Monday, March 15, 2010

The teddy...

“It’s been a long time since I wrote something…”

This has been the starting line of most of the little I have written in the last 2 years.
There was a time when I would churn out two, three, sometimes four posts a night.
I could wake up at 3:27am on a black summer morning and find inspiration in the blank, except for the rotting bloody bodies of dead mosquitoes, walls of my minuscule hostel room.
Today, I lie in my plump bed, fatter in both body and experience, no not wallet, do you know the ratio of the salary of an ASE to her cost of living?? Its 1:38 (No I was just trying to be witty, no I did NOT calculate it, but you get the point right??)Ah! Well! I digress, so where was I? Yes I was in my plump bed with a fat body of experience, a fatter body per se, a blank page and a printed keyboard, in short all the tools required to cook a delicious literary broth.
Yet, the page remains bland and the words in my mind half-baked, because my kitchen is out of stock of the one key ingredient, “Inspiration”.
What is inspiration anyway?
Is it a strange face in the crowd that is gone forever in a span of a heartbeat, or a familiar stranger we sit next to every day on our way to work? Is it a little voice we hear inside our head, or is it the God whose existence we all try to believe in? Is it the smell of rain in the air or the colour of the sky on a sunny day?
Is it a broken heart or the edge of a tapestry you see through the half open window of the apartment in the building opposite to yours?
Is it hope or is it life itself?
I do not know…
All I know is that there times when everything feels empty and meaningless and life feels like a dream trapped in an eternal repetitive cycle. You crave for a way out, to write something anything yet everything eludes you, it’s like you are empty of ideas, empty of ability, empty of life itself.
You remember, how when you were little
life meant a cute cuddly teddy bear with a pink satin ribbon we loved to run through our fingers, ‘coz it felt so soft and shiny. Today, it is a monstrosity of unspent tears and dusty emotions, of broken hearts and discoloured dreams…

And then comes a day when you are sitting at your window, listening to the thunder of a rainless sky, as the sun takes a deep plunge down the horizon, feeling the wind whip your hair around your face. Your legs are cramped, your laptop at the verge of becoming extinct, your view is the same empty plot/garbage dump, you try not to look at every day, yet for no reason you feel this faint stirring of something, like hope, like just a faint hint that something other than emptiness still resides in some hidden corner of your being…

And in moments like this, you almost believe, that under all that grime, under those broken pots and disfigured pans this monster still has that little cuddly teddy curled up somewhere, a little too dusty, a little too frayed, quite a bit thinner and very wobbly… but with that faded pink ribbon stills blowing around its crumbing ears, just as soft if not as shiny as it was…in moments like this you almost believe in belief

8 comments:

Soul Less Curry said...

What is inspiration anyway?
Is it a strange face in the crowd that is gone forever in a span of a heartbeat, or a familiar stranger we sit next to every day on our way to work? Is it a little voice we hear inside our head, or is it the God whose existence we all try to believe in? Is it the smell of rain in the air or the colour of the sky on a sunny day?
Is it a broken heart or the edge of a tapestry you see through the half open window of the apartment in the building opposite to yours?
Is it hope or is it life itself?
I do not know…


Beautiful...

Unknown said...

and moments like these..will make you humble, more human,.. and moments like these make its more interesting, challenging which otherwise would be boring life. no!?

Avisek-The Martian said...

Hence, I think inspiration is a rather vague word...It should be defined as moments...which make or break us....if that's too loud...moments that assemble or dissemble our lives....

Haddock said...

Inspiration.....

umangexuberance said...

@Suni
Thanks :)

@iamyuva
Yes, absolutely..

@Avisek
Nicely put

@Haddock
Indeed...

Zubin said...

This post is an inspiration in itself..!

btw..you must be an SE now..not an ASE!! :p
And how have you been..? :)

umangexuberance said...

@Zubin
Thanks! That was a huge compliment.

I am good and still an ASE (got a really bad first rating and turns out getting 7 exceeds expectations in the next review doesn't change that)
how have u been?
are u at accenture?

Zubin said...

I have been well..
Yes, I am in accenture...Bangalore.. :)

Really bad first rating..?I hope you didn't hit your supervisor with a bat or something..!!?? :P