Closer to home..

I recently got hooked onto to the TV series 'House'. Bought five seasons of the interesting medical drama from a pirated DVD shop and began a marathon viewing of the shows back to back; surprised to find all of life's varicolored dilemmas - emotional, psychological and physiological being played out boldly in most of the episodes. And to top as the icing on this cakelicious experience was the fact that I could absolutely relate to the central character of Dr. Gregory House - cold, bitter, misanthropic, calculating, a terrifyingly insightful eccentric genius, an intellectual with a sarcastic, witty and caustic sense of humor, a narcotic - addict who likes to push the limits till it all borders dangerously on murder or suicide and inspite of all of this still remains endearing, respectable and above all humane.

And it shocks me...that I can find House relatable. Its like saying 'I am a nun and the Texas chainsaw massacre villain feels like a soulmate'. The metaphor is a tad over-exaggerated but the feeling isn't. What really gets to me about the character is that even though it is written in a way that is too smart for it to be a real person, the flaws and the progression of the character's psychology and emotional maturity are unflinching and hard cored. And this growth is somehow fulfilling. House is generally Mr. Smartest Pants for most of his screen time, the "I-know-what-goes-on-in-your-mind-at-all-times" person. And more often than not, he's right.

He's right about people, about diseases, about diagnosis and almost everything under the Sun. But then there's always someone, a colleague or a patient or a relative, who cuts through House's defensive wisdom and reveals his vulnerable, tortured inner self. The smugness, the cocksure, rude, maverick, arrogant, defiant exterior of the character vanishes the moment he confronts his personal demons and in place of that we see an unsure, self-loathing, troubled individual who has difficulties accepting himself and his life, who questions his own judgment and fights against his own survival instincts to end it, once and for all.

And it is in these well-timed moments that the show's brilliance shines through and so does Hugh Laurie, who embodies Dr. House with his amazing emotional range and impeccable American accent. He's the reason for the 'all the way up" in the 'two thumbs all the way up' review that I'd give to most of the episodes in a true Roger Ebert style.

Also the way he talks is really sexy...like for example he has these dialogue Wimbledon matches with his best friend Dr.Wilson (who, by the way is modelled on Dr. Watson from the Sherlock Holmes. Ah, by the way did I mention Dr. House is based on Sherlock Holmes? Holmes - House, see the connection?)

Wilson: "That smugness of yours really is an attractive quality."
House: "Thank you. It was either that or get my hair highlighted. Smugness is easier to maintain.

Wilson: "She's hot, so she's a hooker? What kind of pathetic logic is that?"

House: "The envious, jealous, I-never-got-any-in-high-school kind of logic, hello! "

And then ofcourse there are those nitrous oxide suffused philosophies:

House: " take risks; sometimes patients die. But not taking risks causes more patients to die, so I guess my biggest problem is I've been cursed with the ability to do the math."

House: "There's an evolutionary imperative why we give a crap about our family and friends. And there's an evolutionary imperative why we don't give a crap about anybody else. If we loved all people indiscriminately, we couldn't function."

Apart from Dr. Wilson, there's hospital administrator, Dr. Cuddy, a feisty female match to House's witticisms. Also there's his team of fellow diagnosticians, who act as perfect foils to his character and somehow are unrealistically but needfully effective at witty dialogue delivery.

For most part of the series, House convinces you that he hardly cares about curing the patients, he only wants to cure the disease. He only wants to be proved right, wants to establish that he is somehow the wisest of the lot. He talks about his unconventionality as a doctor, refuses to wear a lab coat and sneers upon all the typical patient-doctor emotional bonds. And he does that very well. But then he also is unafraid to take a beating, go to jail, give up his medical licence just for a glimmer of hope based his wild diagnosis, which eventually may or may not cure the person. These contradictions to his character make it more mysterious and unpredictable, yet you never tend to dismiss it as fickle. And that is what makes the writing of this show truly impressive.

