Am teaching now. Talking about literature in classes, encouraging students to write. There are good days I have at school and some really horrid ones! It's a mixed bag. At times hard to figure out how much of a friend I want to be and how much of a teacher. All the things that one criticizes from a distance, one finds oneself doing exactly those.

That is a separate matter though. Somehow am also going through oscillating emotions in terms of feeling at one time that am moving ahead, doing a lot - and am plagued simultaneously with the fear that am not strong enough intellectually; that am not really accomplishing anything meaningful and that my career is headed the lord alone knows where!

That brings me to the lord! Who I have had immense faith in and who has stood the test of time and always proved himself to be exceptionally loving and kind (I am a believer of the best/worst kind!) Have always looked for, and found signs - known that the lord will lead me to a good place in life. But that can happen only provided I know where I want to go. Am at a phase in life where my comfort zone is really a place I am so beautifully stuck in that am finding it hard to even think of getting out of. Doubts, confusions, crossroads plague me.

Given that I just spoke of writing being cathartic and introspective and a process where one discovers oneself in class today, thought it would be quite hypocritical of me to not engage in some writing myself. So here I am - hoping this exercise of purging my thoughts on screen will help. Looking at the neat font and the profusion of print before me is soothing. Gives me a sense (whether or not false) of things moving, of there being some content generated from within.

Still unsure of what the new year shall bring forth, I stop here. Will do some serious productive work now and hope for the best!

Surviving Life

'Give me the brush and I shall paint'

'Give me a pen, and I shall write.'

Can I say -

'Give me a life and I shall live'?

Till then, I just survive.

I feel good...

I thrive on the existence of possibilities. In fact the most thrilling feeling of all is of being wanted - that things might work out - that a new adventure may be embarked on. Perhaps this is why I love freelancing!

Although at times, this lack of stability, lack of a set group of people you meet everyday - your 'colleagues', or a familiar work desk do get to one, the moments of exhilaration are many. The gift of time that I am blessed with - to sit back, study, think, day-dream, plan, and also fret, worry, crib, bitch...

Filled with gratitude as i type these words, I pray that all me day-dreams of doing more work see fruition. Inshah-allah - is what I say with all my heart and might!

May this be done! (And more...)

Random... ...

My taste for coffee is back... as is my love for American sitcoms. Thanks to my friend Gayatri who has all the seasons of Everybody Loves Raymond, Fraiser and Dharma and Greg. Watching re-runs of these beloved sitcomes takes me back to earlier days [I don;t wish to call them my younger days; what the hell, am still young!!] Which brings me to the fact that I will be turning 27 mid May. I like that number, 'twenty-seven' - 3 years away from the big 'three-O'. But am glad I live in this day and age when it's cool to be thirty. I look forward to it like I have always looked forward to growing a year older. Any jitters I have ever had about turning another year older was always the result of peer-pressure, in the absence of which age does not scare me at all.

Although, I have started realizing that all the noise made about anti-ageing creams isn't too much of a fuss. Yes, your body does become kinda old and rigid. I know 'cause am having an ever tougher time trying to lose weight. Now I'm beginning to broach a subject which is overdone everywhere - on the internet as well as in books which sell like hot cakes... And knowing there are better authorities on how one can work better at these things, I shall let this subject be...

... It was raining today. Absolutely delicious weather for a smoke and coffee. [ummm... my re-found love for coffee...] The rain always makes me feel life is full of possibilities - that I can do what I want to, whatever I feel like... that life will work out the way I want.

I look forward to the new phase of my life in a new city. [Hoping that all goes according to plan...]. Will fill in more soon...

I am at work. I am bored. My Microsoft Office is down and I am handicapped. The internet has lost all its charms... There is nothing that I want to look up... I am filled with ennui. It's interesting how not having things to do at work can actually tire one so much. I'd rather be in a place which has more stuff for me to do... [read interesting stuff]. But you know, that too is a trap...things can be interesting only if you choose for them to be. Like writing or reading this stuff!! LOL

I knew someone who had written a book called 'My Biography of Boredom' - a suitable subject for a discourse. Bertrand Russell too has written extensively on boredom and ways to dissipate it. In true Russell style he's extremely pragmatic about it - doesn't romanticize boredom and raise it to the heights of the existential philosophy like the whole range of European writers who did [read Camus, Kafka and others]. It's beautiful their writing - it's like wallowing in self-pity... a luxury the romanticization of the world and its meaninglessness. But to produce art of/from the meaninglessness itself provides purpose and negates the existentialist enterprise.

There can be no meaninglessness, because human beings will not allow that. Meaninglessness is paradoxical to the human condition. We always have and will, strive to find meanings. Like I am right now trying to find meaning in my condition of not having my Office up and about... it means 'write on your blog'! Well, am doing just that!

I was reviewing my blog - looking at past posts (since they are few in number it doesn't take much time!!) and I wasn't displeased. When it comes to writing on paper or typing on a keyboard, words take on a life and character they never seem to have when spoken. No, am not going to even think about the whole debate in philosophy on the spoekn vs. written language and which is to be privileged over which... I am just going to revel in words - in the tactile sensation they create as I type them... (I've always loved the clickity-clack of the type-writer and keyboard) and the shapes that take form as I press on each key. To be able to play with fonts and choose which font goes with what kind of writing... In my own miniscule way I experience art - personal art, which I create - words which I string together, thoughts which I choose to articulate. No claims to originality here, since I believe there's nothing original in the world anyway. All we can do is come up with new permutations and combinations. But that in itself is, my friend, quite an art!!

Why!?!?

Why is it that the best ideas/thoughts/words come to my mind when I'm in the shower or in a cab or walking around, in short when neither a keyboard or a pen is handy!?? This is the cruel joke my mind plays on me... to choose to have my creative juices flowing when I am not in a position to document the little nuggests for posterity - if only for me to take a look at to know and feel that I could/can, did write.

It has been close to a year that I have written on my blog, which is cheesily called 'My World'. But my world already exists - in my living it! But offlate simply living isn't good enough... documentation in ways of photography or writing (read blogging - since gone are the days of hand-written diaries and journals) are imperative. The dictum is no longer "I think - therefore I Am", but "I document - therefore I am".

I feel threatened by my lack of blogging or photographing that I shall fade into oblivion. That I am not making my mark in cyberspace... the privileged space of the present. I have to resurrect my 'being' not in terms of passively existing - but in the sense of the verb - the process of 'being' of 'living' of blogging, photographing, sharing, 'being' on social networks and 'knowing' that I 'am'!!!

Unfortunately or fortunately the force of peer pressure has got the better of me... I will document my life - for that is what I need to do to be in the zeitgeist - to live in and with the spirit of the times. So be it.