it - for it can only sound stodgy.

Day 11: A weekend. Typing this out from office. 3.04 pm. Nothing much has happened in the last two days; except for deteriorated stamina and increased work burden. A friend asked me to sign up for a writing project on www.nanowrimo.org but shelling out as many as 1700 words a day only sounded draining. I am anyways working out on this Diary Project, so I let it pass on.

Diwali is here. I vividly remember the glorious makeup a sweet shop got done for itself during last year's festival. As much as I feel comfortable whiling away my years in darkness and its warmth, such sporadic exposes to eye-widening glories only invoke a childlike joy within me.

There was this time in my life, circa 2013, when I used to dream about a life - devoid of any happenings to call it a happening life. Like the one Irfan Khan has in Lunch Box before he meets his elusive, angelic lunch-feeder. I kind of pined for it back then, considering the stuff that was happening in my life.

Spin 3 years and a few good months on the wheel, I am living that life right now. It is not really as pleasant as I had expected it to be. For that matter, when was the last time I thought something was pleasant? I don't recall that, neither do the ones who read this regularly. You know me, don't you? Always glass-half-empty.

Diary - Day 8

Ah yes. Apologies for not writing on 25th. Like I bemoaned in my post before this one, work had me occupied for more than a day. But here I come, refreshed with a day of joblessness and hence, a replenished me.

I am slightly impressed with my discipline - which's taste I haven't had until a recent while. I am setting targets and working towards them. The pessimist inside me is only caught unawares lately, winking and hinting that it may as well only about time before the newly adapted discipline crumbles.

I place my bet only on my nascent skill of holding shit together that I discovered barely a year ago. This last one year is the only standing evidence of some decent progress I've managed to record. So that's the only thing, forget about anyone else, even myself would dare to place the bet on.

Why am I even talking about discipline? Because I have had some time today to think about myself and on what path I've chosen to tread. To put it bluntly, I had enough time to leisurely think today about the type of pebbles the path I've come down on has been adorned with.

It might be a while I will again rant about paths and their pebbles.

See you tomorrow.

Diary - Day 7

It's 2.00 PM as it type this out. Too early an entry into the blog to be called a daily post. As I've already lamented about afternoons and their uninspiring nature on Day 1's post (if I'm not wrong), I am beginning to like the idea of this post-lunch writing regime - it helps me keep up my writing promise while the thought that goes into these posts stops my brain from slipping into a siesta.

I know what's about to happen in the next 36 hours. Something I've vowed to myself to never conform to, before I took the plunge into this industry. To never give more of myself than what constitutes to one-third of my years' time for as long as I work in this industry. I feel helpless I'm breaking that vow for an umpteenth time in the last one year. While I'm somehow keeping up this promise of writing daily, I am breaking the other. Yep, I am working for 36 straight hours - merely to deliver the agreed.

With more number of years adding to my life's calendar & my stint in this industry, I have been increasingly feeling the need to jump into writing. To tell the stories I've always longed to tell, rather than writing business use cases that hardly stand any character against the former.

I'm well aware all this talk of wanting to be a writer amounts to very little, if not nothing. So hopefully, this will be the last time I crib about how much I want to be one - but actually start working on a couple of short ideas I've been thinking over.

One good thing has started to develop as a result of this daily writing exercise though. I am now able to string words with relative ease. That's some progress, ain't it? 

Diary - Day 6

I have gone to a bar today which I hadn't visited in 2 years. I don't know if it's ironically funny that a waiter or two remember me at the bar from the days I used to frequent. Just bantering over those quick seconds when one of them was serving me beer, I asked a few things, to which their responses were grim.

I asked why the bar seemed so dull and they claimed this season has something to do with the auspiciousness of the time of the year - and so people refrain from pouring in. So god-fearing are people, I sighed for a trice.It just seemed as absurd to me as a man trying to conceive a baby by working out in the gym. The waiters were hopeful that the bar would restore its crowd and so its lost gala, by January.