If you could overlook the fact that there is a barrage of really complicated medical jargon bombarded at you for most of the time at the speed rivaling that of light, I think everyone will find House really entertaining. More often than not, I find he says the kind of things that make you question the fallacy of your steadfast beliefs. I find to my amazement that he sometimes voices arguments and passes comments that I dare not speak out for the fear of hurting someone or being rude. The nasty tone, the hilarious gestures, the outright insults camouflaged as witty twits, the absolute disregard for authority and the non-existence of moral, respectful or even dignified behavior just makes for such compelling, vicarious entertainment that I am completely hooked on for hours... Plus there is a regular dosage of strong debates over issues of belief, faith, God, afterlife; its intriguing because both the sides of the argument are so strong that sometimes you root for the side opposite to your current ideology...and ofcourse there are those outrageous sexual and sexist innuendos...but never offensive, always 'guffaw'cious...And its fun for most parts..

Will soon be getting over with the five seasons I got...But this will go down as one of the best TV series I have seen in a really long time...Go Team House!!

Hitting the big 1ohhhhhhhhhhh!!

One senseless...another egomaniacal...third prude and upright...fourth brain-damaging...and the list just keeps growing as I come down to my 100th blog.

More than 3 years later, I have finally arrived at the big 1-00. Actually had I made blogging a regular event in my life, I would have made it to this point earlier but never mind. I generally take my own sweet time with all the things up, close and personal to me and this blog is just one of those things.

For better or worse, I blogged about movies, books, poetry, prose, writers, directors, artists - all the things that caught my fancy. I made a conscious attempt to keep my real life experiences from becoming too detailed and have never put down much about the people, new and old whom I encountered in the last three years. I admit that it would have made the blogs more interesting and more intimate but it might have ended up hurting people because not everyone likes to see themselves in the light of others' perspective of them. I wrote about my life (or something like it) with a tone of self - deprecating humor cause I will always view it that way. Taking it seriously just doesn't go down well with me; plus that's the only way I have any fun with it.

I am a much different person than I used to me; my perceptions and ideas about the world and the people living in it have undergone a meteroic shift but at the core of it all, I still believe; I still have my faith. And I am still a kid at heart; ever trusting to the point of being suicidal. I guess I have a natural aversion to growing up and acting all high and mighty. I have to be the female Peter Pan, happily gliding about in my imaginary Neverland without a goddamn concern about my advancing age (its always at the back of my mind though) and no idea on how to get down to the business of earning a fabulous living and sorting out my priorities in the real world. I can't still bring myself to tell the nerve-wreckers to 'fuck - off' to their faces and absolutely hate being rude and uptight even when the situation demands it. But then that's me...though I have to say I have become stronger, I can handle more stress - both emotional and physical and the experiences have made my instincts sharper. So not all that bad, huh..I guess not.

In my head, I think by now I should have been at a certain place, with certain privileges and a body of shining achievements but I am not there. I am not where I began but in a limbo somewhere between these two places. Time somehow takes its own sweet course with me while I am racing along its side and yet it still wins. Its not fair but then with time you can't always win. So many of my friends are married now and have gone away to their own separate lives with their new priorities. Time has beaten me there too; I couldn't be with most of them on their special days and now a huge chasm of lost moments stands desolately and unforgivably between me and them. I can't seem to bridge it, making fumbling attempts to throw ropes across but in vain.

Between shoots, when I come back to my family I often hear of births and deaths in the families of relatives, all of whom are just wisps of blurred images as if from another lifetime. I often lose track of days, dates, festivals, wedding anniversaries, birthdays when I am shooting and when I am not, I really don't know what to do if I remember them at all. Life has become disjointed in ways; exists between certain periods and at other times, it seems to have smoked away. Amidst all the hustle and bustle of the shoots and the disquiet of the non-shoot days, I wonder if I am going down the right way...And ironically, only my dear friend and worst foe - Time can tell for sure.

