In Vacant or in Pensive Mood

On some days, my heart is overwhelmed and my thoughts are a blur. For no particular reason. My body goes to auto-pilot mode on such days. I can ride from home to work without noticing a thing. I can sit through the day at my desk without getting a single task done. S PA C E D OUT. Such an apt word. Not just because I am mentally absent from earth (and therefore "spaced"), but also because my mind itself looks like a black oblivion, with thoughts, like fiery red celestial particles of dust/rocks, swirling around in it. I take to writing on such days. An empty word document in front of me is like therapy. Like some force that can calm the thoughts that are in constant motion within my head. They slow down, coming forward to show themselves, word after word, in front of my mind's eye. I type each word I see, putting them down, not knowing what would come next. As the words line up next to each other on the blank page, I begin to see what they mean. Clarity. Th...

It was late August in the year 2014; and 'Catharsis', the inter-collegiate cultural face-off for social work students, was round the corner. Pinky was both officially and undoubtedly in charge, and she excitedly made a list of twenty student names and put down events next to each of them. Before I go on, I will let you in on some background information: one, if our professors at MCCSWD allow us to participate in any cultural event, they expect us to come back winning the overall championship, and two, we won the Catharsis championship the previous year! Catharsis Winners - 2013 As a junior last year, I hadn't felt the pressure to win. I was just excited to be having an excuse to visit Trichy (where the event was organised, by Bishop Heber College) and was looking forward to enjoying myself. This year, as a senior, I felt the pressure. One of our professors was literally breathing down our necks, pushing us to practice over a short span of two days before the event. ...

One weekend, I was trying out a feature I didn’t quite understand in my computer, and so I clicked the ‘Help’ link. A popup help window opened, and as I was reading through it, I found myself constantly thinking about the technical writer who must have published it. The faceless, nameless author of the Help content would have put in several hours of research, relentlessly pursued the developers and SMEs (subject-matter experts) for information, made over a hundred calls, and sent an equally overwhelming number of mails to clarify details. At the same time, this technical writer would have also had to deal with a pushy project manager from the developing team who believes that technical writing is the simplest job in the world, pressing deadlines to the writer’s face without giving a second’s thought to the fact that he himself couldn’t, if he tried, write to save his life! While the usual claim is that the Help document looks simple and understandable, and so must be easy to write...

You know what the biggest curse to a writer is? Not having enough time to write! Having to live so many different roles in life that are apparently more important than writing for one’s pleasure, especially when the muses are at work. Take my case, for instance. My primary role, currently, is that of a student. And like all students, I have a lot of academic work on the top of my priority list, whether I like it or not. Whether or not writing is my passion, I need to put my assignments first in line. Here’s a situation I go through pretty often. It is about 8:00 pm, and I am just getting back from college, after a hard day. I have assignments on my mind, and tests that I need to prepare for. I am trying to plan out the few hours left in front of me before I have to start on a 2-hour journey back to college early the next morning. I have to stay up the whole night, I decide. There is no way I’m sleeping tonight! Worried thoughts haunt my mind, and I’m feeling pretty beat up already. ...

I’ve just created my blog page, and this is my first-ever blog entry. In this day and age, when pretty much everyone has a blog page, my first blog entry seems a tad too late for my almost 22-year old self. Oh, to be honest, I’m a lazy person, and I like to avoid doing anything that is not mandatory. Except, of course, the things I love. It’s not mandatory to read a novel, or Facebook constantly, but these things I do, because I love doing them. Most normal people don’t like working/studying, but both these are not optional for most of us. So we do them. Writing, for me, is not optional because it is part of my job. So writing is programmed into my system, into my nature and into my way of living. Apart from the writing I do at work, I write anything and everything my friends want me to write, I scribble down spontaneous lists anywhere possible, I devour quotes from all possible sources and write them everywhere for inspiration, I record almost every feeling and every event of my life...