Between words and thoughtlessness
According to Natyashastra, the largest treatise on dance ever written, everything related to humans begins with a thought. There is no such thing as thoughtlessness. Just like the universe, our consciousness is constantly expanding. Over the years, I’ve come to find comfort in this deeply philosophical possibility. To just be, probably full of thoughts, is enough? Well, no. But at least, being thoughtful is a positive step, right? Hmm.
I am fascinated by the pursuit of thinking simply because I am marginally skilled at it. Some people are great at doing this and that. I am good at thinking things out. In a way, I am constantly at debate with myself, talking things over with nobody else in the room. Modern psychology calls this pep-talk. The distinction being, I think fast and my tongue can’t keep up sometimes. Hence, the mumbles and mispronunciations while conversing. Left to myself in my study, I am a champion chatter. Those we call the silent type are often the loudest people inside their heads. Their mind stays on fire and their brain doesn’t know when to hit the standby mode.
One of the many reasons (excuses?) I’ve not been able to come up with a series of short stories that I promised on this blog about 5 years ago, is I think too much and often get lost in the maze of plots and subplots. Peeling layer after layer of a character or the situation they are in, I keep sinking further and further in. By the time I am back to the real world, I don’t remember most of the details. It’s a weird form of meditation with my eyes wide open, staring at the whiteboard on my wall. For instance, I’ve been building a story—titled 7 heroes, 7 scripts—around seven characters caught inside seven scripts. These characters are to mingle in the climax and I’ve already thought of that. The trouble is, I think ahead of myself and keep losing track of each script. Inside my head, they function perfectly in sync. On a blank page, they are dancing without any choreography. It’s the equivalent of attending a viva and not answering the questions because the right answers don’t wish to be heard. Yet.
Perhaps this could be the reason why some of us can’t sleep peacefully. Nobody else is tormenting us. Nobody else has the power. It’s our thoughtfulness that is taking us for a ride.
“What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.”
“You always appear lost.”
“What?”
In the David Fincher classic Seven (1995), Morgan Freeman’s jaded character reminds us that it’s easier to beat a child than to raise one. Everything good requires time, and more importantly, some amount of thinking. Randomness begets randomness. As a writer, I am extremely awry. To this day, I can’t describe what my style of writing is, so I often say that I am a lazy writer. Which is actually a lazy attempt at describing anything. That said, it’s more convenient for me to drive to the point at the earliest. Paragraph writing allows me the space to keep my thoughts immaculate, so to speak.
However, if you ask me what I enjoy writing the most, I’d say within a heartbeat: one liners. There are some things you tend to be excellent at and I am—without a tint of immodesty—bloody brilliant at it. I’ve been spouting witty sentences for 15+ years now. Chances are you must have used my lines as your WA/FB statuses without knowing I wrote it ages ago. That’s the beauty of the internet. You write something and it spreads like a silent fart.
Anyway, one should keep challenging themselves—should we greet every new challenge with a Japanese bow?—and see if we are getting better. This was my mindset behind writing Hindi one-liners. Why should my thinking be limited to one colonial language? My spoken Hindi is decent but my northern friends point out my southie inflections while people in Mangalore point out the flaws in my Bombaiya Tulu. Nobody is entirely happy when I am talking.
Regardless, I’ve shared my attempts at Hindi (Hinglish?) one-liners last year and what you are about to read are some more sentences that are struggling between the usage of hai (है) and hain (हैं).
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Shaktian Space to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.