This whole self-introspection trip is not the stuff that should ideally make up the 100th blog. It should be more of a celebration, a kind of achievement or something but I think of it more like the way I think of a birthday. More than a day of fun, its a day of thinking of life at that point. And that's what I did with my blog today...

What did you guys think of my blogs so far? Let me know...Promise to come back with something really funny. :)

Since the last blog..

which was really a long time back, I have realized that it is not a good thing to take a long hiatus with an uncharacteristic blog like my last post. 'A vampire boyfriend is fine by me' is probably my worst-conceived blog idea which I managed to put down quite well and immediately regretted posting. The fact that I wrote it so passionately added to my woes because all the people who read it couldn't believe that my ideas about men had undergone a paradigm change from intellectually stimulating to physiologically divine, a perception that couldn't be further from the truth. I guess it was just a fit of hormonal overdrive that made me react to Edward Cullen in such a mindless fashion and I remember that the minute I finished my last blog, I snapped out of it and began to question my basic sensibility about writing it. Still, I went ahead and posted the blog and never bothered to delete it inspite of being ashamed of it just to serve me as a reminder of the really bad choices I am capable of making even in my sanest moments. But I shouldn't have waited so long to post another blog. It is like having a bad aftertaste in your mouth, having a Listerine nearby and not bothering to gargle with it....Anyways moving on...

Since reading the crap called 'Twilight', I have thankfully moved onto better books. Starting off with the incredible 'The Manchurian Candidate' by Richard Condon which boasts of being a controversial and nightmare-inducing thriller given its premise of brain washing (absolutely original at the time of its first release in 1959), it more than stood up to its fanfare and high expectations. This is not the stuff that Booker winners are made of, but it is certainly high entertainment, devilishly narrated by a man whose sweat stinks of the waters of Hollywood. I read it feverishly, sinfully delighted by its melodramatic plot that meanders expertly through themes of war, terror, spies, brainwashing, cold war, incest, megalomaniacal motherhood and then of course, quite unexpectedly a little fervent love. The characters are well-etched and the mother's character is probably one of the most demonic ever written. Definitely a must-read. Needless to say, it spawned a movie and then another....Hoping to catch the original one with Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury soon.

On a friend's recommendation, I got hooked onto J. M. Coetzee's 'Disgrace' and have been grateful to him ever since. Its an eloquent narration of an aging Professor's life as it spirals into web of disgrace and compromises when his torrid affair with a young student is exposed. The language is exquisite without being flowery or overwhelming and the conflicts are very real and humane. There is no extraordinary message of "triumph over all odds" that the author is trying to relay; he's just telling a story as if it has happened and his unpretentious, unassuming writing makes this Booker winner poignant. A recommended read for people who enjoy pure, unadulterated literature.

Right now, I am onto Orhan Pamuk's 'My name is Red' and from the first few pages, its hitting all the right notes with me...I can't quite describe the joy of reading a truly wonderful book; even if I decide to exhaust all the superlatives known to me, I don't think I can ever come close to documenting the ecstasy and its after-effects that accompanies a real good read. Maybe someday when I have accumulated enough literary wisdom and have the power of effective vocabulary at my finger tips, I might begin to put together a blog dedicated to the immense, varicolored joys of a good reading...

Maybe someday....

The Lars Loneliness

Just saw the movie, "Lars and the real girl" and identified with it immensely. It tells the quirky tale of a sweet, innocent guy called Lars who begins to treat a doll as his girlfriend and lives the entire life cycle of a relationship with her, imagining her side of the conversations, her choices, her life story, her preferences giving her such emotional depth that in the end when she 'dies', people in his church congregation shed a silent tear for her. It is such an amazing, unbelievable plot made so freakingly acceptable that you are compelled to empathise with the characters inspite of their seemingly lunatic behavior that borders on the extremes of ridiculousness.

