Diary - Day 24

Ate some chocolate cookies. Watched some new TV series. Read some comic strips in the dailies. Working out right now as I'm typing this. Will prolly catch few pints of beer after this.

See you tomorrow. 

Diary - Day 23

Two days of absence again. It's funny how nothing notifiable happens in as many as 50 hours. Or maybe the entire struggle is to keep it as is. Just to keep up is also hard work. Weekend is here and this one's going to be very boring. The old boys of neighbourhood are busy getting their shit together at 200 km from where they belong to. Trips to the cafe will only end in one cup if chai; or maybe two, given the break time takes before we call it another Monday.

A good friend is tying the knot this Sunday and I wish her all the luck on the new ballgame that awaits her debut. On a parting note, she wished I get a good woman to call mine and I wished her wish come true.

I was talking to another person of interest last night. We mused about the chronology of events that we partook in and it was only epiphanic how I always have managed to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Some call it hard luck. I prefer Irony.

As more number of days being ladled into my bowl of life, I am beginning to see how humanly flawed the people I call my parents are. I stress humanly flawed. My father's a conservative and only time has taught me that. But he only tried to outdo the definition of a father in every way possible for us kids. My mother's just any other mother, who's always got a pinch of suspicion towards any new friends of her children but her eagerness to feed the hungry us trumps all her other worries.

Only it's getting increasingly difficult to be a homeboy at this age. 2016 has been kind to me. Hope 2017 carries the lineage and lands me up in a place that cures my domestic anxieties. 

Diary - Day 20

There are a few timeless gems Fight Club has given us - long after we disregard it as a cult film that only meant something to all of us during growing-up phase. One of them is the "you are not our job,....." one. Only it is getting tough to keep relating to it.

If me saying that 'what I now make is approximately 8 times of what I first made' sounds cocky, I would encourage you to abort reading this. But if you wish to read further, I have a bit of ranting to do.

Money. It is difficult to resist its allure. The more money you make, more steps you climb up on the mountain called Lifestyle and I am afraid it is one of the only few mountains on which descending is tougher than ascending.

You sit in a bar and happen to overhear quite a lot of things the loudmouthed fellas yap on your adjacent table. You realize they live in a different world - one that's way different from yours. If you are a judgmental person like I once was, you'd judge them by their choices, tastes and interests. But every now and then, one of the loudmouthed says a thing that you can totally resonate with. 6 or 7 times out of 10, such things of concord will be about ubiquitous elements like money, greed, recognition and other humanly universal needs and wants.

Probably that is the elixir on which money has thrived. Probably that's what makes it ubiquitous. What I'd choose to do if handed over a bag of million dollars may radically vary from what you would do but you and me are tied together with the wish of being thrown at, a bag of million dollars.

All this rant is more of a prologue to a short I am working on to put up here shortly. Also serves as my daily feed to the diary project for today. 

Diary - Day 19

Guilty yet again, for 2 days of not showing up. Same excuse - work. But what I'm beginning to like is feeling the need to come back here to type out. Day after day. Okay, day after every two days.

I've learnt that a 19 year old girl who happens to be my apartment watchman's cousin from his village died less than a week ago. I remember her as a maid working for our neighbour whose broomstick was nonchalantly generous to go beyond the neighbour's and swept a part of our house's frontal area too.

I've heard some rueful tales about her sorry state, her increasing illness and her losing battle against a bigger disease she had been fighting since birth - poverty. She had moved to Hyderabad in pursuit of moderate education while her stay was guaranteed at the watchman's & she worked in few houses during the evenings to earn some money - from which she had to send some back to her parents in the village. It was probably her way of contributing to her dysfunctional family - damaged because of a farmer being its breadwinner.

Apparently she had battled TB before she lost to it. But the regular intervention of money, or its dearth, had her treatment ineffective because of irregular visits paid to doctors and pharma stores. And she died. On a nondescript evening, she drew her last gasp

Nothing remarkable about her life; or perhaps she wasn't given a shot at life to make it meaningful (I doubt if the word 'meaningful' holds any meaning here) in her own right. She may not have ended up as a Sania Mirza or a Romila Thapar but she could have had the experience of a life lived to a considerable extent. 19 is too sorry a number to call it a long-lived life.

P.S: Contrary to by ruing in my previous post, Tehran Cafe near Secretariat is unscathed and functioning like it has always functioned.  

Diary - Day 17

Recorded absenteeism on Day 16. Was busy working.

Honestly, I am only writing this to divert my mind from the boring documents for sometime. Coming to think of it, it was a conscious decision to chase money and more money (not that I had a bucket of choices either). Well, no complaints in that right. Little did I know that money doesn't necessarily imply comfort. Comfort can be sought in many ways.

Comfort is the cup of chai after a workout session with no need to glance at one of the cafe's wall-clocks. Comfort is nursing your lower back with heavenly stretches after a week long drives bouncing off the potholes. How much have the definitions changed?

Reminded of cafes, learnt that Tehran Cafe near Secretariat was demolished recently - probably to give way to a rather beautified neighbour to the infamous motel that sits in the backdrop. I did not feel a pinch when I learnt the news but coming to think of  it, it feels very sad.

Maybe I will tell my kids one day that Hyderabad used to have a lot of cafes. And Irani chai used to be much more than just another button on the coffee vending machine.

Diary - Day 15

A good old writing master looked squarely into camera's eye once & shared what I consider a timeless piece of writing advice for aspirants. He goes by the name, V S Naipaul. He said, 'consider the necessity of each sentence before you write it down.'

I was grappling with 3-4 possible opening lines for today's entry and I questioned all of their validity. They didn't pass the test. Readers wouldn't have missed anything if they didn't read those lines. This tantalising quality of writing is what has made me its unquenched pursuer. There's this suffocation inside the head to drain out the unwritten, yet failing to find the appropriate vessel that could give this shapeless string of thoughts a presentable shape.

No joy for me comes close to the one I get when I think I have given a decent frame to words that echo like a sentence I want to be echoed like. And when I am fiddling to do exactly that, time becomes a bearable behemoth. It in fact seems like a giant cloud, pleasant of the ones, whose passing nature makes them pleasant.

There are a couple of shorts I am working on, one of which I may put up here. While readers of the blog (if there are still any left) get busy in judging the short, I jaunt dreamily in the pleasure produced by merely producing a short.

Diary: Day 14

Been a day slightly twisted than the recent others. Can't go into details. Too tired to think about anything to write. So this is a small piece. 

See you tomorrow.