Category: Rhetoric

Through the land of windmills!

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

The title is what I named my feature on Nuclear Power Plants at Koodankulam! In Malayalam! I found that very amusing and beautiful. Kattadikalude naatiloode… But perhaps, that’s not how you write features for a magazine. What do I know about it anyway! Well, I am making another point here. May be its not always about what you know, but about how you express it. I am not an excellent writer nor an expert with words. But I am ardent in expressions of thoughts. In words. In speech. In action. Somehow. Thoughts are to be conveyed, shared and thought more upon. And there, I have a lot to share. My eloquence is one thing that makes me proud of myself. And only recently did I find out that, the blog is just one of the many forms of my expression, and not the ultimate of anything. There’s more talking to people, more interaction, more sharing of thoughts, more pooling of ideas, and exhaustive brain exercise! More like, I am just out of a long hibernation, and I feel revived now!

Going back to my feature, I have left that pending yet. Not that I can’t put down a few words and a liitle thought into them, and come up with the matter. But as I pointed out to myself, it’s not just about knowing but about the expression of it! Words are too few, for the infinite expressions of the multitudes of a mind’s knowledge. Waiting for my chosen few words, I think it’s worth it to give myself a break often. More than writing a lot of things, the focus is to be upon the expression of things. And to give away the best expressions of thoughts, thinking is what you need more than writing them down! Taking away a writer’s block, I am with a thinker’s pause!

Limbo!

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

So now, Rekha akka, I officially lost the challenege. I didn’t write yesterday. Did I forget? Or did I run out of things to write? Well, in reality, I just slept it off. Like, 24 hours are really not sufficient for anything. Lately, I have been losing a lot of time in ways I can’t even identify. And lately, I am not being myself. I am suffocated with words brewing in my mind. And blogging everyday is really not sufficient expression of it. Words are enough to express, only, time isn’t ever. Lost here, with a deluge of words in my head, I can’t explain myself.

This morning, I was shook from sleep by something and the first thought was to confirm if I had blogged yesternight before dozing off. But I hadn’t done anything more than the title “Happily ever after!”. I always wanted to write,but always had excuses to run away from the actual act of it, with trivial justifications. I was of the hope that atleast a challenge of this kind would cheer me enough. An article for a major magazine, or so I persume, is due tomorrow and I haven’t even begun with it. And for the record, the deadline was a month ago, and by some luck, I just got it extended. As if even those magazine people were keen on publishing what I might write! And, I don’t write at all. My college magazine is on the go and I haven’t done anything there either. I have an essay competition today. What miracle am I expecting to happen in that constrained one hour and thirty minutes!

I don’t want to be here, caught in limbo. I don’t want to experience this block in the flow. May be, me writing or not writing doesn’t change anything in this big world. But, there was a time when it changed a lot of things in my little world, filled with satisfaction of having expressed myself! I am waiting to be once again back there. Waiting to be kicked out of this limbo!

Being the wise one!

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

This is not me boasting about my wisdom. This is plainly about the ‘wise’ aura that I am proud of! I asked someone who knows about the 30 day challenge, for a topic for today’s blog. And this, the title, is what she suggested. Like so many others in this world, I often feel very wise about decision making and problem solving in other people’s lives. And unlike so many others, I find equally sensible and wise about ‘the’ moments about one’s own life too. I am confident about what I do, what I think , how I speak, why I turn away. I know it all, in my life too, as in any another person’s life! I may not be a visibly successful person, considering how promising my wisdom appears to be.

But yet, this is a feeling. That boosts confidence in me. To make another step in my life, as in others’ lives, when situations demand! I am growing beyond my tiny shell of ignorant arrogance and foolish temperaments. I can help people out, as I listen to them. I may have access to a variety of life experiences and may be growing more mature and containing enough, to most adversities that a normal person may have to sit thru. I can talk, coz I listen patient enough to assimilate and walk thru the by-pass! I suddenly feel old. Looking around for newer and sectioned experiences!!

