Logical progression?

:Tell me the way to the big city.
:Do you want to go there?
:I don't know. Give me the directions and then I will decide.

If the journey is all that matters, why set a destination? Enjoy the sights along whatever path you are on.

If you want to reach the big city, find a way to get there regardless of what the directions say.

Unsure of both desire to reach a destination and the means to reach it, one can rarely get anywhere.

Among others, I am

I went to a party yesterday. One where I didn’t know a soul and my RSVP, sent thrice, had not been acknowledged. I walked into a tiny room filled with people and wine and beer and food, conversations and laughter and those big, intimidating circles of people who all know each other. I spoke to people I had never seen before, and eventually even the person who had ignored the RSVPs wandered over and introduced himself. About 30 people spent over two hours together, and at the end of it I was among the last 8 hanging around and chatting as we made plans to continue the conversation at a nearby bar. Bottom line: I enjoyed it, and met some good people.

If you had told me a year ago that I would be this person, I would have laughed in your face and bet my first-born child upon proving you wrong. If you were to tell anyone that knows me, they would probably do the same. I am the person who skipped out on a party I helped organize because I couldn’t talk to the classmates I had spent two years in a dorm with. I’ve skipped out on countless reunions and lab lunches, work outings and dinners with friends, only because I was “too shy”. And yet, I would do yesterday evening over without a second thought. Have I, “as a person”, changed so much?

I try not to dwell too much on the self. In terms of a personality, I don’t care for discussions or analysis of who I am. My tastes, the things I like or the ways I behave are not significantly enough a part of who I am to be held on to like symbols of identity.

Am I shy or talkative? Am I the kind of person that hangs out in bars? Am I sufficiently devout and respectful of tradition? Am I a fashionista or a geek, a chick or a scientist? I try to avoid clichés not because they exist, but because I don’t think they serve much purpose. The “person that hangs out in bars” is not always an alcoholic, and the “shy” person is often far more egoistic and full of themselves than the girl that chatters to every stranger. I don’t like being labeled, and refuse to label people based on such traits.

A personality is a set of survival tools for society, and I view it as such. At a more innate level, I am a person with ambitions and desires, a specific set of goals that bring me different kinds of satisfaction: physical, emotional and intellectual (I will not discuss the spiritual here). My “personality” is what helps me get to those satisfactions.

Cocoon

Inside these padded walls, I can bounce my ideas around. The walls lob them gently back to me, creating a resonance of harmonious theory. Nothing crashes, nothing breaks inside the silk cocoon. Any dissonance is quickly blended in until it is unrecognizable. Occasionally, an especially sharp notion may poke through, exposing the padding and threatening to break my shell. Poke the stuffing back in quickly, frayed threads and knots and all. Sew up the hole, and all that remains of the uncomfortable idea is a scar where the walls were stitched up.

Each of us creates our own padded spaces, surrounded by people and ideas we are comfortable with. Within this space, we like to think of ourselves as diverse, open-minded folk. Yet the best measure of being diverse is when one's ideas are threatened.

If everyone you speak to agrees with you and slips seamlessly into your cocoon, you never even see diversity. If you aren't being challenged, you have no idea of where to expand, where your padded walls need to be mended. The measure of your growth is how your cocoon handles challenges that don't fit into it already.

About me

Considering how much time I spend writing about myself here, it seems unfair that I should be annoyed by other people's bios. I hate having to write "About me" sections, bios or anything else that requires a snappy, succinct sentence that sums me up. And when I come across one that attempts to be humorous or deep, all I want is to rip it apart. One person describes herself as "Delightfully Indian". To whom are you delightful, and what makes you more Indian, or more delightfully so, than every other person in the sub-continent? Are you really no more than a uniquely gleeful conglomeration of race-determining gene variants?

Or someone else who says: "I like blue M & Ms". What's wrong with the rest? Yes, I went out and ate an entire pack of every color to find out what was so great about the blue ones (nothing?). Would this person get along better with the blue creatures from Avatar than normal human beings? The people with sparkly one-liners about themselves abound. I, on the other hand, must prepare for hours to introduce myself in a professional setting, just listing my qualifications. I have no world-views I would kill for, no candy fetish, and much as I love certain geographies, I like to think I am more than just "Indian", delightful or otherwise.

For myself, a recent conversation with a friend helped me understand. I like the idea of being always amused. Amusement, which stems from the verb "muser"- to think. I am constantly encountering things that set me thinking. Things I do not understand, funny things and sad things, strange things and things which explain older things I didn't understand. They all make me wonder, and most make me smile. I finally have a bio: "_ is constantly amused by the world and everything else." And even that amuses me. Ha.

