Flash backs, in gaeva colour!

Now who was the bloke who famously uttered, "the true tragedy of a routinely spent life is that its wastefulness does not become apparent till it is too late"?  Sure, there are couple of things about this statement that can be disputed.

For one, is a 'routinely spent life' a tragedy?  Why, I would rather have that tragic experience any day, if the alternative is a 'not-so-routine' life of adrenaline-pumping excitement.  'Wastefulness?'  - Is not in the long term everything wasteful, as in the long-term all are very dead?  Even so, for many, the so called wastefulness does become apparent before it's too late but they are simply unable to do anything to alter the course life has chosen to take on its own!

From my routinely spent life so far, I have tried to pick out a few moments, a random selection of  memories.  Memories that keep coming back, memories that never fail to light up the mood. Memories, not of wastefulness, but of the joy of life!

Like the memory of that moonless night spent in the sea-shore with a few friends in a Mahabs resort, a few years back.  The din of the roaring waves, the black limitless expanse  of the sea, a star-spangled sky, heady breeze hitting the face and  velvety sand.  For this setting to be romantic, the company of a girl is not a necessity.  Loneliness can be the best company.  If that is demanding a bit too much, a couple of friends will do.

Like the memory of the visit to Darjeeling two decades back for two bone-chilling days of January.  Again with long-lost friends.  Two days of misty mountains, the fleeting glimpse of Kanchenjunga, meeting with an elderly director of the mountaineering institute who had actually summitted Everest, the hospitality of a kind family,  the ride in the toy train,  the group photo with the TTE, the overnight ride in the 'rocket' bus from Calcutta to Siliguri....

Like the memory of dark evenings at Kasba Kalibari.  The secluded hill-top temple an hour from Agartala.  The dancing priest performing aarti to the background of conch and cymbals.  The watch-tower enveloped in perpetual darkness.  Comfortable arm chairs in the sit-out.  The coke bottle in hand.  Again a good friend for company.  The sight of trains crawling across the Bangladeshi plains far down the hill.  The barbed wire fencing, no-man's land on the other side, BSF jawans going about their business...

Like the memory of popcorn smell pervading Fame cinema's lobby in Calcutta's South City Mall.    Of the Sunday morning 9 o'clock shows.  Of the company of the best of Hollywood and Bollywood for the next three hours.  Of the small coffee-corner in a nook inside the book shop in the mall.  Of the temerity to spend  an entire half-a-day inside the air-conditioned confines of the mall with just Rs.70/- (60 bucks for the morning show and 10 for the brew) buying nothing but happiness....

Like the memories of countless Saturday night shows in Chennai with another movie freak.  Of heading straight to the K.K.Nagar house of a friend at midnight, after the show.  Of unending discussions and arguments till day-break.  Of the 2 a.m. tea at the road-side stall...

Like the memory of the picnic at a resort near Vasai a year back, with office colleagues.  Of the gallons of liquor consumed.  Of the swimming pool. Of the animal farm nearby.  Of that memorable ride back in the Virar fast....

Or like the memory of 15th July, 1996 on a humid Wednesday afternoon at a Coimbatore hospital, when someone handed over 2.50 kilograms of a bundle of joy to my hands.  Of brittle bones, long limbs and a terrified face.  Of an inexplicable pot-pourrie of emotions....

Life may be routine. But it need not necessarily be one of wastefulness. Life may seem uneventful but still full of events that, looking back, never fail to make you want to get into a time-machine and travel back to those memories. Life may be quiet and calm. No disturbance.  Just routine.  Mundane.  But during the course of each such 'wasteful' life, there do come several missed calls.  It is up to you to spot the missed calls and call back and connect to happiness! Ignore the missed calls and you end up ignoring life itself.  

But I am no Dickens!

Here I am, sitting before the PC, mind as blank as the screen in front.  A hundred insane thoughts swirl around my head but I can't catch hold of any single one to give shape to.  An hour passes, still not a single click on the key-board.  I get up in frustration, go out and have a smoke. Hoping against hope that miraculously a straw will float by to clutch, while drowning.  An idea to grasp furiously and work upon.  It's already an hour since I logged in.  I have seen worse nights and each one feels like the previous one was better.  The tidal wave of hopelessness drowns me as I plunge  deeper and deeper into the abyss...

Here I am, trying to conceive a post for my blog.  I curse myself for bringing about this self-inflicted misery.  No one forced me into this.  Neither is this an exam paper to be finished off in three hours.  Then why this pursuit of madness?  I realise why,but too proud to admit it.  It is that demon called 'ego'.  That inflated sense of one's greatness.  Once upon a day, by chance and fluke, you managed to put together 1000 words, neatly divided into paragraphs which collectively made passable reading.  You  gave it a grandiose title (after wracking the mind for another one hour), posted it in cyberspace, linked it to a couple of other sites, took a deep breath and waited.  The wait produced a response or two, a couple of comments and likes from a little circle and presto, you think you are the next Booker winner. Ah that ego!  Its trail of destruction is legion.   

But coming to think of it, any one can dish out readable prose.   It is only a matter of putting on paper (or the monitor) the first few words.  The beginning.  Because unless the beginning is arresting and captivating, the middle and the end, for whatever they are worth, have a fat chance of being read.  So here I am, like a constipated soul, still searching for those magical first words.  But how were some of the more famous first words created?  What went through the writer's head before the first words popped out?

"Howard Roark laughed"

Simple, unassuming line.  Nothing sensational.  Not very prolific or profound either.  But they do make you go to the second line.  Mission accomplished.  Perhaps the best three words that made the world sit up and take notice of Rand.

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether than station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show"

And show they did.  In typical victorian elegance.  This fable is the favourite child of Dickens from among his many works and they say it is almost autobiographical.  Now how many hours would Dickens have suffered before conjuring this opening line?  Open to conjecture.  Even if he did suffer the writer's mental block his Micawberish hope ultimately prevailed and David Copperfield was born.

"The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking from Bramblehurst Railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly-gloved hand."

Ugh, pretty lengthy stuff.  But the tone is set for the rest of the work and already an eerie feeling of being watched by invisible eyes engulfs the reader.  H.G.Wells was, in the opinion of many, too ahead of his times.  His Invisible Man certainly was.  It is not exactly of the mystery/horror genre but the protagonist manages to evoke mixed reactions from the audience. He sure was the hero, at times invoking sympathy and at times hatred.  Some how, reading the work again, Johnny Depp comes to my mind.  His portrayal of a gangster in Public enemies  beautifully approximates the invisible man.

"It was a cold October morning in Paris and even colder for a man about to be executed by the firing squad"

You guessed it right.  The master of suspense's  famous first lines brilliantly sets the tempo for the rest of 300 pages of top-quality stuff.  The Day of the Jackal set the standards for what would eventually be called 'Forsyth' class.  Does it appear this opening line took two days for him to compose?  Not a chance.

So it all boils down to the opening lines.  And here I am, still in search of that elusive combination of first words that would persuade the reader to go right up to the last ones.  Yes, the last ones too do matter.  After all, who can forget "after all, tomorrow is another day?"

May be, I should log off and wait for another day for that stroke of inspiration.