Even though the premise of the story is crackling, the real beauty lies in the fact that inspite of Lars' mooniness, people around him try and adjust to his new reality, patiently accepting Bianca (his doll girlfriend) as a real person, even getting her jobs as a model (cute!!), a school story book reader (with a tape recorder) and giving her makeovers. Ofcourse there is the initial discomfort and disquiet that a few of the them experience but eventually they go along with the pretense of it and somewhere I think, most of them feel a sort of companionship with the mute doll and a comfort in her inoffensive, unassuming presence.

There are also some hilarious mini-anecdotes about grown-up co-workers and their possessiveness over little action figures and teddy bears. I guess all of us have such affections for non-living things and I think that is the writer's way of saying that Lars is a normal person, just very lonely and socially inept, probably due to supposed-problems with his upbringing by a single parent, having had lost his mother at birth and that his attachment to the doll is just a magnified, blown up version of our own quirky, little, emotional ties with our lifeless possessions. I guess all of us are lonely; if not always, atleast at some point of time in our lives and not everyone is lucky enough to find a real person to share their troubles with, so we (as in we, the absolute irrational, illogical beings that we become sometimes) seek solace in the non-judgmental company of our little toys. And that's real...

Do watch the film...it is a little slow at times, but amusing and thought-provoking for most of it.

My newest love..

The day I purchased the iPod, I realized that I probably made the second best investment of my life (the first being my laptop). It is absolutely fantastic!! Though I am the queen of over exaggeration, I swear there’s none of it here. To me, my iPod is a gorgeous piece of equipment that sucks me out instantly from the occasionally dull routine of everyday life and transports (or rather in the Harry Potter universe ‘disapparates’ me) to another world where music and lyrics lay out a fascinating conundrum of ideas, imaginative possibilities, meshed up with my memories and spruced up by a dash of inspiration.

It is like my wired chair from the colorless, drab Zion to the deceptively seductive Matrix of infinite, superficial pleasures –the passion, the madness that only love can summon, the high that only drugs can give, the abandon that comes with irresponsibility, the intolerable pain that heartbreak brings, the adrenaline rush of a bungee fall; sometimes all at one go…One minute I am this zombie, sleepwalking through life with the maddening city bustling around me and the next minute as the iPod plugs in, I become this high-octane, supercharged megatron zooming past people, places experiencing everything on a different level of rhythm- induced fauxmoreality that seems more pulsating as I see things happen over the background track playing in my ears.

For eg: Like if I am at the railway station trying to break through the ranks of people, in an attempt to catch the elusive fast train and say the track ‘Adiemus’ (from the incomparable ‘Lord of the Rings’) is playing on the iPod, I begin to imagine myself as a hapless warrior trying to break through the enemy ranks, vanquishing hostile beings with every swish of my sword, inspite of my numerous, failing wounds, all in a desperate attempt to somehow make it to my fatally-wounded beloved’s side before death claims him forever. And trust me; this helps to enjoy the otherwise tragically unpleasant and tiring task of having to run for the train, day after day. It is so filmy, I know….but it is better than real life.

Then at other times, when I watch a couple walk by on the road, chatting, talking, laughing; generally enjoying each other’s company, I associate it with the love song playing in my ears. Suddenly the lyrics come alive, the tune becomes more melodious, it is like I am watching a mini movie unfold before me. And I remain astounded at how close these artistes, these musicians come to capture the essence of emotions in their words, their tunes…and how close I am getting to experiencing it thanks to the iPod.

And it is not just the music…Since I have the classic iPod, I have trailers…Lovely trailers of movies that seem eminently watchable and will most certainly never be released in India…How I love my country!! But still, it’s a joy to watch them. And then there are podcasts; about films, scriptwriting et all - masterfully narrated or intellectually discussed in interviews that are just like icing on the cake to the already piled-up fantabulousness of the iPod…

The only glitch though is that I have to exercise a very high level of self-control and try not to break into an impromptu sing-and-dance routine when I am listening to my favorite dance numbers….and that happens almost every day atleast a hundred times, so it’s a real test for me…but otherwise I am doing great with my iPod. Thank you, Steve Jobs!! You are a genius.

