A Writer's Dream

The grey lines on the tar road whizzed while racing along with darker grey wheels of the college bus. We were travelling on a flyover, in a giant metal contraption controlled by a circle and a few foot buttons. Approximately fourty odd lives at the mercy of one bus driver.  

There was a brief talk about a change of principal. A buzz that surfaces every now and then only to be doused by the perpetual presence of that short , skinny man in an ill fitted suit  ( my friends like to call him Rat – Face) . He was appointed  princi during the inception of our great institution (or so some would claim ) in 2001. 

15 years a Principal. 15 years a dictator. See what I did there ? :p Noo? Poor joke? Okay.

Anyway , I stayed immune to all this seated by a window. Immersed in the last few pages of The God of Small Things by Arundathi Roy. We are all gods, clinging to the small things. And the big things as the narrator says ‘ever lurked inside’

I reached the last page , the last word. It read tomorrow. The bus, meanwhile had reached a signal.

When you are done reading a book, you know it’s ended. Yet there is this inertia. Your mind is not ready to accept the truth of your surroundings. We stay in the book, re-living the frames and pixels imaged by our mind’s perception.

The story is over but the words linger on. 

The song is over but the melody lingers on.

So, what is a Writer’s dream ?
To be awarded one of those prestigious awards for literature.
To rise from the pages of printed text and enter the readers’ hearts.
To etch characters that shift consciousness.
To open your eyes to things you never knew existed before.
To simply let go of one’s self and pour everything onto a paper.
To leave a mark.
To stroll into a bookstore and see their work in the best-sellers or the critically acclaimed.

Is that the dream? Of a writer?  

Am I a writer? I like to think of myself as one. If so am I a good one at that?
In this motley array of Wattpad novels, Blogs, Instagram profiles and Facebook pages , what qualifies one as a writer? Is that validation even needed?
I dunno.

Far away, far far away from the smallness of the routines led and tears shed is a patch of land. In the middle of nowhere , they say. Situated there is a thought factory, out beyond the fields of wrong doing and right doing as Rumi once said. One purple night , lightning struck the factory and led it to manufacture a menacingly plain question - “Why should anyone read what you write?”.

Why would someone read what I write ?

Am still struggling with that one.

What I do know is art in any form can stir in us the bigger things we like to keep concealed. It has the power to bring to life revolutions, history, an instance of time and a being that has long passed us by.

A change. A vibe. A glimmer. A bird. A pot. A face. A frown. A life. A dream. A pen. A voice. A word. A question. An exclamation.

I ‘ll leave you with a quote form Whitman “ O me! O life! …of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless…of cities filled with the foolish ; What good amid these , O me, O life?”.

Those of you who have watched Dead poet’s society know the answer to that. The rest of you go watch Dead poet’s society.

Carpe Diem.