Sketch

I usually don’t sketch. The reason is simple: people HAVE eyes!

Jokes apart, yesterday I sat down with a blank piece of paper to sketch my own symbolic impression of Life. To begin with I drew a straight line. Then I drew a sinusoidal line. Next, was a trough. Followed by a crest. Then a line with only crests. Again, a line with only troughs. After which the bell rang.

It was my neighbour. I chatted with him for some time while his seven year old son kept hopping all around the flat. When they left I went back to the sketch where, to my surprise, I found a big circle drawn which included the straight line, the sinusoidal line, the trough, the crest and the lines with crests and troughs respectively.

PS: I smiled.

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Poetry

When I was a kid I thought Poetry only meant a collection of lines with sometimes intelligent and at times ridiculous rhyming words in the end. And it was something which always sounded fun in totality.

But when I grew up I came across such pieces which didn’t have a single rhyming word in the end or any overtly synchronised rhythm in the content for that matter. And yet people termed them Poetry. Perhaps of a different kind! I surmised.

One day, I tried to translate my life so far in simple sentences as in each year of my life equating to one line. Surprisingly, there were no rhyming words in the end and some of the lines were scary as hell!

It took some time but eventually I accepted and later respected the fact that those lines -defining my life thus far - taken together was also Poetry.

Perhaps of a different kind! I know. And I thus realized, its not how a particular piece is written but how it all sounds and what all it evokes that is the point of it all!

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Few words..

“A Thing Beyond Forever” [written in 2007-08 and published Sept. ’08 by Srishti Publishers and Distributors] was a personal story. The essence of it was something that troubled me constantly during my adolescence. The book's working title was “Something In The Air.” Honestly speaking, am yet to find an answer to the question I put up in the book: is attraction really the missing link between souls? I think, yes.

“That Kiss In The Rain..” [written in 2008 and published in Nov. ‘09 by Srishti Publishers and Distributors] was inspired by all the women who touched my life at different times in various avatars and helped shape the man that I am today. The book's working title was ‘Three Cubes Of Sugar.” I strongly believe love ‘is’ the weather of life.

After my second novel I promised myself I will not churn out novels for the heck of it. The ordeal of penning a story, I told myself, should take me on a journey within me and thus give me a once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet the strangers – one at a time – who live inside me thereby helping me explore and realize something new and concrete about myself be it beautiful or ugly. My first two books definitely did that for me. When I finished them I felt I gained few things permanently and lost some, forever.

In the months that followed I started a total of three novels which I was sure were great stories but left all of them in-between simply because that desired inward journey was not happening. After months of frustration and speculation a plot happened to me. I started developing it, made notes, researched and the like. The more I involved myself, the more scared I was because of the epic scope of the plot. “Will I be able to pull it off?, was my prime fear. But the best trait of Fear is it ‘takes’ you somewhere unexpected if you allow it to. Right then I knew…this has to be my 3^rd novel!

After thirteen months of preparation now am ready to pen it down.

And what is it about? Well, at this moment all I can confess is that the book will be:

FUN. DARK. PRISTINE. SCANDALOUS. PROFOUND. EROTIC. ETHEREAL.

The acronym of the working title is ‘S-B-T-F’. Shall disclose the full name with time and if it stays as the final title.

Would need all your best wishes :))

Stay blessed!!!

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