Pause...

It’s been 2 month’s since I wrote a line no let me correct it, crafted a line, no let me better that, put my thoughts on paper. Why do I write, rather why cannot I write (regularly)? Why is it so difficult to create those words which form in my mind early in the morning as I sip my morning tea in my balcony but gets lost on the roads to my office between phone calls, e-mails, meetings, reminders…and so on so forth?

Is it a question of priority or is it a question of discipline. Priority – What is priority? Can writing be another item in your check list which you can tick? An important task in your daily / weekly to do’s because it’s a job to be done just like you make a presentation or create a campaign. Can you prioritize between reading a great book or write about that thought which has been wriggling inside your mind like a worm for last few days or Can you prioritize between a swim and a lazy afternoon with friends vs an intellectually stimulating piece on tribal life in Nagaland which you want to write…
Can u write as a discipline, Can u open the laptop and except the words to come pouring out. Words which came to your mind as you were sitting through a boring presentation, words which choked you when you saw an emotional movie or experienced a touching moment with your loved one, words which filled up your mind, body and soul when you read something inspiring & felt “Gosh this is something I need to write…!!!!” Words which keep knocking at your head, day in day out because they do not have an answer and you know you do not have any hope to get an answer in this lifetime…

Honestly, I do not know.

I read a lot of new authors especially in the subcontinent and really like the way they express the turmoil, growth pangs, relationships, life changing events like partition, Afghanistan war and it touches a chord because I also go through the same & I like the way every story is interweaved to the current mileu, politics, leaders so much so that you can almost touch & feel the characters. Reading them tugs my writing side which becomes dormant or hibernates when “work & home to do’s” pushes me to scratch off “writing” from my to do list as I switch off the light for the day.

I do know that an end goal and discipline is critical for any writer – from Murakami to Amitava Ghosh to Orhan Pramuk that’s the only thing which makes them write such complex masterpieces. It amazes me how can they hold on to so much in their mind especially over such long period of time.

I started blogging to build the discipline of writing and till date that has been the reason and not who reads and comments. But somewhere I wanted to differentiate between blogging and real writing (short story, poems or a novel) and that struggle is still on. There are very few things which you can say “only you have created” which you do for a purely selfish reason of your creative satisfaction. For me writing is the only lasting thing which I do only for me, a close second probably is cooking but I do that for my little masterchefs and bring an element of surprise in our mundane life.

As I opened my laptop to write after 2 months, I had various things in my mind I wanted to write from the numerous books I read to the few stunning movies I saw to some unbelievable facts of history and politics which moved me.

But as I caught the first glimpse of the first monsoon clouds I thought let me just pause …just like the first monsoon clouds which like my thoughts keep hovering in the sky but seldom rains.