Unwinding!

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

If only if I could just skip this writing or unwinding of the day! I am near a black out of my senses. Too tired. Too much pressure. Too sleepy. Exhausting but exciting days are on their go in my life. And at the end of every such day, I just wanna hit the bed and black out. I don’t wanna think about anything. Not about what happened the whole day. Not the least bit about writing. Just shut the eyelids tight and usher sleep in!

This has always been an irony in my life. As in many others’. I so much want to write. About my life at this precise moment. There’s really so much to write about. To be proud, to be happy, to be sad, to vent, to simply share. But now when life’s so eventful, I don’t have time. Not even to acknowledge the awesome turns in my life, let alone write it down. But the craving to atleast scribble something is pushing me enough to post this. Well, everybody’s life’s so and so I know there’s nothing to boast about it. But I just had to say it out anyway.

The irony still intrigues me. Almost a year before, my days still used to end up in a black out when I used to forcefully exert so much pressure on myself and push me to exhaustion. And back then, I used to support and justify my ‘not writing’, with this same very reason of the end of the day black out! Things pretty much remain the same except for that, now I don’t look out for blacking out! Writing is always at stake and so is my passion!

Maktub!

~ Soumya ~ 2 Comments

There’s this thing I always wanted so much to convey to people. Have you seen these ‘spiritual’ serials, which is shot so absurd and ridiculous? Or at least the film My Friend Ganesh 3? In the movie, there’s a scene where in a forest, a tiger is about to attack a group of rabbits or deer. And you see that Lord Ganesh himself glides over them, and saves the innocent creatures from the ferocious tiger. It got terrified and stopped abruptly, and gently escaped the scene, without even turning behind at the Lord. How fair does that seem now!! The Lord himself created both the species of creatures, and both were synced to the agreement of coexistence. The tiger was simply trying to gobble its lunch! How could they probably call it wrong of it!

When all people in the world have their own list of right and wrong and circles of existence, how can there exist a god who meddles in between on his own screen play? What’s right here and who’s defining the righteousness? I often go there, and be there at that point where you find it stupid! To worry and lament about things that already happened or that are scheduled to happen! What’s the point worrying about all this, when its all written? Maktub – it’s all written! There’s nothing so fair anyway.

The awkward moment!

~ Soumya ~ 3 Comments

That awkward moment when you see this or hear that or realise something out of somewhere! “That awkward moment!”. This is my ‘that’ moment when I awkwardly understand that so much time out of facebook and yet this one ‘awkward moment’ thing would just not go away from my mind! It just kept echoing, “Is this my awkward moment?”, almost every idle moment of life. Until I finally realised it. That awkward moment when I realise, after living thru almost a month into the New Year, I have not turned a page, read a line or wrote a word yet! How could it be I didn’t even a read anything from my latest book fare extravaganza!

Its not like nothing’s happening. The New Year was too eventful. That 24 hours seem too insufficient to do anything at all. Too man resolutions, the struggle to keep them running and so many eventful things! Come on let’s list it out.

1. Pooled in ‘needy’ people like me who needed that one extra push to get things done. Keeping track of eacother’s resolutions and to-do’s, its going good as of till now.

2. Restarted one of the best things from my past. Diary writing. Really treasuring the spirit, holding on to it stronger.

3. Met with a minor accident kinda thingy, which did somuch harm. Disturbed my routine morning walk for half the month. And shook my unshakeable confidence with two wheelers! My hands still tremble. Its gonna take some time, I guess.

4. For the better, contested in college election and won with a huge majority! Now a member of the union, that was almost unbelievable, considering the politics involved. Might even write a separate post on that, one of these days.

5. When all else fails, there’s family and FRIENDS. Started watching the TV series (too late, I know!) and falling in love with Phoebe!!