Right now the theme song of my life: ‘Jump’ by Madonna.

That's me!!

I am the kind of person who'd die, go to heaven, be welcomed by the angels, have a seat all decorated for me, be escorted by beautiful demi-gods who'd take me to it, have a symphony played as I walk down to it, then as I sit on it and the ceremony reaches a crescendo, I realize that it is the sacramental seat for those to be sent as an envoy to hell - forever!!! And for what??? To try and reform the evil there....

That's all there is to my life!! No real heaven...only detour trips through it to hell....

Raindrops keep falling on...

Hey check out this pics that i clicked the other day at home; nothing new about them but was fun...

No photoshopping here; they are cropped a little though for effects....

Like a century has passed me by...

It does feel like that these days...I mean from the time that I left college, then joined Wipro, then left Wipro, then joined Mindscreen, studied, learnt, experienced there, then passed out, did films as an assistant, each one unique, met different people; people of all levels - moral, social, intellectual, spiritual, professional....got more than a peek at the stars - their lives, their ways, their mannerisms, their dedication to the job, their success, their pain, the way people perceive them, the way they truly are....seems like an eternity since that last day at college...I was 21 then, in a matter of 5 years, I feel like I have lived through 5 decades of life...and yet there are lapses of time in between where I remember being all by myself, devoid of any human contact for days together. Still I have so many million moments of having discovered people, one little idiosyncrasy at a time. And so many of them. And I remember them as if I have had them yesterday.

Sometimes I feel like I lived my life well....but then again maybe not. I spent time poring over books when other girls were discovering nailpolishes, scrap books and romances. I was visiting encyclopedic websites when others went club hopping; I was locked up in my room doing self-assigned projects when people were opening up to idea of beach vacations and rain dances. I was struggling to find my vocation when most were climbing up the professional ladder with the gusto of a trained tiger out to make a kill. Most of my friends are married by now, some might even be expecting a kid while I am still to even begin a decent relationship(an almost impossible concept to me) . I don't know if I am a loser or just one of those people who take too long...but then again how much is too long?

I'd like to think I am a little different....maybe not always in a good way but almost never in a bad way. I have taken time with things but then I have learnt my lessons well. I have never had a romance but I can bet my a** I can write a great love story. And even if I spend very less time with others in general, my mind makes every moment count. And to top it all, I have learnt to live centuries within a span of years...So even if die tomorrow, it hasn't been a sad life. Well a little sad but definitely not uninteresting.

I always thought I would wake up one day when I am 35, completely unable to recognise my husband lying next to me, dripping with sweat after having had a terrifying nightmare, unable to recall most of my boring life except the one moment when I should have made a decision to switch to what I really wanted to do and didn't find the courage to go ahead with it...This was my greatest fear till the day I changed the course of my life. Today I am not who I want to be but atleast I am somewhere on that path....not on the top but definitely trying to figure the best way up there...I guess it ain't too bad...somehow...

I believe..

That emptiness is the beginning of a new Universe

A whiff is the strain of a new scent

A lonely thread spurns a yarn

And a drifting heartbeat eventually makes a song

And that the Universe with these million scents woven into a thousand yarns floating amidst the beseeching melodies is worth the chaos of the Big Bang!!

All by myself

Living alone is not so bad as people might think. There is a unique solace in it; a silence that envelops you and keeps you calm, giving you a sense of detachment that makes you a part of this world yet away from it as if you were a star far away in a nameless galaxy watching the earthlings as they busy themselves with their lives.

You can hear your own thoughts a little louder, you can break into a song at will and not have to explain, you can talk to yourself and not be taken for a lunatic, you can dance at will, sprawl your clothes all over the floor and not have to tidy up every freaking day. You can eat as you like, sleep as you want, talk all night on phone without disturbing anyone else’s sleep, watch all the movies you’d like at the volume you prefer, return home late at night without having to tiptoe. It’s a world without rules…and only you are welcome to it…

So all by myself...just wanna live....all by myself

The real drama kings and queens...

