It was an intense situation, a storm had set up, and it had taken up everything in life with it. This was against all the plans. And this nasty storm was not to stop. I tried calling a friend, I tried opening a book, I even tried Facebook, but my mind was in the hands of mojo jojo, and it just kept throwing pages at me. Long sheets of thoughts…. They kept rotating at high speeds, like a hurricane had caught hold of them, and they questioned and answered the ways to live, the right and wrong. I couldn’t hold myself anymore and switched off the lights.
And as this darkness blissfully shadowed my soul, I turned on my laptop. The white screen blazed at me, but this suffering was nothing in comparison to what pain the angry child inside my head had. The only way to relieve and put this child to sleep was to put these stacks of thoughts that spoke so much of life on paper, or on my kind of paper – the Internet. I opened my blog, and here I was – peacefully alone, unbound by time, focused, and passionate.
I wrote a paragraph and then erased it.
The cursor was blinking, as if it was living and observing me. It looked dangerous. Intimidating. It would type out anything I’d write, and I wouldn’t feel like undoing it if it’s written from the core of my heart. I had to be cautious here. But, I also had to convert these strong remorseless winds in my head to a breeze.
I changed the topic and started ranting about how engineering environment blocks my creativity sometimes, how it locks my thoughts about the sky, the flowers, the moon and nature in a casket.
But, then I immediately I deleted that. I can’t blame my friends here or the challenging tasks that I face. They’ve been together through my achievements and failures. I love some of the profs too! It wouldn’t be appropriate defaming the nature of a generic person around here because of the solace I need sometimes under the shadow of a tree.
So, I left that too and typed a few sentences about fear, courage and selfishness. People, unknowingly reflect these (and many more) traits every other day, and when I observe them, I feel like writing of these heroes on my wall, so that those looking for inspiration in YouTube videos may start looking and observing it around them once in a while. But, I was restricted here. I couldn’t use the real names of the people who motivated this piece of text. If I would mention them, they’ll either think I have a crush on them, or that I’m doing it to get noticed. Or may be I am looking for a favour in return, or that I used it to improve the amount of hits I get on my blog. And, if not all that, some people just don’t like getting mentioned. They are a batman of their own. Diffused among your peers, a great figure for the world, yet unknown.
Oh but I can go for dummy names for each of them, right? Possible solution isn’t dummy names really. If I have to describe them differently as well, it takes the truth off the whole story and I might as well write a fiction only. And If I describe them the way they are, with dummy names, people around me which by the way covers majority of the minority of readers I have on my blog, would easily make out who he or she is. And, that gives birth to journalism – A religion we all follow together.
Say, I express my dilemma over interest in computer science and English literature, and put all my heart out sharing my personal story with you people in the best way I can wrap it, and let’s say I use a metaphorical title, “I’m bisexual” just to describe my strong desire for the two very different fields.
The next day, when I’ll be sitting in the lecture theatre trying to decrypt the slides, two girls sitting just a bench up from mine would point at me and say, “you see that guy in the red tee? He recently declared that he’s a bi. He likes both girls n boys.”
“Oh shit, seriously? I know him. He’s a good friend, he was there in my XY project. Hmmm…. That’s why he had a break up probably.”
This is what I hate. This is the journalism I’m taking about. Rumpling up the story and sharing only parts of it that completely change the meaning, but make it more ‘interesting’. TVs do it for TRPs, you’re doing it for likes/tweets/attention.
Remember, you’re a trusted individual for many. Whatever you say, a lot of them will just believe it. Don’t take an advantage of it just to add spice to your conversations. If you ever happen to have a real eye-to-eye conversation, even a trivial one would be tasty.
….
The only way left after all these restrictions is to write what I want to put forward in a very generic and cryptic manner. I have to mask every person and change the environment. I hate to do it. It takes the beauty, the truthfulness and purity away from it. Frustrated from always making this compromise, I chose not to surrender again.
Eventually, I set fire to all those thoughts that were riffling in my mind. I know it wasn’t right, and it hurt me too. It’s ironical to the very caption of my blog. But honestly, I felt aborting those thoughts would be better than bringing them to life and sending them on this journey where they get raped.
And then… I turned to my bed and waited as the 5 minutes time out slowly faded off my computer screen and the darkness in my room took over the deletion task and another blog post died with my sleep.
P.S : I apologize for degrading the term ‘journalism’ , really, but that’s how it is followed in the TV sets too, in India at least. I respect and appreciate hard hitting journalists who work to present a story in the purest form possible.
P.P.S : This post was ‘somehow’ inspired from Anurati’s post – Old fashioned. It’s way more worth a read than this post was. Check it out : http://insidemyclandestinecellar.blogspot.in/2015/02/old-fashioned.html?m=1
P.P.P.S : This is exactly how awful it is. After an hour of this post going on the internet, one of my friend comes and tells me to delete the ‘bisexual’ analogy from this post. People might think you are one, he says.
I’ll pity at their dumbness for not understanding the exact point I’m trying to make here. Of course, I’m not bisexual.
That’s a wonderful flow of thoughts, Bhavul.
Thank you for the mention, you don’t know how much it means to me. It’s like I’ve found a message in a bottle thrown out in the sea, only to see it was addressed to me. 🙂
Keep writing.
PS: I owe you money.
Thank you sooo much Anurati!! 🙂
Didn’t expect you’d read my blog really. I’ve never been this happy before any T1. :D.
About the money, you can return it whenever you like. 🙂