The 2023 Sign -Off- another write off for my writing

 At the beginning of 2022, while still in the Philippines, by myself and pondering over the future, I came up with the notion that one of the areas where I have clearly underachieved- and by no external measure- just by my own output - or lack thereof, was my writing. I have been informed sufficiently and quite early on about the fact that I can write a bit. I will go into the tell -tale signs of this and the reader can be the judge. My first published work was an essay in the school magazine at the Indian School in Bahrain. It was a few lines describing my collection of cars in Bahrain with detail on the various brands.- with the punchline that these were only toy cars.-seeing I was in Standard 2- so must have been all of 7 years old. It was nothing great- just about qualified as cute. But perhaps I am too harsh on myself. Thereafter I got some validation many years later when I was in year 10 - 12 in school in Jamshedpur. During this period, we had a lot of inter-school festivals organized by various clubs and young engineers across the various industries within Jamshedpur. There was "Wheels"- which was based in Telco Club - organized by the Tata Motors engineers- mostly in their twenties. Similarly there was Autumn Fest at the Golmuri Club and  Utsave at the Shavak Nanavati Technical Center. These were essentially more compact versions of college festivals, seeing as they were organized by people who had only recently graduated from the various Indian colleges- mostly purveyors of Engineering degrees of course. There were various competitions even open to schools from standard 9 onwards- and in at least 2  of these contests, I had somehow participated in the "Creative Writing" contest- wherein you were given a random topic and had to make something of it in one hour of scribbling.  I came out on tops on both these contests, often punching above the weight of relative academic stalwarts in the city- and being a small city such stalwarts were often very well -known, Word got around- and when you actually ended up seeing these chaps in person you would notice the unmistakable swagger with which conducted themselves- not always, but mostly. If I had won this contest once, it could have been attributed to a flash in the pan, but seeing as I  had repeated the performance it certainly suggested some degree of talent lurking under the vestiges of an unassuming bespectacled and decidedly shy and often awkward kid. But I heeded it not- as I was preparing for my boards and also the subsequent circus of Engineering College entrance exams. In the several years in college, I dedicated my free time somewhat to rock music but mostly to a form of unbridled idleness portrayed before only in the words of Jerome.K Jerome.  In other words, no writing, in all of four years with lots of empty spaces.

Following this phase was a flurry of new experiences that I was grappling with which included a move to New Delhi and then to the USA- very far from home, not to mention being engulfed in the American cultural trappings and somewhat enjoying whatever I was discovering. About this time I was also pre-occupied by someone of the opposite sex- perhaps for the first time with any fervor. Even within this time, as I wrote up my research paper for my thesis advisor at his behest, he called me to my office and said to me - " my prayers have been answered, I have finally found a Materials Science graduate student who can write properly". What he didn't say, and what I well knew was the the content of the research was not anything to write home about. But ofcourse I could spell and write proper grammar- which I guess was more than could be said for several other international graduate students and also American students. So here again, I had a whiff that my writing may be something to look at more closely

Then when I finished grad school and started working circa the turn of the century, I started writing songs- putting melodies and rhythms to lyrics. My influence lyrically was British progressive bands if the ilk of Pink Floyd- and Roger Waters' writing really appealed to me. He was not a poet like for example Bob Dylan was- but he had a remarkable lyrical dexterity that put things on point with the succinctness and clarity of a Bertand Russel. And the themes he wrote on were quite unusual for a musical genre.

I daresay my early songs were like this- My goal was to write to express the often unexpressed or to express the often expressed in a long-winded way with substantially more compactness without compromising on stylistic elegance. About this time, and before my marriage I had submitted a song to a Poetry Contest online. These were relatively early days of the internet but I was pleased to see a collection of poems hardbound mailed to my address- my poem/song was in it. It was called "Remorse"- which I had added to a song I had worked on with Avinash Bhatia year earlier while still in college in the USA- a fellow musician ( guitarist ) who also liked to dabble with composition,

All of these writings were never widely shared beyond my college bandmates most of whom were also in North America and beginning various careers around the US and Canada.  I got a lot of praise from them on my writing but it never went beyond that. Life always came in between- and focus on new marriages, careers and generally everything else took over.

Around 2003, I also started to pen down some vignettes from my college days- with an idea to weave them together into some form of fictional narrative that could be published as a paperback, Back in 2003 it was a novel idea. Alas, I was beaten to it many years later by Chetan Bhagat and "5 Point Someone".  And then when this happened, I read the book and thought to myself- " This is really crappy writing- surely I can do better". But upon a deeper reflection it came to the fore that Chetan was more interested in keeping the narrative ultimately mass relatable- so he added sections of drama that were totally unrealistic- but, hey, the large chunk of Indian readers loved it and it became the basis of an incredibly successful Bollywood film- which by the way was one of the most popular films in the Philippines-can you believe that?.  For me, just the thought of trying to add artifice of this nature to my narratives would cause my stomach to churn, I would be rubbish at it I feel. Although I haven't actually tried it- and  this has been a non-starter as far I am concerned. So what I have to show form myself is a collection of narratives - each a chapter describing some facet of my college life in India. I have 7 or 8 such chapters- maybe if I can add another 3 I can just publish as-is without trying to do more with these unstructured essays. But will that day ever come. 

As I started to say at the beginning, before I merrily digressed, I wanted to put myself to a routine of writing.  That is to say write a certain number of words every day- not just when I felt like it.  Funnily I was inspired to try this out because of my own success in doing exactly this- with the acoustic guitar. I never played guitar in my life before but during the covid year I bought a guitar and took the trouble to play 15 minutes everyday for 3 months on the trot- weekends, holidays-it did not matter- there was no business travel so there was ample opportunity. But I decided unlike my usual idle self, to grab it. And in 3 months I was playing 3 chord songs. And now in 3 years I can just about play and sing "Locomotive Breath"  by Jethro Tull- which is tricky to play and sing at the same time. The rhythm does not go with the vocal line so one has to ignore the rhythm while singing it. This is such a beautiful struggle- only a fellow musician can truly appreciate. It is a means of connecting and disconnecting simultaneously- perhaps this is somewhat related to the really dense ideas in the Upanishads about discovering the "Self"- whatever that is.

Anyway I went well for the first 6 days in January- and then one day in February and then one day in May, two in July and one recently in November. So 12 entries instead of 365. That is how miserably I have fared this year. Can I change this next year. Can I ? We shall see won't we.