To call oneself a writer, one needs to write….perhaps even to write well enough or at least better than most so as to define one above and beyond other scribblers…
And yet in the shallows of the night, self-realization drives in the honesty of the fact that there is not any difference between the scribbling of others and that of a writer’s…
So, then, what defines a writer……??
A few thousand more words and phrases in your vocabulary…..perhaps a keener wit…..perhaps lucidity and empathy…..and yet even these singular abilities aside, it is still not enough to define someone as a writer….
A writer is perhaps set apart by his observations and understanding of people……more of others and less of his/her own perhaps……and an arrogance to set the same down on paper or screen with a justification that the same cannot or could have been observed or concluded in any other manner….and then to wonder whether it was worth writing at all or not……
Did I mention self-absorption and delusions of grandeur? Writers often give psychologists a reason to call their mumbo-jumbo a profession usually…..
I too observe…..and when I find that my eyes are not enough, I employ my ears and tongue…..that is to say I converse…..with people, with utter strangers, with friends, family and those of mine own and not as well….
I find solace in my feeble attempts to observe the unseen corners of the human existence that is present everywhere and yet is neverwhere….
The little old lady who always stands in the corner of the bus stop to catch the first sight of the bus, rather than taking the shelter of the bus stand…..and likes to talk about what she’s going to prepare for her dinner in the evening…..
The elderly professor who nudges empty and discarded crisps packets or wrappers on the street when he thinks himself alone……and would construct theories of brilliant communication by drawing parallels for the everyday things he does and his chosen subject…..
The father holding the hand of his son and his unconscious pride in his son’s mindless prattle as his son holds his hand trustingly and tells him of his world…..
The stray and solitary library assistant who reads books heavier than himself and digs for boogers in his nose and munches on them with relish, without realising that half the table is trying their hardest not to make a concerted rush for the door……
The affluent and most eligible bachelor with dog hairs all over his body, flat and life who feels safer with his two dogs than alone or worse in frail and undependable female company……
The lonely and well-to-do career woman……my ever-warring parents…….friends……strangers…..anyone and everyone is grist to my every-churning mill and I find myself floundering on the unending grain of people & lives from my mill…..
I find a thousand stories on the sidewalks and discard a few million on the threshold of my flat……..there are a few too many to write about and yet, I write……as many as I can, as many as I can understand and believe……
Stories are like ships, some sail and some sink beneath the waves…..but they are all true ….. at some level or the other….
The truth’s that I perceive are perhaps lies to another and another’s travesties are true to someone else all over again….and so the cycle’s revolve….
Each time I begin a story, I merely wonder where I would be going…….rather I think of the end and find myself being taken there by a cast of characters I never met before and would perhaps never meet again…..I often wish that the journey’s would be longer so that I could get to meet them properly…..
Perhaps, merely to observe them, converse with them….yet again….
