Writing Zen

I turned 32 a couple of days back and I made half a resolution to begin writing again. Half because I wasn't sure if I would be able to take out the time and if we are to be honest I wasn't sure if I have the patience anymore to but here we go !

Writers are supposed to have exciting lives, its not possible to come up with interesting stuff to write  if you actually have not gone out into the world splashing your colors all over the place. I  picked up on writing as a creative outlet during my engineering days and its one of my clearest memories. I even told my grand mother who I was very close with and in a very proud voice she said 'you know it would make me so happy if you continue writing, it's one of the best things that you can do plus it runs in the family ! '. I always think that writing is one of the things which will make the world still livable for me when I get old. So for all essential purposes this is a selfish outlet in the guise of being selfless, Just like entrepreneurship and it requires the capital of time and experiences.

So what has changed in the last 5 years when I wrote last. I've worked on 6 different ideas 5 of which are now shelved due to various reasons that escape logic. The 6th idea is a clear winner still out there kicking ass. I have been on a gazillion dates but have still managed to be single ! (I have an actual list of my top 10 best and worst dates ever) I have maintained a similar physical dimension only with more muscle now. I have read more, traveled more, redefined my inner circle and have several crazy stories about crazy people to share but all in due course. First I need to clearly define a flow here to suck you inside my world.In the next few days i'll be writing about a whole range of things that have influenced me. Those might or might not be relevant to you but I promise entertainment !

Dreams and Bandra

Around 6PM these days at Bandstand there’s a moment. The sun starts to set, everything starts attaining an orange texture, the wind starts blowing with a lot more gusto and people tend to chatter less or maybe I just feel that they chatter less. At that moment I see a lot of people just sitting and staring blankly at the ocean and paying less attention to what’s happening around them. I call it the dream minutes, the time of the day when people sit down and think how life is or was or could be, the time when they reflect on how lucky they are to be there at that moment or maybe on how things could be better. But I feel that it’s that time of the day which makes Bombay what it is , a place for dreamers , a place for struggle, a place where insanity meets order. It’s that time of the day which gives the city and its people the will and the energy to move forward, all the time.

So much has been written and said about Mumbai in movies, novels and articles but the fact that I still feel the urge to write about it means that the city has grown on me and almost everyone I know here. People either stay here for a long time or they tend to move out immediately. I still remember when I moved here three years back a couple of my friends did say “tum se nahi hoga” and I really believed it too. But these days I sometimes catch myself speaking Bombay Hindi on the phone or traveling without ticket on the local or craving a vada paav or arguing with society uncles about parking, things quite strange for someone from Delhi. I sometimes feel that I’ve entered a comfort zone in an uncomfortable place. I say this because now I feel at home here, I should be careful because at any moment something could happen which could make a dent on my perception of this city and that’s exactly what excites me and most inhabitants of this megapolis. The unpredictability, the sheer ability of this place to hit you on the blindspot.

It’s also one city in India where people tend to express love/affection/ideas quite freely. Strangers talk to strangers , acquaintances are easy to find, connections are made/discovered with ease, words are spoken without fear,  no one wants to know tera baap kaun hai ya mera baap kaun hai. Individuality is accepted and if I may say even rewarded. I still remember this one time I got on a local train 1st class bogey and someone said “ye first class hai” but the guy next to him retorted back “ to kya hua tum bhi to first class ho, baitho”  or the random guy at the toll booth saying  “hamara bhi din aayega” !

When I see what I’ve written so far I feel that the whole piece is a bit incoherent or lacks real order but maybe that’s how my subconscious addresses my thoughts about this city which I call home territory now and I shouldn’t get too carried away because hey it’s gonna be 6 PM soon and I have to be at Bandstand, just in time for the dream minutes ;)   

My Year in words, Thanks for being a part of it

To 2014

It took an year like you to make me get back to writing. I was starting to miss staring at the blinking cursor on my word pad and then you came along. But I waited for you to run your course. I waited with patience, with hope, that maybe , just maybe, you might throw another surprise at me. You might come along and shout out something new, unheard of , but you somehow decided to end it on a boring note. Maybe it was your own way to balance things out, your way to impress on me that you weren’t as eventful as I thought you were. But you fool me not and I still shall write.

