Diary - Day 71

It has been quite some years that a month has been this meandering in its passing and ultimately eventful to me. It has also been a while, actually a long time that a year has passed, leaving me only chuffed. I've made some decent progress professionally, sorted some things characteristically, turned much less judgmental and more patient with irksome phases.

It is only fair to talk about luck when a whole year bore pleasant fruits for me. They say, all in good times. But in this very month, I've seen how irrevocably unfortunate some lives can be. Industrious people debate this by citing the lack of very same industriousness by the less-blessed. But having breathed the same air we do & soiled the same earth we soil, they deserve some compassionate consideration. So good fortune is what I've been blessed with in 2016. Sure I've got things to work on; for who haven't?

Any discourse about how 2016 made me into whatever, has to be disregarded as senseless spew before the year ends. So this is it.

Back tomorrow.

Diary - Day 63

Alright. It has been a while I typed in. But I have got a bag of convincing reasons to reason out the absenteeism. There’s this trip I have embarked on and I should say it is a blast. So much of a blast that I almost tore away from it for a while last night to clear my head and think through the happenings. It could be calibrated in the count and class of the pictures we’ve clicked.

Coming back to the project, first thing it feels like is home. Home is the word that spurs in my head when I come here. 

Fun and folly aside, there’s something essential this trip has shed light on.  There have been moments of gazing into distant dreams of future and dreamily talking about the post-work plans. Of a retirement home and a city that makes it worth a stay. Having been a person who always belonged to cities of hustle-bustle, I thought a serene town could negate a lifetime of noisy existence. Little did I know that what I have been convinced as noise is not noise after all but the ethos of my existence.

So this is the revelation. Or rather an epiphany that came down pressing on me when I was amid beaches and breezes. I could never think myself of belonging to a tier 2 town that offers a lazy lifestyle. A visit every once in a while could recharge my exhausted brain but nerves twitch to get away to the noise after the rejuvenation. Although I curse with my car horn, that city is where I belong. Or rather a bigger one. I could adjust myself to a rather ambitious city but not a nihilistic one.

5 days of holidaying has revealed something very fundamental about me to myself. Not bad a trip after all. Will resume posting regularly. 

Diary - Day 57

Deaths

Two people from one family dead within 48 hours. Lone survivor of the family is apparently munching away his grief into fried potatoes.

This man - my father's cousin, has been my subject of observation ever since 2014. Before that, I knew he existed, drew breath at just 150 km away from where I did and that's that.

Roots

I have developed this unexampled interest in my roots. As in who's my family, where do they come from and what have they been like? Right from the childhood, I've been fairly exposed to my maternal family. People I call cousins belong to the same family singularly. I am well aware of the idiosyncrasies of this family, its quirks and eccentricities.

The paternal family has been mostly wiped out from the history, quite slowly and painstakingly. And so, from my memory. Since my father is a man of few words, all we get from him when we enquire about his family are grunts and sighs that mostly stand for discontent for wasted lives of the people he shared his childhood with. Okay, sorry lives sounds apt than wasted lives.

The Visit

The two deaths had us scurrying to my father's derelict village with a petty population of 1200 or so. 350 households, I was told. To which the cousins had been the revered landlords for decades. I said 'had been' because they stopped existing a long time ago to the villagers. They physically existed, confined amid the crumbling walls that have a great past to tell.

The one who died first was reportedly seen last circa 2013. The two sisters had been known for their inseparable sisterhood and love. Grief engulfed the second within a day. Leaving behind a recluse with empty eyes & as always, an undefined future.

The Project

I thought those 3 siblings did not have drama in their lives. But I was wrong. I have been learning since their deaths many things about them. There has been enough drama to stifle you by throat. Enough conflict to compel you to throw in your towel atop human progress.

I am writing his story. A tale to be told. 

Diary - Day 53

This delay is an unprecedented one in the diary project. Apologies to the ones who keep coming back to check. Last week has been quite an eventful one. Full of unexpected things & my measured responses to such things. I write this on Monday, having just stepped into a new week. Read on the rambling below...

I thought I've buried it. It doesn't necessarily mean I have forgotten its existence. It took careful, diligent cultivation of certain habits which let me stay away from that irresistible valley of longing. I thought I've learnt to walk away from the valley with a heart of disrupted peace & a mind that acts maniacally sometimes. Only until the valley has unearthed itself & presented itself in my face with its widening crevice, making me think that's it's an invitation into its warmth. The insides of that valley are not unknown to me. Only that I think it has become unbecoming. Alien. Unfamiliar. 