Now these are big things that happened in the past month of my life. I wonder why I didn’t share anything. May be, the diary is too much replacing the blog. Or maybe, my words are failing me yet again. Half way thru this post, I had a draft saved. My cousin read thru and said, “What a crap! This is so not you!”. See! May be that’s it. Not in form, anymore. Too young to give up already. So let me give it one more chance. A 30 day challenge on the blog, with a cousin. Didn’t lose the first day itself. Good enough, for somebody out of their usual performance scale. 😀

P.S. Writing down stuff in points was always a near impossibility to me.But yay! Here on my 101th post, I did it!

In the going!

~ Soumya ~ 4 Comments

So now finally, when 2012 is in the going, what’s more important to me? Welcoming the New Year and stepping into 2013 with grace and certitude are all part of my schedule. But, as I said, what’s the most important thing? Its actually winding up 2012 in as good a note as possible by me, for myself. 2012 was a nightmare. Don’t take me for a person who whines this at every New Year Eve. The past year was that bad. 2012! This is what I want to do. Guess I just did it and I am so much more at peace with myself now. The past year must be wrapped in a box, tight and secure. I don’t want it to ever repeat and seep into the future, that begins in less than an hour.

I have a lot to say about 2012. I can list out the points, where I failed, how I lost, what I lacked. But I am sure that won’t help improve my New Year. They were tough days. And tough lessons. And tougher punishments, everytime I failed to assimilate them. I’d rather not take such a rigid course! There’s nothing I carry over from the past, into my future. There are no big anticipations. No ceremonious beginning of the year. No hopes attached anywhere. Its just another night. To wake into another morning. Nothing changes with the sun rise. Change is a matter of more substance than dawn and the light. I am not pessimistic here. I am not expecting the worst out of tomorrow, or the days that follow, making 2013. I am being the realist once again. The one that I was, before the onset of the mishap called 2012. I can deal with life, without fancy dates associating to it.

This year. This day. This moment is what I feared I’d never survive. I am thru with ’em all! What more to stop me! I survived. I stood thru today. And that inspires me to live thru tomorrow. Today is the day I feared yesterday! And today turns out to be just another, and over before I even knew it. With a handful of decisions (resolutions sound silly beyond tolerance) to revamp LIFE, I stil claim, ‘No hopes attached’! Hoping to stay detached from hopes. 😛

Poornathrayeesa!

~ Soumya ~ 3 Comments

I’m no atheist. I dont say I’m not a theist. Does that make me a believer of God or a non-believer? That’s tough question, though it basically is simple. I dont want to prostrate myself in front of the Almighty and show my submissiveness. (Looks more like I’m never so!) But that doesn’t mean I dont appreciate the wonders in life and marvel of this world. I’m grateful for my life. And I am spellbound by the nature’s bounty and the universe’s vastness and on and on. All appreciated and acknowledged. But those aren’t enough reasons I bow to someone everyday and let them know how huge a fan of them am I!

But somehow, there’s this one person, Poornathrayeesan, who totally gets me bowled over that I wouldn’t mind always bending low before him. (Not that I’m a regular visitor, but he knows.) The temple, the shrine, the very premise of the temple and my Poornathrayeesan. Everything feels so warm and soothing that I always imagine coming down till here and catch up with him once in a while. I so much love him. But I dont carry around his photo. Nor do I cry out his name in peril. I dont expect him to solve my problems. Now does all these make me an atheist? Looks like it!

