Retrospection: One

Welcome Back.

I’ve been gone long. 3 months, near about. 3 months of slack acknowledgment of life’s suckiness. I am hoping for that to change.

A lot of changes took place, yet somehow I am still as indolent as ever. Rains gave into Fall, which gave into Winter. The music playing changed with seasons – Jazz for the rains, Slowcore for the fall, Johnny Hollow (listen on it) and a whole lotta Gothic ambiance for the winters. The lack of good books to read was apparent in much scarce thoughts on the blog. However, I pulled myself up to read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and I find myself completely blown away. I haven’t read a more complex novel. The writing style, I presume, is part reason for the complexity. I also watched Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and it is an amazing adaptation of Heart of Darkness. If you aren’t much into reading books you much watch this classic of a war movie. I am currently trying Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

A lot of pending DVDs found their way to the screen. Apocalypse Now, Chinatown, Dead Poet’s Society, The Dreamers, El Topo, Everything is Illuminated, Fargo, Silent Hill, and some more. Many old DVDs went into a lot of heavy rotation too – Casablanca, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Godfather I & II, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Good Will Hunting, Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, To Kill A Mockingbird, Vanilla Sky and a lot more.

So, all-in-all, I haven’t done much again. It is high time I do something worthwhile.

There’s lot to write about but words aren’t flowing the way they used to. I feel more and more like Winston Smith starting his diary in Nineteen Eighty-Four, wanting to write, afraid to write, but when he writes it seems more like babble than a meaningful discourse yet the babble makes complete sense.

So I’ll leave you guys here hoping that at least one or two of the old readers would return. While I club my notes and thoughts for a serious introspection of the last 3 months, you keep reading and talkback on this routinely mundane post.

PS. Took quite a part of these three months to redesign this blog. Wait and Watch. Work In Progress.

Two Years Down

So this is becoming more of a writing pad than just a diary. I have been writing about everything except me, although you can argue that it's all me, in the end.

This May it will be two years since I had been a Blogger. Books, Movies, Design, Web Standards and the Open Source Revolution. I have written about them and not, but anyhow I have written. It started with an ambitious little blog, The Signs of Being. It was online in the May of 2004. I posted two short posts on it in June, maybe July. And I found out: I wasn't any good at writing, No one would read my blog, and I am no-good-lazy-ass. And so Signs of Being eventually got deleted from the Blogger server.

Then near about a year later I came up with I Want Doesn't Get. I thought it was a great idea putting out your wishlist blog-style. On April 20, 2005 at 11:56 PM I wrote my first post on IWDG. Not a great write-up, not particularly interesting, but I wrote. Another post came by six days later. And then, Period.

It took 10 months for me to start writing again. In February of o-six I published Anonymous Content. It was a new blog, a new beginning. I wrote my first ever nicely-written post - Nineteen Eighty-Four. Since then I haven't stopped writing. I resurrected IWDG with some serious posting and here I am two years down, a little mature, more geek-ier than ever.

Now I write with much fervor. My writing reflects what I read. I read a lot now, more mature books, more stylized writing. A few good souls do come over to read my wannabe-mature posts. Some go a step further and comment and I'd like to thank them for their interest - Arsh, Thotster, Sunfever, all my friends, and some more.

I hope to continue this writing expedition indefinitely. I also hope for more readership - I will hit the 500-mark by the end of this week, It's not flattering but at least I got the facts right.

Update: News is, I didn't have to wait for a week for that 500-mark. I hit 518 while I was writing and posting this piece. Cheers!!

Hapless in Hyderabad or How I Stopped Worrying and Started to Write

The days were rocking slowly and the nights were short. The crappy speakers on the sideboards of the huge computer table were squeaking tinny sounds that heard something like Pearl Jam’s I am Mine. Some days are meant to be wretched. The daily weather ticker on a local website announced the temperature. 38 freaking Celsius. It also proclaimed Hyderabad was the hottest frying pan in the whole country on that day.

The 1984 vintage air cooler was blowing arid waves of torture in my direction. It was the year that I did nothing. And I perfectly know that the previous statement is crap because it is impossible to point out the year being pointed out. I push next on my playlist. Sting’s Fragile. This one at least complemented the weather, as in didn’t make you feel more humid. I put the song on repeat.

I have been hitting the return key for the past 10 minutes to register the results of a boring little program I wrote in PHP. I peered over the book in my lap. At this pace I would develop my dream project in about 10-12 years. I slammed the book shut and opened another. It was Kevin Sampson’s Awaydays, an excellent debut novel which would later encourage me to see Green Street Hooligans and read Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch.

Deeply immersed in good Scouse accent, football matches and gore I was thinking about the one thing I always think about when reading a book. I wish I could write. I wanted to write something. It could be anything, the only prerequisite was readers. It was a no-brainer that who would read my crap, no one. So there it was, always in my mind yet it never happened.

Rewind << I have written before.

My first real writing was a collaborative piece of work with my younger sister, Arshiya. I was 9 or maybe 10. It was a short story about this guy called Massey and how he meets this ghost who shows up every now and then. Just like today the story reflected a lot of what I’ve been reading or watching. Those were the days of sci-fi and space adventures. Massey, the protagonist of our story was actually a hero of another sci-fi book we were reading. Anyway, the joy of writing a full story was great, but it was read by only two people, me and Arshiya. We both happened to be the only creative minds in the house.

I close Awaydays.

I think again, of writing about my life. In thinking I come up with the idea of writing about “years” past. I also come up with the format - Yearly or half-yearly set of events written under the title of a song much heard in that part of the year. And so I keep this idea in my mind and so it came to be.

Presently.

I write them now as I have thought it out. I have stopped worrying who would read. I still am the only creative mind in my friend circle, the only one holding creativity in high esteem. At home everything remains the same too. Still I am going to write. I will write as unbiased and as truthful an account as I can or want to. I will also take the pain of offline-ing my friends who are now spread around the world, and tell them to read at least a single entry.

It is but hope that keeps the world running and the writers writing.

About the day described above, it was a summery day in March 2004 and today it is yet another summer day and the city has recorded the highest temperature in the country. I have just finished reading Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch and I am listening to Sting as I end this little write-up. And yes he is still on repeat.

P.S.: The 7 songs series is coming soon to this weblog or a feed reader near you.

P.P.S: Apart from the title and this Post-postscript the whole article is exactly 666 words. Coincidence or demonic intervention.

Don't know what to write

That's why I can't say what I will write. I don't know when I'll write or if I'll write at all.
That's why Anonymous Content.
I hope I write something.