If you had to pick one word or phrase to define your (most frequent) state of mind, what would it be?

The point is to live everything

Too much in the recent past is unexplained, and I struggle to find answers, even as I feel ashamed to be so expressive in this space. There are others who wonder and hurt far more deeply than I ever wish to, children and parents, lovers and wives and friends. In lieu of greater comfort, I rediscovered this:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.“
— Rainer Maria Rilke

Echo

Somewhere today a lab is out of order. People walk the hallways asking, "Have you heard?", "She was going to finish in a few months" , "She worked so hard.. poor thing."
A greying professor remembers her first emails to him. Enthusiasm bordering on desperation, the years she put into getting to a point where she could send him that email. He may even remember how he wondered at her perseverance as he presented her case to the committee, asking them to fund her graduate studies.

Somewhere, a brother takes the first flight available to meet his sister. There are anxious parental phone calls, logistics, endless paperwork and planning. This I cannot bring myself to imagine.

In frozen time-frames she walks into my room at night, after roll call, demanding and distributing her 'jaadu ki jhappis'. I hear her echo "-TA" when I call her Sanchi, completing her name emphatically. I hear her laugh and I see her dance, listen to her voice in countless conversations, real and virtual. What next, we ask and say, what next?
We've talked of plans, after hostel and after Baroda, what the US is like and the tedium of grad school, buying cars and non-academic options after a Ph.D. And each time our refrain, What next and what else?

Somewhere, there is an echo of our words that goes round and round the globe, a string of electrons magically dancing through cables under the oceans and continents. What next, it whispers, what next?

Even as the words bounce around, you are gone. In frozen time I feel the crash of metal and flesh and bone on a dark highway as it ripples under my skin, my fingers trembling in a mocking echo of yours. The smell of the fruit samples in your car and the sound of the sirens and helicopters and paramedic voices. Your emphatic ending of your own name resonates in emptiness and hits me harder than anything.

The words of our friend as she tells me you are gone. The way I wish for someone to hold her close through this.

Somewhere, shouldn't something be more ordered than it is here? Are the partings here balanced out by reunions elsewhere?

Or perhaps our echoes have no balance. Just the strength they find in their repetition as they bounce around the world, fading as we fade and revived by resonant times as somewhere, an advisor reads an enthusiastic email from a grad student. And somewhere, a brother flies out to meet his sister for a reunion happier than this one. And friends talk of things other than death when they say, What comes next?

Instead of faith

On a circling wind I watched a bird rise. Steady in its ascent, perfect stillness and awareness in every wing tip. On the same wind two sparrows tumbled through, flapping desperately to get to the nearest tree even as they were tossed around by the wind.

When I raise my eyes for inspiration, I don't always see what I wanted to see. But at times like this, I get what I needed- a good laugh at myself. So what if the universe doesn't feel like restoring my faith once in a while, and instead chooses to remind me of how ridiculous it is to flap about desperately in a storm?

Perhaps it is merely a spiritual placebo. Or perhaps it is just that when I am quiet enough to look to the skies, I can connect with a calmer, more rational and faithful self. Yet these are the times I am convinced of greater powers, a deeper universal rhythm worth keeping time to. And sometimes laughing at myself with.

I wish you a storm

"In the kingdom of the gods, one must be very careful. There are things we cannot do, words we cannot say." These are some, that for different reasons, will never reach their intended destinations in that kingdom.
=============================================================

You think you know it all. Just as I do. But here is the difference between you and I- I know that everything I stand for and believe in might be wrong. And I hope at least some of it is. But I know this also, and try, most times, to live by this. That commitment and kindness mean more than romantic ideals. That honesty counts for more than chickening out. That sticking through the tough times is worth it.

Because this much I know is true. Life is short and people disappear like summer winds. One minute they are here, talking to you on the phone about wedding dresses and how they suspected that guy you’re about to marry was your boyfriend all along, and the next minute they are gone. Before you can pick up the phone and call ‘when they are better and out of the hospital’. Before their son has a chance to start on his first job or bring a bride home. Before they can even get home from their first family vacation in ten years, they are gone in a crashing disaster of brain and heart and organ failure.

Because life slips away like this: Raw flesh tortured apart by the force of its own life-blood. A little clot that stops your brain that breaks your heart that brings your kidneys to a grinding halt. Because life slips away like this: Not in your sentimental tears and tortured emotions.

This much I know for sure. That blood surges and clots and the color of your bleeding romance will stop you in your tracks forever. This is the nature of blood and of life and of death. And this I can assure you will one day happen to both you and I, regardless of what we stand for today. So spare me your mawkish romance and your bloodshot eyes, your weeping heart and your fragile pretentions of emotion.