It took me good 3 days to grapple with that irresistible valley from the past. Then strikes this year's quota of  days of depression. Those days when the meaninglessness of all of it rises above everything else and speaks to me, shouts at me, looking squarely into my eye. The weight of Purpose becomes an unbearable load on my shoulders. So heavy that I begin to question the existence of Purpose to even bear it. Isn't that what the bitch called Meaninglessness want to do to you? Yes, that's what it wants and it always gets it.

It took art counsel to shake off the load from the shoulders. Respite found amid pages of books & sighs of characters in films. They remind me that it doesn't have to be this painful. The cynic in me almost rages up against such soothing pats but I put him to sleep. 

Oh boy! That valley from the past is irresistible, I tell you. (Close folks of mine know about my succumbing to the irresistible; saves me from the horrific thought of being judged).

Diary - Day 48

This is the nostalgic post I've been excited about. If you can't resonate with it, my bad.

Dated: 30th Nov 2016

Sitting in a bar and waiting for a friend to show up. Ordered myself a beer and got a bowl of roasted peanuts as a complimentary snack to nibble. It's a smart trick by these highbrow restaurants to remind us of our nativities at small costs. 

Roasted peanuts warmly reminded me of my childhood spent in one of the arid towns of Telangana called Karimnagar. It was a dream-come-true for my mother to stay in Karimnagar, for she had spent her pre-married life in a village. Having tied the knot to a man who hailed from an impoverished family, she had taken it upon her to save money which her husband earned by going from doctor to doctor, chemist to chemist to sell the products of the firm he worked for. 

His modest income barred us (myself and the brother) from reaching out to delicious confectionery neatly stacked up in the glorious displays of bakeries. Instead my mother tried making snacks whose recipes she obtained from weeklies. Having been a woman of routine & new things discomfited her. And so the culinary experiments mostly ended up in awry ways. Then she retorted to makeshift snacks that her available ingredients allowed her to. One of them was roasted peanuts. Served with a pinch of jaggery to neutralize the excessive intake of the former. 

Having eaten cup noodles for breakfast & a pizza for lunch, the sight and taste of roasted peanuts gave me taste buds a nostalgic delight. 

We as a family have made progress, monumental progress for where my parents have started. And in that process we have acquired a certain fashion of living. A fashion that flushed roasted peanuts and many more down the toilet. 

Diary - Day 47

This post is a prelude to the intended piece of today. Songs from the glorious past of Snow Patrol are blaring in my ears as I write this.

What makes memories fascinating is their multifaceted nature. I remember reading a trivia titbit that says something on the lines 'if you are thinking about an incident from the past, you are not revisiting the incident but you are actually reminiscing the last time you remembered the incident.' If that's true, that very aspect smears fascination onto memories. Two people could have a memory about incidents they partook in. It's not necessary the two people remember the incidents in a similar way. So that's technically two versions of remembering; both could vary - sometimes radically and other times slightly.

The next post that'll be up (the intended piece) is a nostalgic piece on our (myself and the brother's) childhoods in Karimnagar. I was talking to him about some events that I vividly remember from the times but all the response I got from the other side of the phone was silence. He remembers a few incidents but he cannot revisit them the way I can. How is that possible, was my impulsive question. Same partakers, same incidents. Both remember them in a radically different way.

If I want to talk about my memories with a person about the times we shared them, it's likely I'd only amuse the person with my version of memory. That leaves me disappointed. Like D F Wallace moaned during the last days of his life, 'It's tragic that there's all this inside me and it's so much but they are just words to another person.'

Tragic, yet fascinating - like a glorious mistake or a spectacular failure. 

Diary - Day 46

I am updating this needless update for the sake of keeping this project up and going. Got a couple of solid posts handwritten and sitting warmly in the bag. They will see the light tomorrow and the day thereafter. I hope that should compensate my irregularity and drag me back onto the track.

See you tomorrow.

Diary - Day 43

Smoke from his cigarette rises up against a hanging bulb's backdrop and breeds quite a sight to watch. The government's intention is to hammer it into smokers' heads that such a sight is at the cost of their lives. The scene cuts and camera pans to another location now - his home where he's in the drawing room, staring at the TV with his daughter snuggling into the fatherly warmth of his left arm and rib cage. His right hand is busy holding a cigarette in an awkward manner.

As the TV volume goes down because of his daughter's amplified cough, realization strikes him. He walks towards the balcony, puts off his cigarette, determined it's for good, comes back into the drawing room, embraces his daughter as a father who quit smoking.

He wakes up the next morning. On his way to work, he stops at a shop and lights a cigarette with shaky hands & a remorseful heart.