Of Unfinished Sentences and Unhappy Memories

This is an attempt to publish some of the things I wrote not so long ago, possibly to gain clarity of thoughts or get myself back on my feet when I was feeling down. 

Occasionally, when I take a break from the constant and mindless social media surfing that I find myself doing a lot these days, I contemplate the progressing ruin of the budding writer that I once used to be. It is fun to read as an adult the poems, stories, and diary notes that I wrote when I was a child. Sometimes, I also feel a warm affection towards my child self, which I imagine I would feel for a much younger sister if I had one. It saddens me to think that somewhere in the vicissitudes of adulthood, I lost that artistic child in me. 

I started becoming conscious of the growing distance between the young adult that I was and the writer that I used to be towards the later years in college. However, in hindsight, it was only when I graduated and started working in Mumbai that I completely lost touch with the art of writing. I would like to tell myself that it was not because I somehow stopped being creative but because I felt a kind of emptiness and a lack of diverse thoughts during my years in Mumbai. I remember thinking that there was nothing to write about, really. All I harbored were thoughts of how suffocated or alone I felt. 

Some say artists create their best works when fighting with negativity. I say an artist could, if she found some desire to even address the negativity engulfing her. 

When I look back on some of the things I wrote when I was in Mumbai, I am quite unsure as to how I feel. They are notes I scribbled on my to-do note pads, or on the back of my office work-pads, or the thoughts I attempted to capture as blogposts and left mid-way in incomplete sentences feeling uninspired. Recalling those days, I am certain of only one thing: that I was unhappy during those years and even when I took holidays, I was weighed down by the realization that my break from what Mumbai represented to me was short-lived. It was akin to a prisoner being released on parole. He may be happy to experience his newfound freedom but that happiness is not unconditional, as it will eventually be taken away, and he knows it far too well. How well can one enjoy one's momentary happiness while possessing the crushing knowledge of how fleeting it is? 

There is a sort of uncanniness that I feel on re-reading my old Mumbai era notes now; though I still connect with the person that I was when I wrote them and I vividly remember the emotional states which prompted me to write those notes too, I am currently in a place which is so removed from where I was when I wrote them. It feels surreal to now think that there was a time when even eating rice with pappadam and curd counted as a significant moment of gratitude that needed to be jotted down. 

***

"Since I moved to Mumbai and started working, the little artist in me has been constantly in a state of suffocation. I have hardly got time to sit and think, write, sing my heart out, read books, or just listen to music and forget the world. I remember this one time when I was going to my cousin's place in a taxi and listened to my playlist after what seemed like an eternity and was overwhelmed by emotions. So moving was the experience that I was near to tears. I realized that I had even forgotten the songs I had in my playlist which I used to listen to on a daily basis before Mumbai happened.

Mumbai has been a confusing mixture of complete freedom and lack of accountability AND lack of work-life balance. On the one hand, the city offers me a world where I am free to do anything and everything I wish. There is nobody here that I need to ask before doing anything. This includes anything from taking an evening walk to partying like there's no tomorrow. "

***

"Home is my escape from the mad city of Mumbai. I revel in the feeling of the slow passage of time here. Home is the feeling of being comfortable with having nothing to do and that is something I have never experienced in Mumbai and for this reason alone, it will never be home. "

***

"Ate mangoes.

Got wet in the drizzle.
Slept till afternoon.
Had rice, with pappadam and curd. Hot dosa with ulli chammanthi. "

***

"If I could afford to live on impulses, I would be running away, as far away as I can get from work, from Mumbai, from everything.

Sometimes I wonder if I am the only one of my age who feels so inadequate to be living on her own and  employed. Oftentimes, I ask myself if I am an idiot who just cannot figure out anything in life. Today is one such day. I am a product of my thoughts and my thoughts are at the moment not at all happiness or peace inducing.

I am Jack's -"