In this my parents, my husband and others more patient than I tell me to be kind and move on. Life is short, they remind me, and gone like a cloud in a summer storm. Love the uncle who said, the last time he called, “I’m waiting to see you at _’s wedding.” Remember the affection and hold the memory of shelter and warmth. Life is too short for unkindness, they say.

But on days like this I resonate only with one of my favorite cinematic moments. A scene from American Beauty, of a plastic bag caught in the wind. My words billow with rage and patience is ripped apart by my uncle’s passing.

I have neither time nor space to give you, ex-girlfriend of someone dear. Instead I give you my questions: Why say you were faking your emotions all this while? What sort of a woman are you, so keen on a wedding that you have forgotten what it takes to make a marriage? Why this gut-less playing of mind-games that only hurts the one I love? And what sort of family is this you come from, that thinks nothing of making outlandish demands of others’ children, but have failed to make their daughter become a decent human being?

At the end of it all, I only want for this to turn back on you, all the anger and confusion and unhappiness you have caused.

I wish you every unshed tear and all the grief you have caused. Because I hope they cut you deep enough to open your heart to this ephemeral space, where fragile things like people and love must stay so strong, when all we have is each other to hold through all the storms.

Easy way out : The boomerang effect

Sometime back, I wrote about how it's actually quite easy to fulfill one's dreams. (Before I go on, I would have to say this is speaking only in a personal growth/ professional sense. I don't mean dreams like your crush returning your affections or time travel to a care-free childhood.)

From personal experience, an important motivator is being forced to do things I dislike. Stuck in a job that is "OK", something I can tolerate from 9 to 5 and go home, rinse and repeat for the week- I am far less likely to stay up all night trying to find a way to make my 'dream' happen. But when forced to do things I actively dislike, it is far easier to make myself move towards what I want even at the end of a ridiculously long day.

The potency of fear as a motivator is well established in metaphor and reality to any adult(looming deadlines, ticking clock, back against the wall). At least for me, annoyance and hating what I was doing turned out to be pretty strong motivators to move towards what I want.

So if working towards fulfilling your dreams sounds impossible, try running in the opposite direction. And maybe you will find that hidden something that makes you push harder when you think you can't, and boomerang back to where you want to be.

Recipes and stop signs

Especially among friends, it surprises me to find people that think of recipes as rules to follow. When cooking with friends, I am amused by those that level out the flour in the measuring cup or insist rajma cannot be complete without the addition of fresh coriander/ cilantro leaves. Some friends frequently receive links to recipes with comments like: "Oh, I am very creative, I always add my own tweaks to dishes", while others might reply: "How can I make that, I don't have any _ on hand". Between the two extremes, I have grown up watching my mother add sambar powder to pasta for fussy children and serve sandwiches as dinner to a group that felt a "meal" must include rice, chapattis could hardly count as lunch or dinner.

My favorite kitchen memory of my mother is this: Working 9-6 and trying to manage two small children, one of whom always wanted sambar and the other would eat nothing but rasam, my mother put her magic spoon to work. In her absence, we were given a 'spell'. No matter what she'd cooked, all we had to do was turn the spoon thrice. Dip it in deep and turn the spoon thrice to the right for sambar, and three times the other way to turn the sambar into rasam. Et voila! We each got what we wanted. Of course, the other requirement for the spell was two naive children who didn't know that curry powder sediments at the bottom of the vessel, or even really know the difference between sambar and rasam ;).

My own culinary adventures are similar. I like to think I can cook menus off several world cuisines, and given a spare pantry will whip up a kootu or a pasta or fajitas or a stir-fry. But none of them are 'authentic', and none of them are particularly 'creative', at least in my opinion. It's food, and it tastes good to those I cook it for. It fulfills our needs and keeps us happy, and that is enough for me.

Recipes are suggestions, not rules to live or die by. As are stop signs, as long as you look all ways ;). And so are 'principles'. There is always a different perspective, and principles/morals are guidelines on how to proceed, options one can choose to live by. If a moral cannot stand up to circumstantial logical scrutiny and open discussion, I don't think it is worth killing/ dying for, nor is it worth causing unhappiness over.

(P.S: Why does spell check find fajitas acceptable, but not rajma/sambar etc.? For those that want 'recipes' for any of the foods mentioned, I'm happy to oblige ;))

If self-defeating statements all spontaneously combusted, conversations would be so much more insightful. Or perhaps non-existent. Like this post should be, perhaps :)

First, a little explanation: A combination of de-motivation and procrastination, awesome words (Carl Dennis, Wallace and others), and my own desire to see something nice when I visit my own blog - are the cause of this sudden flurry of posts. One of the most recommended things to beat the blahs is a good walk/run, and I'm a strong-voiced proponent.

