I must write because I love to write.

I forget the name of the guy….sorry, I must more precisely say, I never remembered the name of the guy in the first place…but there was this guy who was an author kind of person who had written many newspaper columns and perhaps a book or two also…..this guy was on TV and he was saying “one of the first things I learned as a newspaper columnist was that I should not think about who I am writing this article for. I should not think about the reactions of those who are going to read this. Only then can I write. So I just wrote whatever I felt like writing, without worrying about whether it will be appreciated or put down”. That’s probably the best advice I have ever received. And maybe the reason I feel myself capable of taking it is because it was not intended for me personally.

My friends often ask me why do I not get down to writing a book.

I offer my entire range of theatrical shrugs and poignant sighs by way of explanations. Work, frustration with work, life, frustration with life.
But I know the real reason.
And its something which ashames me as I admit it – even to myself. Such a damn delusionist I am.

Till the time I don’t write anything significant, and just keep shooting off a glib mail, a sarcastic reply, a biting review here and there I keep convincing myself that Oh Yeah, I have this talent as a writer. But what if I write something more substantial, say like a book, and it falls flat?

Then, I would convince myself and everyone else that I never had any gift of substance.

And that would be it. That would be the end of this feeling that I have of being a good author, of being able to write stuff that interests people. And that’s why I don’t try writing a book. That’s why.


Well, if no book, then no book.

Writing, out-pouring of thoughts and ramblings.
That’s something I can do and I will do.

I do not consider myself a person of any deep or incisive thoughts – about life or anything else.
But there are times when I feel like I have understood something, like some fact that everyone else, or most people have already been aware of for quite some time, which I have realized just now. This feeling is quite something I tell you.

The way I see life, myself, the world around in those moments, I wish I could see the same way throughout life. At all moments, in all occasions.

I just finished reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
(Considering the heavy analysis of psychological theories and alternate viewpoints in the second half of the book, it might even be called as “Man’s Search for Meaning…of This Book”)
Pretty interesting book.
And more than that.
If one reads this book and finds it no more than interesting or touching then it’s as wasted as a conversation with a pretty woman without appreciating how intelligent she is.

One of the interesting things I found in the book is the importance he attaches to the past. The past is real. The future is all potential.
What has been achieved and done has been secured in the past.
What is there in the future and undone is a mere potentiality.
Hence, to live life one must try and put as many things as possible in the past.
The potentialities must be converted and secured as permanent indelible pages in the book of Past.

Each moment spent in regretting is a moment stamped and sealed as “Moment of Regret” and that’s it – it has been lived, it has become real and it has become saved unalterably as a “Moment of Regret”.

I was walking back from the Churney road HDFC ATM, rolling these marbles of thoughts in the palm of my head - ‘look, I have got these 5 minutes while I walk and whether I like it or not these 5 minutes will definitely become history 5 minutes hence. Irretrievably cast into a statue of sand. Nothing bad is going to happen to me in the next 5 minutes. Despite all the transitoriness of life and treachery of fate I can still say to myself very re-assuredly that nothing bad is going to happen to me in the next 5 minutes. Now whether these 5 minutes freeze into wax statues of drooping, wizened listlessness or rising little angels of joy was upto me. Is that a decision that I can make? Oh yes. In the face of all the fatalism and determinism of the world, that is still something I can decide. '

And I just decided to fill the next 5 minutes with feeling good. Just feeling good. No regrets, no worries, no expectations, no evaluations. And I tell you, it felt so beautiful. So calming. Maybe that’s what Bliss feels like. Such peace.

Now, as I write again, I am looking for that 5 minute walk here.