2013 had tried to set us into a monotony of a 9 to 6 , tried to tame us , tried to make us more careful about where we stepped but you decided to end it all. On one fateful day in July, you came shouting in and decided to end it. Enough was Enough you said, we need to break free, we need to create new things, think bigger, take on new challenges, meet new people,change things, make a dent. I love you for that. I have never been more alive, never been more creative, never been more patient than I am now. Patient because you taught me that it takes time, effort and humility, lots of humility, to build something new and fuck no, it’s not easy.   

You also introduced me to death. To the misery and disappointment which a being suffers from when it loses someone close , someone dear to heart. I needed to get away. Go somewhere far and you took me there. Back to Europe where we found courage, where we found old friends again, where we found hope and maybe happiness.

You showed me what might have been the illusion of love. Strangers become lovers and become strangers again, all the time, you showed me how true this was. We just need to keep at it till we meet another stranger or not.

You reintroduced me to Mumbai. The city I have come to respect so much for its audacity, for its never ending energy, for its nerve, for its efficiency and also for its irregularity at the same time, for its ability to astonish me day in and day out, for its Bandras and for its Dharavis, for its bright lights and sea shores, for its chai shops and fancy bars. It has kept me young and running. Alive and Kicking (Yeah you know the song).  

Finally, I really thank you for the beers. For the countless cheers, prosts and santes.   For the stock markets and the casinos . For the long runs and new friends. For the crazy strangers and overflowing backpacks.

I raise a final toast to you my dear friend,

See you again in another life.

Yours truly   

Sanchit

Have I met ME?

Sometimes it's just great to wonder about your existence. To just forget everyone and all those things that have been worrying you. But I felt the opposite at my sojourn to a beach in the southernmost tip of India. I thought I would find solace, relief and a sense of just being away from everything for a while.

My experiment at staying alone/detached for 3 days turned out to be not quite what i had expected. I did live like a king, I wouldn't deny that. Staying at a place right at the beach, getting up at 11, bathing at the beach, sitting at shacks for hours having fish and just wondering who made the sea so beautiful, walking in the sand and looking back to see your footprints being owned by the sea, reading and wondering about the characters in that book like they were alive at that very moment and watching the day go by from that lighthouse that overlooks the ocean and the wilderness.

But there was something that always remained the same, the ME inside of me. I always told myself "hey, this is supposed to be a vacation so stop thinking" but no ! I thought even more, at times i equated my life with the book i was reading. All the emotions that I had felt at some or the other time of the year just came back to me with a greater intensity. I thought more about the people in my life, about priorities, about what an asshole I can be and how I should continue to be one. WHY life has been what it has been so far and how NOTHING is going to change very soon.I thought of my self as an animal, as a glutton whose only motive in life was to live better and felt that being at this place is gonna change nothing. I will just be the same when I go back to the "real" world. But then there was this one thought that turned around everything. " Atleast I was thinking!!!"

We just walk through our everyday lives without smelling the roses but more than that I think its more important to feel the thorns once in a while ! Think about what you did to someone, about why you are such a terrible person, about that loser that stays inside you and comes out when you least expect him to, about that person who bullied you when you were a kid.Sometimes just sometimes its good to sit back with some beer and think about all those bad memories, stuff you are not really proud of. It's only then that you will accept completely what you really are and that acceptability and not the being itself shapes what you truly can be.

Somewhere in time and space:Europe

Europeans in general have a strange craving for silence.The metros,the hotels,the universities,the roads all of them say the same thing in different ways.There is no interference with the personal soul, everything is objective,looks at you from a distance and wants you to think.Think about the food,about the women,about the silence, about the masterpieces on every nook and corner of the street.Then you become a cripple, a slave of your thoughts which embrace the questions this objectivity asks them. You dont realize where you are going, there is noone to ask about you,noone who cares about your whereabouts. People are engrossed in thought, the mornings are silent, and the evenings are beautiful. people dance, love , eat, drink but I wonder if this is gods attempt to create an equilibrium in life in general here.Its like India, the mindnumbing activity during the day is followed by quiet nights, for the average indian that is.

Every women has a scent here, an inescapable odour,its like a second identity,its like an addiction,just doesnt let go of you. in a club u r suddenly in an ocean of sounds and odours, with the music acting as a catalyst. You look into the eyes of that beautiful stranger and have a conversation that you'll forget in a day but something you wont forget is that moment in time and space, that dot in the world where you were happy , where you could be whatever u wanted to be.

