My Blank Spaces and the Words

Sunday;

What is it about a blank word document that sings a siren call to my nerves and synapses to fill it up with utterly meaningless shit and gibberish, of no use to anyone else and of ultimately no other use to myself except to remind me that I wasted an hour writing this shit?

I am a sick, sick man and I usually find justifications for every stupid thing that I do, so allow me to find one for this as well. I could say that writing is one of things that saves me; the discipline and the abstraction of putting m life and my thoughts into words, everyday, helps me cope with shame and its first cousin, despair.

Or I could say that I enjoyed reading and writing. I liked words. Words didn't shout or make loud noises, which pretty much defined the rest of my family. Well, once in a while, I like to make loud noises and shout as well, usually in Capital Letters or BLOCKS.

For newer internet users Caps of Capital letters means talking loudly here and writing in blocks, LIKE THIS means shouting in in net-language.

I know, I know, as if English wasn’t enough

I like to write and I also realise that I write a lot of nonsense, descriptive nonsense, but nonsense still. I mean, shit is shit, however you describe it.

The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate. In fact, some sort of law should be passed in a determined attempt to put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honesty into reporting. And this should have been done a long time ago.

Thus, if a legend said of a notable here that "all men spoke of his prowess" any bard who valued his life would add hastily "except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a liar, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him."

I like the entire neatness of orderly rows of evenly spaced writing all in the same size, just marching along the white space of a blank document. There is something very relaxing and very Zen about the whole process. After my actual handwriting, anything would be better, but seriously…..

My writing is like, one moment it is an orderly, matter-of-fact printing; the next a series of angular runes. Then it would be curly cursive script. Then it would be pictograms in some ancient, evil and forgotten writing that seemed to consist exclusively of unpleasant reptilian beings doing complicated and painful things to one another...

You get the picture….

My brother can’t ever understand this huge fad or obsession of mind. He is, in fact, functionally literate. That is, he thinks of reading and writing like he thinks about boots -- you needed them, but they weren't supposed to be fun, and you got suspicious about people who got a kick out of them.

Of the early school mates I had, the clans of the back-benchers inc. and chalk-throwers assorted brotherhood's hated writing for all kinds of reasons, but the biggest one was this:

writing stays. It fastens words down. A man can speak his mind and some nasty bastard will write it down and who knows what he'll do with those words? You might as well nail a man's shadow to the wall! Ergo, writing was bad and reading what anyone else wrote was worse!!

The clans were amazingly illiterate and were therefore much appreciated in the various unions and factories around the city and even in certain families of known repute (ill) and close relations to operations of the jet shades.

My granny always held that the dude upstairs invented schools for children, on the basis that since reading and writing were quite difficult it was best to get them over with early.

It’s not as if I think that I am writing words that will last forever. These words would last for a few weeks, maybe even a day if my server decides that he’s had a day and needs time off to go and see his babe at the servicing centre.

All this finally gets deleted, much like an old newspaper being thrown away the next day. But there is always hope……that a few might hang on, in people’s minds or heads. Or more likely like old newspapers, might be quite the reverse.

But then all this is prelude to my actual reasons for even starting to write. Yesterday was Diwali and apparently even today is Diwali. Festivals are often merely an excuse and are understood only when you are with your family and friends because they are merely a means to bring together the same under the guise of rites, rituals and humour for the inherent idiocy of the said rites and rituals.

Well, we had quite a shindig (American for GREAT PARTY) here at our halls of residence. It started with a very British bloke belting out bhajans with a rather nasal harmonium, in rather fluent Hindi and the rest of the audience either awestruck like us or sniggering away at the rest of us who had never seen such a sight before. It was quite a sight I assure you....

There was a rather nice evening veggie meal with naan’s, dal, sabji and pulao and pakoda’s and gulab jamun’s. After weeks of not seeing Indian food, the mob more or less broke down at the sight of the delicacy’s. The event was organised by the Glasgow Univ. Hindu Society and it was quite a show with party games and such, followed by a lot of dancing.

The Indian bucks just rolled back their sleeves and got right down to the shoulder shimmy and a lot of light bulb changing with two hands, bhangra basically. The girls were more or less shunted aside as the blokes of bhangra got into the act. There were no crackers or fireworks as the same would require about 116 different licenses and the police and paramedics standing in attention.

But the hindi party hits of last year were still a treat for the people who have been subsisting on bread, butter and tea and the incomprehensible music of these firang’s!!!

Anyway, the party broke up at about 4 am in my flat kitchen with all my female flatmates in rather compromising positions with the Indian studs, about half the liquor of Glasgow in my kitchen and me kicking and rooting people in rather interesting situations out of the flat.

It was an interesting evening, the sort dreamt by Indian undergrads that bring them out in pimples by the score and create harder foundations of studying abroad than concrete or parental recriminations ever could.

I realise that I am being nasty, petty and horribly cynical, but hell that’s me, so deal with it.

The simple fact is this that like an escape from the boundaries of home, the mere absence of anyone to question their acts make them half delirious with joy and more than half drunk. And to anyone who is in their early twenties, the other fact of having to return to a life of drudgery, actually working for a living and worse of all, MARRIAGE has the effect of doubling their intensity at partying.

I just love this place and encourage one and all without discrimination; the devil and I would have much in common, methinks.