As I went on with drinking, I later learnt that the waiter bunch of the bar were beaten to their shit for their unwelcoming behavior with the customers.

Diary - Day 5

         "How do you grit through an unpleasant phase? Perhaps, by having something pleasant to look forward to, by  the end of the phase. What if there's nothing to look forward to? Hey, I am arriving at making the 'nonexistence of anything to look forward to' as the adaptable idea. I mean, to not look forward to anything; instead accept the reality for/with all its bleakness and come to grips with it."


What an abysmal line of thought that is?  That's how my thought weave themselves into their web on afternoons. Thankfully, I have crafted a list of things I'd like to look forward to:

• of wanting to be a novelist (not considering the dwindling possibility with each day passing by, supplemented with no effort from my end to do [actually begin] some serious writing).

• of making it to an open foyer in the downtown of any archaic city and wander around without a speck of care for time and trivialities. 

This afternoon is too cruel; for it is not letting me doz off and dream of the things. But it is a touch merciful in allowing me to write about them at the least. 

Diary - Day 4

I am coming back to the blog for fourth day in a row. But 4 is too small a number to account for any kind of consistency. I will talk about consistency and all that at a later time.

There's this colleague at work who walked up to me with a genuine interest to seek anything I know of language (he thinks I am some sort of English virtuoso, which is obviously his untrue opinion about his newfound colleague). I really liked talking to him about the mediocre stuff I know and which I thought could be of some use to him. It kind of added a sense of fulfillment to my morning. I went back to my desk with lungs full of smoke and satisfaction.

Allow me the liberty to say that most part of the industry I work in is made of artificiality. And that touch genuineness was like a rare breeze of warmth on a Serbian's cheeks.

Apart from that, today has been quite a normal day with no surprises springing up from the bushes that grow between two cubicles in the office.

Diary - Day 3

Following days of drunken nights have in them a feeling of pallor and that irks me to a great length.

Lethargy reigns my body in a way as if it has never reigned before.

On days like today, the list of looking-forward-to things gives due space to physical workout, not out of deference but out of the need to purge the lethargy.

But sadly, there's work today stretched into that time of the day when tepid evenings slowly melt into chilly, dark nights.

Perhaps, my tone gets better after a workout tomorrow preceded by a good, long read or a film tonight. 

Diary - Day 2

Winter is here. And so are those chilly mornings & evenings. Hyderabad's winters have always been special for me - not for what they bring  into my living but by their mere occurrence and the associated pleasantness. Maybe it has got more to do with my inherent disliking for subcontinental summers. Unpleasantness of broken skin & the unconsummated desire for chai form the flip-side though.

Yet another winter is is in passing, with normalcy. This diary is only one day old in its existence but it has found its way into my list of looking-forward-to things. The list has no other things.

I am writing this with a sense of urgency but I'm actually enjoying this urgency which my life has not experienced in quite a few years. I like the way in which time seeps from under the notebook in which I am writing this. 

Diary - Day 1

It has been a banal Monday so far. No remarkable happenings that will make me remember today in the days to come. This piece is nothing more than a starting point to the promise I've made to myself to reembark on writing: this time as a craft - in a methodical and auto didactic fashion.

Well, afternoons are deprived of motivation that mornings usually contain. They are uninspiring and so, they seem long than they last. Let's not talk about evenings because I usually spend them in retrospection and hence, self-retribution. Like I had to quench my ego when someone said something nice to hear about an absent somebody - I pitched in to prove myself too (An incident that refuses to leave my memory and comes atop me every night to put me to shame).

I've read quite a few number of books in the recent times. Running a blog post with 3 liner reviews sounded like an exciting idea initially but you know, excitement bites the dust when its cause wears off in its age. So, like many writing ideas, the mini review thing also took a backseat in my head as one of the remnants of a receding enthusiasm to try and adopt new, healthy habits.

As I've mentioned that this piece is the starting point to a promise made to self, I don't want this to be extinguished before it can make its due journey.

Hope to see you again tomorrow, against the pallid white backdrop.