Random conversations about politics,media, movies,love, weather , music, business and what not run wild. You open your mind every night and let yourself be. you dont cling on to ideas , u neither accept them nor reject them because it doesnt matter, because nothing is true and nothing is false,you just fly . fly in the deep corners of your mind and speak whatever you want to and also, whatever you dont want to. the alcohol makes you wild, the music makes you calm and after sometime you close your eyes to talk to yourself, everything is spinning ,your thoughts collide with each other and suddenly you dont know what to do with them, you dont kno how to keep them still, your mind is at war with itself and the only way you can bring peace is by letting it fight in solitude.

and then you go home...

The "B SCHOOL" experience

On my first day in business school, I met GOD !! he was standing on the stage, behind the podium, giving us a "WELCOME" speech. He began by saying "welcome batch, you guys are good" and before i could even begin stoking my ego, he went berserk with the rules! Rule 1-blah blah blah ,Rule 2-blah blah blah blah followed by If you dare to blah blah i will blah blah blah. I asked myself 'seriously how old is this guy? and why the f&*^ is he scolding us!! Although i'm not a very good public speaker(not even half of what this guy was) i could earn 10 times more respect than he could when on stage. Being a little polite would do, and i'll be a star if i could crack a joke or two! seriously, how difficult is it to be nice to people? to understand what they want to hear? oh wait, i heard this guy was majoring in marketing !! god bless this country.

On the second day, i met GOD 2 !! He was out there on the stage giving us a presentation on the basics of marketing. He was alright, but wait, after 5 minutes he too like GOD starts shouting at us !! "You ignorant fools you don't know this", " seriously who sent you guys to a business school, this is just a waste of time" and then suddenly the trick worked. A bunch of juveniles decided to rescue the session and started asking questions which almost made me puke!!! The whole setting turned into a parliament session in the next 5 minutes. First years asking questions to become popular, seniors retorting back to save their egos. I was just a quite soul who preffered thinking about the universe than petty toilet soap ad campaigns.With my hands behind my neck and my seat in full recline i was gonna make a breakthrough in understanding the evolution of the being when GOD 2 interrupted my chain of thought.He was shouting at the top of his voice, he was shouting at me with all his energy.Then at that very moment i made a decision.I am never gonna buy a single product of the company he goes on to work for. They just lost a customer before they even hired him!!



On days 3,4,5,6,7,8,9...16 i met GOD 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,....16. Each one of them was pissed off for some reason or the other. They had insane fetishes. They loved formals. They wanted each and every first year to wear formals day and night,and by night i mean 2 am. They wont let them eat if they are not wearing formals, wont let them study if they are not in formals, wont let them attend "interactions" if not in formals( oh wait, thats what we want don't we !!) Dedicated, sincere EMPLOYEES who follow deadlines and submit themselves towards authority and hierarchy is what they wanted them to become. Uniformity is what they aspired to bring, individuality is what they forgot altogether. They stressed on interaction but forgot that they had to stop being angry for that to happen !!

You'll expect me to end it on a healthy positive note to appease certain people but that's not going to happen . I'm not pissed, i'm just bored.Where's the fun? Where's the excitement? Where's the passion? Where is THE LOVE?

Disclaimer: The above article is purely fictitious not resembling any person or place.
;) ;)

Too cool for school !

Another month and i'm gonna be back in college. It's been ages since i left manipal.

1.5 years to be exact, and i feel that its time to get in touch with the "student" in me. For starters, the Goatee is back !! it's symbolic for me more than anything else. It Remind's me of the times when i didn't give a rats ass about anything, the times when i used to walk in the classes without realizing what date,time or year it was, the times when i used to look into the mirror and say "i'm getting sexier day by day" and my room mate used to laugh his ass off.and what's more, my insane laugh is back!! the one i tried to hold back in office, the one that always got me in trouble in college, the one people could hear from miles away and say "i know who that is!". My ability to consume alcohol is improving thanks to my recent bangalore trip, and i really hope it will meet the required standards when i get started with college. The last year had left me longing for liquor(lack of company not liquor!) , i could get high on lime soda for all i knew. The old music is back, folders in my old computer named after my friends with nothing short of treasure in them,the songs we could levitate on. For some reason or the other college always wakes up the freak within,or maybe its the real me. Looking forward to two more years of pure and absolute bakar.