I must also point that while noting down the activities of other, I was by no means an inactive participant in the revels and no mere looker-on. I had more reason than anyone else, I was over the hill according to the youngsters and at present the most successful at their given objectives of the meaning of fun.

The only thing was that since I had been made an ASR so was a bit worried about the noise levels and if the attention of the warden would be attracted. Turned out that we had the quietest party in the year and no one even knew we were having a party.

The only casualty was a “Faccha” a fresher baccha as we call them who slumped off on three pegs and rather openly admired my flatmates obvious assets. The compliment was quite well taken, however before the youngster could end up in either a situation that could be embarrassing for him or for me (Him, if the poor girl got upset and me, if the girl liked the compliments and took him to bed!!!)

So, anyway, I got him in an armlock and got him home, where the dratted fellow actually started bawling about how his mom asked him not to come to “Phoren” land and that he would get “Polluted” and which he was now and how much he missed his mom and his spicy food and how insipid the food was and how he longed for his mom, how polluted he was, how insipid the food was and how he wished he had listened to his mom…..

I tell you, it was not the first time I had put a junior to bed, undressing and all, but I was stuck at perhaps my recollections of an old senior of mine putting me to bed on my first ever drinking bout. And I did feel immensely sad at being so old as to be the one getting these idiots into bed and not the other way around.

To assuage my feelings of guilt, I invited the poor red-faced and totally embarrassed boy back the next day and cooked him the spiciest curry I could. The potatoes got burnt and the chicken was over-done and this guy just dug in and I swear I felt a prickle of awe for anyone missing their food so much. Now I understand my cousin's looks when I would dig into food at their place during my undergrad days...:D

I was laid low for two days after the party with a bitter cough and cold, however I am rallying and am off to class on Monday. I guess, I should call it a day here because it is Monday now and I am dead bushed and I have no more energy to write or type anymore.

Tuesday;

I am in Scotland!!!

It has taken me 4 weeks of unrelenting sightings of bloody white people everywhere to convince me of the fact.

No, I don’t mean it that way.

Its just that today as I was climbing the steep upgrade on Botanical Gardens, I felt the slight twinges on my legs, but I went on walking without taking my usual gasping breaths and breaks. I went on walking till I got to the University and I was sweating freely but I had walked the whole 2 miles of steep upgrades without a stop and my ankles and leg muscles didn’t let me down.

Probably wont be able to do it tomorrow, but as I was coming back home from the Univ. today I suddenly felt different. I realised that I was in a totally different place and absolutely unaware of it, till that moment. The last four weeks had been so hectic and fierce in their pace that I was too wrapped up in my schedule to have time to appreciate the fact of my existence in a completely different area.

I meet and greet people with a “cheers mate” or more like “Chirrrs Maait” as the Scots would say, and “Saary fer det, maaait” !!! I have time for this, instead of worrying about where I am supposed to be next or what I have to finish up before tomorrow.

I am eating of foreign food, which is basically anything that can be microwaved and its usually gross and horrible, which might account for my shrinking waistline. I cant still get into the trousers sewn for me in college, but I am hoping I will be able to soon. My jeans are loose anyhow and the t-shirts now have some cloth to billow in the stiff wind instead of draping itself unflatteringly over my curves.

I spend a little more on food than I should because I am constantly looking for fat free and low fat foods. But then, in the long run I think its worth it. Or at least I hope so!

The cold is setting in and the wind is biting. Even on a sunny day, you better be prepared for a stinging wind instead of the balmy breezes we are accustomed to. No wonder the bloody brits wanted to conquer the southern hemispheres; they needed the sun!!!

But everywhere that I see, it’s the brown faces, the ones with the sharp noses, sometimes slanting eyes, the quick hands and the ever moving hands which intrigue me the most. The British have every right to be bitter about the influx of foreigners who take their jobs. Long, long ago, watching this very phenomenon on the streets of Mumbai I had written some lines, maybe parodied or incorporated from another’s, but mine in its inscription in my diary–

“It is the exiles who own the earth; because they are tough enough to walk without shoes, eat stale crusts and even mate with strange women. For they will survive. Walk any road and you will find a foreigner making money out of the locals. Look up in the sky and see the wild geese flying across the moon.”

This phenomenon exists and I remember the lines with clarity as I scribbled them onto my battered old blue notebook that survived 5 years of law school and 4 years of practice and finally came home to roost in my desktop and now in this laptop.

Even today, perhaps as I write these lines, I will remember them again and perhaps that’s what I have been attempting to do with blank spaces of paper or memory on my computer. Attempting to fill them up with accounts, thoughts, images of my life, of my experience, in a manner that I would be able to understand and retain, if not in my memory, then at least in here. So, perhaps, this is not shit, not meaningless gibberish, of no use to anyone else.

Perhaps this is of use and if of no other, then merely to remind me of the times when I was so full of the sap of life that I could imagine no greater happiness than to inscribe it in regular flowing typescript that would fill up the blank spaces, page after page, recording, reminding me of the times I have had, the moments I have lived….

And perhaps, it is this siren call of these blank spaces that speaks to me of the future which is also gloriously blank and unknown. Someone, perhaps the one above had led my feet to all they have been to and now to Glasgow and I am but a grain in his universe.

So, I write, retain, note and led my feet walk and my fingers talk.

For the blank spaces beckon…..