Last month, there was a huge uproar over the title 'Billu Barber'...all the hair technicians seemed to have gone to the court seeking a stay over the movie cause it 'downgraded' them as 'barbers':(Answers.com definition - One whose business is to cut hair and to shave or trim beards) and this had obviously not gone down too well with these refined stylists. Anyways many people perceived it as yet another publicity gimmick....

Now I haven't seen the film but seriously if anyone had any real objection at all, I wonder why....I believe the story was about a barber called Billu and so the title; the movie wasn't about the profession, it was about the man and I also don't understand how and who from the stylists community saw the film 3 weeks before its release, maybe more than 2 weeks before its first screening for the cast and crew (as per the norms) and wanted a stay on it. Somehow the media never questions like these and then they proclaim that they 'research' and 'analyse' and 'search for the truth'...search, oh really?? And then on top of it, so much coverage is given to an issue like this that's completely irrelevant and hopelessly illogical. Is only the title enough to provoke and inflame a riot of indignation and protests from the supposedly-literate and sophisticated upper class stylists? Assuming this protest was real, shouldn't they all have wanted to watch the film first and see if there's anything abusive for their profession; any real reason for them to drop their choc-o-block diary of superstar appointments and participate in this?

At the end of it, I don't think it was anything more than some more junk fodder to fill up those extra pages of the newspaper (advocating the misconception that more pages for less money is somehow a sign of a value-for-money, in-demand publication) and feed the news-hungry TV channels, mushrooming all over the place like a bad case of plague, where the so-called reporters blare into the mikes with inconsistent information and redundant data over and over again, talking about something as mundane as a man's pocket being picked with the urgency and fervor of reporting the Iraq war from amidst the crossfire. They infuse it with so much unnecessary drama, hackneyed lines and forcefully invented twists-and-turns : all they typical trappings of a C-grade potboiler. that its unbelievable. Especially channels like India TV should be banned for their overimagined, moronic stories about aliens and UFOs, replete with laughable graphics that even a 3rd std kid could top and the distorted crime stories, so cheap and loud that they scream out their own incredulity. It would be terribly ridiculous if it wasn't so funny...

Anyways getting back to negative publicity for movies, I hope that 'Watchmen' - the movie doesn't get stomped over by our Watchmen - Security Guard union who might mistake it to be a offensive portrayal of their profession because of its name or throw a fit over the very well - fitting costumes of the ladies and the men (all superheroes..) by crying foul over the 'over-glamorisation' of their humble uniforms. It is a real possibility these days since nothing these days is a waste of time and everything is news worthy....

The newest high...

Today, I feel more alive than I have felt in a really long time..
the last time I felt like this was the one and only time I went bungee jumping...
As I plummeted to the depths I rose to a level unknown
This was the high I never thought I could feel
I was giddy; my legs dangling loosely, my senses were ripped apart
For moments later I could look at things around, but not really see them
The experience kept flipping back and forth in my mind
And every second I wished to myself that I'd live the previous hour once again

For never has a roller coaster lasted this long nor felt this great..
I felt my soul rise again from the dead coffins of monotony
And once again my heart bubbled with a desire to create
I saw my life running back to me, feel the blood racing in my veins
I can still hear my own gasps, immerse again in the heat of the moment
Feel the butterflies in my stomach, relive the tingle down my spine

Still trying to recover from the heady breathlessness
The bewitching awesomeness of it all..

As I close my eyes now, I still see

THE DARK KNIGHT on IMAX screen...

The 'original' dilemma

I often wonder how you can ever be sure if an idea is completely original… I mean in times like these when several thousand full-length features, a hundred thousand short films, another million of ads, a ten million equivalent of novels and books and a zillion of blogs and articles are being produced every year, how can you claim to have an idea that’s cent percent unique, that’s never been done, said, written or executed before?

