New Sense

The one thing that is common between my sister, my cousins and me is that we all joined school a year earlier than most children. In India (atleast in the mid 80s) children joined school when they were three years old, so frankly I have no idea why my parents decided to usher me into my initial schooling when I was two. Oddly that one decision dictated a lot about what sort of friends and peers I would have for the rest of my life…
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I have always wanted to write my autobiography. It doesn’t matter if it ever got published or if anyone other than me ever read it… What matters to me is to write it, to do that journey back in my mind to places I had been, scenes I had seen, people I had met and happiness I had shared.

The last four years of my life has been well documented thanks to this blog and my writings in my personal journal and at other places, but its the time before that where things are hazy. I have very little memories about my childhood… a few special days, photos that recreate scenes that I recognize… but its no where near enough.

My teenage years have lots of important and special memories, People and places that cannot be separated from who I was, what I wanted to be and what I became… Then my recent past, stronger and sweeter memories… Events that if I close my eyes I can feel them happening right then and there…

There is a lot about the last 25 years that are truly special to me. I have never mentioned those events and people in my blog or my writings. So I have decided to write this series of posts which talk about these 25 years of my life.

This has probably been done before but I am going to try something different. The mind you see does not sort things according to chronological order, it has this awesome tagging system that links events together. Each post will be about a common theme and my experiences about that theme… in chronological order.

Now a lot of the things I mention here will be deeply personal, so not all posts will be available publicly. My Lj friends will have the benefit of seeing most of these posts and even fewer will have access to all of the posts. Sorry guys but I need to do this as a few of things I mention will be about people who are probably going to be reading my blog…

So here is to a new beginning… right back from square one…

Ps: If you are not an LJ friend and want access to my personal posts, mail me

When I finished writing The Sculptor’s Statue about a year and a half ago, i could not have guessed the impact it would have on me. The circumstances that led me to write that short story are still very much private, but I truly consider that my finest and most honest writing experience.

A few of my friends have read that story but no one actually came close to understanding the undercurrent of the story. Maybe it was that thought that dried up the ink in my pen… or maybe it was the absolute satisfaction of finishing my goal… I still ponder over that drought that came after the storm.

Last week it was a similar inspiration that drove me to pen down The Old Man And The Mountain. The title is clearly inspired by the Ernest Hemingway book I read recently “The Old Man And The Sea“… I guess the philosophical lessons are deep down similar too but for me the most important thing was that it gave me that ‘want’ to write again…

My style of writing has drastically changed over the 6 years I have been writing short stories. The themes and inspirations have morphed according to my beliefs and priorities. I sometimes read one of my earlier stories and smile at the realization that I am incapable of such writing anymore.

There was a part of me that regretted the thought that the fire that fueled my writing had died out, but now I see a small spark and there is cause for celebration

The flakes of snow was all over his face, concentrated on his facial hair. He stopped for a moment to wipe a layer of ice off his forehead and stared at the fog of ice at the distance. His face was the only part of his body exposed to the numbing cold… he had once told a porter “Pain is important my boy… Its the most true feeling of being alive”.

People had called him insane, some had laughed at him, some pitied him. The mountain was a murderer, the old people of the village at tried to convince him. The truth was that only a few had returned from it and a even fewer remained sane enough to narrate the experience. No one had ever returned from the peak.
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