Had gone to the temple. After something like very long. Not willingly, but had to join the family. And as ever I dont regret going to the temple. Nothing was the same, with respect to my lack of attention to the temple premise, though I cross it multiple times every weekend. The temple had two new entrances, by both sides of the main entrance, which, as a matter of fact, looked very awkward. But yeah, they had it for some purpose, may be for the elephants during the festival. The banyan branches were brutally chopped and made the tree look like some dry lifeless structure. Again, for some technical reason of convenience, may be. The inside of the temple remained more or less the same. But the first few minutes were strange as I couldn’t spot a single familiar face. (I usually walk into some of my old schoolmates or teachers.) Soon enough, I gave up that exercise and things were better. Familiar faces popped up alone and in groups. And it is only then that I realised that I really didn’t want to meet anybody at all. Sitting down on the sand, by the ‘pradakshina vazhi’, (the outer path circling the shrine), I felt like I’m at Shangumugham. Instead of waves kissing my feet, it was eyes locking with mine. Too many of them. Familiar faces. New faces. Strange faces. One after the other. It wasn’t soothing. But I got accustomed to the situation, almost started loving it. Playing the game that filled my childhood temple days, I was wondering how I’d forgotten it all these days and how I instantly remembered it as I sat down there. I wasn’t playing it as good as I used to. I couldn’t even consider the idea of running behind my sister, chasing her down, like those days. (She wasn’t there anyway. She was in search of her friends. So was dad.) Nothing was the way it was. The ambience is changed. The comfort has been damaged. The sense of possession is lost. It’s not ‘my’ temple. It’s not ‘my’ shrine. I see things I dont wish to see. Hear things I dont want hear. But still, the lord is mine. Or may be, within every mind, there’s a fence of possessiveness that doesn’t let anyone see what’s inside. May be the lord has split himself into pieces, and be present in every mind. But as long as I dont see that, I’m obsessed on my possessiveness. And claim my divine right!

I dont know of miracles that God does. I dont even know the wonderful sagas praising Poornathrayeesan. But I believe in his unquestionable power in making me write again. I never thought I could write so blissfully again, this soon. It’s indeed his charm that I write endlessly about miracles and theism and faith and fate. I’m a believer. No matter I go overboard expressing it or not. I’m definitely bound to my Lord. Taking a last glimpse of him, through the Pancharimelam, only to see him again and again, a million times.

I(‘)mperfect.

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

I’m going back in life. To a point I never wished to return. I’m back there, where I think so much and look like I’m always in dreams, rather reverie. I’m so much lost in dreams that I so much lose my words and the wonderful stories that I wanted to share. Recursively, I think of something, think of writing it down, think of the opening sentences, go back to thinking and then think all that I want to write. Writing turns so pointless then!

Recently, I had found a solution to it. I had thought of adopting the typical ‘bulletin’ style of writing. I wished if I could sum up a week’s eventful events and in turn, write something beyond just thinking. And it’s then that I noticed one amazing aspect of my recent life. I had only amazing things to put up on my bulletin. My recent life has no sad stories or huge drama. And I almost can’t believe it’s my life. Pushed a friend into writing and saw for myself how awesome she writes. Stayed at my native and came to college from there, like it was my home. Broke a cold war and now it’s a hot war. Ended another cold war, and now I’m all cosy about it. Hugged my grandma and slept, after long years! Unplugged my headset more often, and listened to more unknown people and became a part of more unheard stories. Small things with infinite implications, happened in my life. Recently. And finally, the last straw is back. Like it was never broken. How much less depressing can my life be!

Un-RIP!

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

Has been ages since I wrote something. I so much miss me! So, where was I all these days? Thought I’d have to ask the question and frame the answer, all by myself. But fortunately, I’m elated by the fact that people actually were following me and they did notice my absence. Never have I been so sad that I haven’t written for so long either. Now that I don’t have a satisfactory answer or atleast an excuse, I choose not to answer that question that was thrown at me by people. I am here. Always around. But when I don’t write, something is just not so okay. Something might have just happened, you know. Like, a new semster might have started. Or may be, a relocation might have happened. A friend might have kept me busy. A health issue might have triggered my laziness. Or may be, I might have just lost my words for a while. Then again, what was it this time? No, don’t ask me. It should have been a mix of all of these or some of these, or may be none of these. Now that I’m back, I’m planning to hang on for a while more. An indefinite while. For I have things to share, talk, comment and elaborate. About college, the sober days, the ‘not just another’ days. There’s stuff to write. Once again.