The junk blogger's Literary surfeit...

I will never grace any product of my pen as a ‘literary’ work, in any sense of the term. Although I have always believed in maintaining a certain amount of content matter in whatever I jot down it’s becoming a tad difficult of late.
A few months back I suffered from the worst bout of writer’s block ever(on record), come to think of it I did have a few things bundled up inside my head which I wanted to bring down on paper and eventually up here on Blogger but I just couldn’t get myself to write. The motivation was gone!
Now, that equation has seen an astonishing reversal! I find myself doodling all over my writing-pad at office, inside courtrooms, in the car, in bed, at dinner, all the time and the frustrating part is that I have nothing to write about! I scribble mindless things everywhere because the craving to write is almost crazy but sadly nothing comes to my mind, a strong consequence of which is clearly visible through the increase in the number of junk posts on my blogs of late. Hell, I have an entire blog dedicated to junk writeups....





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My Tree...

It’s frustrating beyond imagination at times, to be called an outcast, to be an outcast. I know, because I am one, in more ways than a hundred. For good or for bad, in ways big or small, I shamelessly disagree with a random bunch of five hundred people picked from any part of this city at any point of time.
It’s a fish market outside your door and no one is who he really is. Not all can put up with my kind, we never pretend. Being who you are comes with a price tag, a proviso, that at some point in life you’ll be shoved aside and called an ‘outsider’, a ‘misfit’.
I have felt this way all my life, I am feeling it this very moment and I know tomorrow, I’ll feel it again.
But I am happy. I am not the usual shades of red, white and yellow. I am Auburn, Cobalt, Gray!
It’s not me who doesn’t fit in with my surroundings, it’s my surroundings that don’t complement me. A famous bard from Bengal had once said, “Bonyera bonete sundor, shishura matrikrore” meaning; ‘wild animals look best when in jungles and children, in their mother’s arms’. It’s as important to be different as it is to know where one belongs.

Every outcast has his home, his tree, his flock. Wheres mine?

Congratulations to me, my little doll is slowly turning into a stereotypical 'chick';
yapping with guys over the phone literally for hours, having her life dictated by brands, cheesy humour, 'dudes', being a hypochondriacal drama queen and being highly insensitive to sentiments. Although I wanted her to be someone different, I suppose I'll have to live with this.
What can I do? I love her as much as I despice her behaviour. I hope and pray she comes out of it someday.

The time has come, the time has come for me to do something drastic about my drunk-calling habits. But you really cant blame me, you know.
Last week I victimised Jeetu and of course my favourite, Bikram way past midnight! Both drawled their 'hello's and all the subsequent talk from their end went above my swirling head. I just wanted to hear those voices. They do strange things to me, like a chemical reaction of some kind or recollections from a past life.
We all have our tools for battling loneliness. This ones mine.

Life is a huge gamble, I finally admit. Either you get lucky and win or your decisions go terribly wrong and you lose, the loss drags you to the gutters. Its justified if you repent then. But, the worst kind of life is that in which there are no decisions and you repent at the end for having taken none.
So standing at the threshold of the current phase in my life is it justified to get carried away by romantic notions and make drastic decisions, real tough decisions or stick to the horizontal straightness of the path that lay before, irrespective of whether that could potentially result in my being unhappy for the rest of my days?
Everyone has the ability to make his/her life less ordinary, all it takes is courage. I need pocketfulls of it cause a decision is on its way.

The day it all stopped....

The other night on my way back from office I slowly drifted off to my good old childhood, thinking about the bygone days, events bitter and sweet when a particularly relevant incident in my life came tumbling out of the closet. Heres goes;
My father has never been one of those parents who never hesitate to hit their kids everytime the smallest of things go wrong, nevertheless I have had my share of beatings. Now that I get bashed up a lot less relatively, I realise that it actually took a lot to get my dad to lose his temper completely and believe me, getting up at five in the morning back in the days and dragging me out of bed to hammer Math or Bengali into my skull could even get the Dalai Lama screaming abuses and throwing his arms and legs about in the air.
I have always had this dangerous habit of inventing my own Math formulas, putting random 'x's and 'y's here and there just for the heck of it!! The bit that made it dangerous was that I did it on the examination papers too. It so happened that none of my teachers shared my sense of humour. So in the simplest of terms I always failed in Math. Bengali is another day's story.

One fine evening my report card came home and dad was in a particularly nasty mood, my life is all about such wonderful co-incidences, nevertheless, the minute he saw the bright red zero next to 'Math' he was baying for my blood.

I quietly sat in a corner playing with my Gi-Joes and pretending nothing had happened when dad showed up from behind and twisted my ear with what felt like all his physical strength. For the first half of the twist I was seeing rotating planetary bodies and chirping birds before my eyes and the second half was followed by awe....
There was an audible 'crunch' when dad twisted the ear and alarmingly enough, my ear, the damn thing, remained twisted! it just would not get back to its original shape! Within minutes panicky set in. I sat there Gi-Joe in hand, with a twisted ear, bawling as my parents ran around trying to call doctors. Fuelled by the guilt that he had possibly deformed his son's ear forever dad ran around the most.
Finally came the part where dad, tired of waiting for the doctor to show up, marched upto me, grabbed the ear and twisted it back to position again!
This time it was not only planetary bodies and chirping birds but flashes of light, bells and sparks!
Well, later that night I earned two more Gi-Joes so all was forgiven!

The actual good that came out of the entire episode was that, that day on dad swore never to even think of physically punishing me for my Mathematical misadventures again and he's held on till date.

For once am at home for legitimate reasons, a public holiday called Bakri Id!
But I feel guilty. My immediate senior has to run around attending conferences with various clients today. She was hoping to be able to stay out of office today especially after we'd worked so hard last Sunday and of course, the following Monday was just crazy!! Filing a writ petition for a paranoid and finicky client is never easy, they want you to change submissions, evidence, people signing Affidavits all the time without completely understanding their legal implications. They can't keep a cool head. Appeasing them, hell, putting up with them is a huge art one learns in this profession.
It beats me how I managed to wriggle out last night of that awkward and frustrating situation when your boss asks you whether you'd be cool with attending office or conferences on a holiday, you try your best to produce a 'yes' poker faced, yet inside you're screaming out 'NOooooo!'
I kept mum when my senior stormed into office late last evening, picked up a bundle of papers and hurried out saying she wouldn't have a day off today cause she has coferences to attend, I could've offered to help out. I didnt. I didnt say a thing. I wanted to eliminate displaying even the slightest bit of intention, reluctant though, to attend those client conferences.

Should I switch off my cell phone right away and forget about things, try my hardest to enjoy this rare treat and risk snide remarks from my seniors tomorrow at work? Or do I keep it switched on, have my formal clothing and laptop on standby, just in case and not go out anywhere cause I may be called to work any minute?

Either ways, my holiday is ruined!