I don’t think these days I ever get an idea that’s original…feel like all of it or atleast a part of it has been done before…I have an unusually large database of references, thanks to an addiction to all sorts of media communication, so no matter what idea comes to me, I subconsciously begin to make links to previously viewed or read content and inadvertently end up acknowledging that my latest brainwave ain’t entirely my own...in decent words, it is ‘inspired’…

Does everyone else feel like this too? or am i the only over-analysing, self deprecating, being-hard-on-oneself lunatic?

Droning through the day...

Happy new year my blogspot...
Must be the most delayed, belated happy new year that anyone has ever said to the other..I mean come on, its 24th Feb...post-Oscar time and the world is still reeling under the spell of Rehmania and Slumdog's miraculous juggernaut and Sean Penn and his gays rights activism and the beautiful Kate Winslet with her spontaneous '..dad, just whistle out so I'd know where you are..'So cute!! But then that's me...I believe in making up for my delays and mistakes even after they cease to make a difference any more...so there!!!

Anyways, I was at home the other day and was just wondering what to do with my time...I told myself "I must make it productive" and wrote it down on 10 post-its and pasted it in different parts of my room so that it would stare in my face even if I tried to make an escape and catch an unnecessary, fat-inducing nap; which I am almost-always-tempted to take even in the most unbedlike spots on the planet. So I reluctantly switched on my computer (hoping that it wouldn't boot and then I would have a legitimate excuse to slog off and later complain about how the Universe conspires against my 'efforts' to fulfil my ultimate 'destiny'.. Ahem!!) and of all the times, that day it booted really fast; even the snail-paced Microsoft Word opened up in a jiffy and I had to sit and type in something that could be passed off as an attempt at writing.

But I was amazed for not even a single word could come out...I just tried to type in any random word but somehow even that seemed hopelessly impossible. My fingers just wouldn't type anything not even an alphabet. They just sat there on the keyboard; frozen as if on the last word that I typed for what it seemed centuries ago. My mind was blank and for the first time in my life, I had nothing to write about.

I recoiled back from the computer, unable to reconcile with this new reality of my life. I couldn't write anymore. But I wasn't going to give up so easy..so I sat back and thought about what I needed to write...something fictional? Not really...I hadn't thought of a plot for a long time now.. Maybe something of a review...but there are just so many online, so no need to add to the already existing garbage...maybe something of a personal experience, an observation, contemplation, a book that I like, poetry, something about photography (that I don''t practice, just preach about..) cinematography, people (gets too personal), places, anything....nothing...at one point of time, I was so into writing I could write an entire day about the word 'no' or 'all' or 'whatever' but now I just couldn't...

The horror of my new 'current status' lasted for two days...in those two days, I slept (predictably, assuring myself that the rest might do the trick...hah, as if) , ran some errands, did mindless couch surfing (but then how else do you watch TV?) and kept buzzing around the house like a lost bee; staring for hours at uninteresting flower vases for inspiration, trying to cut fruits to see if an idea pops out, drawing random circles and retracing them in an effort to sketch out a plan to write but nothing worked...I picked up a Satyajit Ray short story book in an effort to voodify some of the master's creativity into me. I scanned through newspaper meticulously; even reading the bland stock columns to stimulate something inside the jammed clogs of my brain, I cleaned out my closets, washed my clothes, read through some of my old stuff but nothing seemed to even bore me into writing.

And then I did the most unthinkable - I actually stepped into the kitchen and seriously thought about 'cooking'. That was it - I had reached the heights of desperation...it was not just worth it anymore. I began to prepare myself for a life without the painful but gratifying adventure of writing. It would be dull, I thought, terribly unfulfilling, for sure but I will live it through. I said it out loud enough for all the deaf cabinets to hear and finally I let my natural lazy self take over my damned spirited imagineer. At night, I logged onto Youtube and saw clips from 'The Dark Knight' with the menancing Heath 'Joker' Ledger in it. I sat in awed silence and played the clips over and over again...each line he said, the terrifying way in which he said it...I just couldn't get enough...

The next day morning (today), I sat and wrote this piece of fiction...