D for...

Note: This is what results when you are out of time and out of a topic and have pledged to write a post a day. Don't judge me :)


O' you flakes in pearly white
Why must you plague me so?
I rinse and scrub and oil and wash
And hunt for solutions high and low.

But, no, you’re always on my head
Reminding me, at all moments
(with an itch here, a scratch there)
Of your everlasting presence

My shampoos have given up in vain
In the bathroom, they, dejected, lie
As I turn to novel cures
But there’s only so much I can try.

One day, I’ll give up too
And destroy the habitat of this nasty stuff
I’ll get you, even if it gets me.
I’ll shave my hair off, O Dandruff!

Cities

After 22 years of having moved across different cities in India and Singapore, I know I like big cities. I currently live in one which is amongst the biggest of them all. I can lose myself in Bombay when I want. I like knowing that I'm in a place that matters to this world, that I can find pretty much anything I look for in some cranny of the vastness I inhabit. I like knowing that I can shrug off the anonymity I love and connect with the city's human side at my disposal. The diversity, the uniqueness underlying this very diversity, the hustle, the self-importance and the lack of it, drive me on.

I'm moving to a little dot on the map of the world called Ann Arbor this fall. It's a town masquerading as a city and the thought scares me.

Baby Day Out

No, there isn't a typo in the title.

The lone bright spark in my daily routine these days is the sight of baby Jaishna, whose lucky aunt I happen to be. As soon as I step into her house, the scent of baby emanating from its walls, its floors, its every inch, surround me with a welcoming hug.

And then I enter her shrine, where she lies swathed in her pinks and greens, kicking and flailing her arms as she awaits her next supplicant. She has tiny eyes which fixate upon me as she babbles and fully convinces you of her intentions to convey a message of the utmost importance. As her sparkling eyes fill my vision and her gurgling laughter my ears, I get sucked into her world, leaving the depressing world of adults behind. My only job is to wipe spittle off her chin and the only path to happiness is the sight of her smile.

For this escape, and for the sheer joy of having my finger clutched by a cherubic angel, thank you, my darling Jaishna.

A-Z Blogging Challenge, The

This scares me. Do I really have as much discipline in my closet of hidden virtues? I doubt it. I'm one of those people who's perennially with a writer's block, and my brain refuses to form coherent sentences when it's in in this phase. I always thought most of 'writing' is in the unconscious part of our brain, all we have to consciously do is translate thoughts to tangible words.

What happens when stream of thought dries up? Do you just wait for it to return? Or do you force yourself to exercise your brain muscle hoping it will find its way? Inexperienced as I am, I think you need to do both. You have to be able to write when you're at your worst. And you can never be your best unless that natural flow resumes in your head.

With this A-Z blogging challenge, I bring forth my bulldozer. Let's hope I dont' make it an April 1st joke.

31.

I wonder what Sachin Tendulkar does with his runs. Does he carry them around, pennies in a gigantic rucksack, lending weight to his every move? Do they wait to be sold or bartered for charity, food or fancy cars? That ache in his back, are the pesky runs the ones causing it, or the bag which grows along with the little mites? What will he do with them when he dies?

And that, is the question we ask of life via Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar's runs.

30.

Stories are found things, like fossils in the ground.

Whatever opinion I have about the rest of Stephen King's book 'On Writing', this statement gets the most vigorous nods I have in my arsenal. Writing has never been an act of deliberation but one of release. You let ideas come to you and engage yourself with the mundane goings-on of life while they ferment in your head, mutating and evolving organically. All you do is look within yourself, find them and hold on to them, then grab a pen as they trickle down from neuronal space to ink. Drug-addled smoke-spewing alcoholics or not, writers (and poets, and perhaps anyone involved in creative pursuits) are saints of the highest order for being able to find that space inside them unerringly and constantly, and for keeping this space sacrosanct and inviolable.

Inviolable, for you cannot afford an invasion by fear, that most cancerous of emotions, or by the clutter of your everyday life, which dulls your creative juices. Freedom is the writer's fuel, just as freedom is the monk's goal. All you wannabe writers, become saints first. And all you saints, it's time to realise sainthood can be achieved without abstinence. Just ask those drug-addled, smoke spewing alcoholic writers.

29.

In news from the Middle East, Iran has raised concerns about the United States’ rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal and questioned the security of small nations which aren’t under the aegis of the “United States Client States” commonwealth. President Ahmadinejad has ordered satellite missions to detect activity levels at various secret reactor locations in the USA. At the United Nations, the Iranian representative has called for sanctions on the United States, not on food or economic aid but Chinese-made goods which would cripple the average American. He has thus far been backed by Russia alone. Pakistan, a member of the extended 15-member Security Council has hinted it would back sanctions unless President Obama pumps in economic aid to its ally in the war against terror. The Indian ambassador was seen looking skywards and refused to comment on the issue. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were seen exchanging smirks but declined to offer comment.