I started running a few years ago for the sense of strength and well-being it brings me, even if it is purely biochemical. Though I try (really!) not to preach about exercise, it is hard not to want to share the high it brings. The quote below sums it up so well, maybe it will even inspire me enough to just shut up about how great it is to run :)

"Even if you'd never get old or even get fat;And your dog could take itself out; And everyone loved you; And you always slept well; And you never got sad; And all your teachers all thought you were a genius; And no one ever broke up with you; And every scholarship was a full scholarship;And the world wasn't a mess; And your body looked good all on its own; And every day in every way; You felt like you just wanted to feel...
YOU'D STILL RUN."

This is water

After my rather silly rant yesterday, I came across some wonderful resources on productive mind-hacks (ways to inspire a procrastinating freelancer ;)), one of which mentioned this little gem. A book called "This is water" by David Foster Wallace, based on a commencement speech he gave a few years ago. Here's a link to the speech.



The mention of just remaining aware of all the possibilities every minute, day in and day out, also reminded me of this poem by Carl Dennis.

Candles

If on your grandmother's birthday you burn a candle
To honor her memory, you might think of burning an extra
To honor the memory of someone who never met her,
A man who may have come to the town she lived in
Looking for work and couldn't find it.
Picture him taking a stroll one morning,
After a wasted month with the want ads,
To refresh himself in the park before moving on.
Suppose he notices on the gravel path the shards
Of a green glass bottle that your grandmother,
Then still a girl, will be destined to step on
When she wanders barefoot away from her school picnic
If he doesnt stoop down and scoop the mess up
With the want-ad section and carry it to a trash can.

For you to burn a candle for him
You needn't suppose the cut would be a deep one,
Just deep enough to keep her at home
The night of the hayride when she meets Helen,
Who is soon to become her dearest friend;
Whose brother George, thirty years later,
Helps your grandfather with a loan so his shoe store
Doesn't go under in the Great Depression
And his son, your father, is able to stay in school
Where his love of learning is fanned into flames,
A love he labors, later, to kindle in you.

How grateful you are for your father's efforts
Is shown by the candles you've burned for him.
But today, for a change, why not a candle
For the man whose name is unknown to you?
Take a moment to wonder whether he died at home
With friends and family or alone on the road,
With noone to sit at his bedside
And hold his hand, the very hand
It's time for you to imagine holding.

==========

Motivation

My email inbox overflows with compliments. Some are delicately phrased critique of samples, others are more immediate "It looks fine, no editing needed!" Complete with smiley faces and wishing me luck, wanting to stay in touch and looking forward to working with me.

You would think this would make me happy, wouldn't you? These are ventures into a field where I have no professional training, no certificates to prove my worth. Compliments from the experts are my only reassurance that I'm making the right moves. And I have enough words of praise in that inbox to satisfy not just one, but several needy egos.

But none of them begin or end with confirmed offers of a full-time job doing what I love. And I am a little de-motivated now, despite going back and reading all those emails over. (Yes, how shallow and silly. I don't know of another way to convince myself I'm doing the right thing- do you?) So I am looking for motivation. To stay committed to this, to not just sell out and go back to a lab bench streaking out cultures and designing primers and doing PCRs.

Perhaps it is petty, to think that a few months of effort should yield such rich benefits so quickly. Perhaps the praise is merely well-intentioned and not meant. But why tell me to "continue writing because of your exceptional style" if you don't intend to give me the opportunity to do it?

Bigger than us

We all need to believe in something bigger than ourselves. For some of us it is material pleasure- the next big purchase. For others it is professional achievements and constant intellectual stimulation. For others it is causes- eradicating disease and poverty and unhappiness in several forms, for the 'greater good' of humanity.

I am a strong believer in the infinite potential for happiness and 'higher ideals' that are innate to every human being. According to me, the roots of this capacity for happiness and desire for 'higher ideals' lie in the fundamental construct of a society- the simple fact that we choose to live in a society is proof that we think those around us are important, as are their circumstances. Our desire to 'improve' society is inextricably tied to our desire to live socially. Heartening to think that it is in our genes to want a better world, even though our choices every day might suggest that we don't care about the planet or other people. In this lies my fundamental faith in our humanity- that we cannot escape what is written in our genes. And therein begins the conflict.

Just as being social is encoded in our DNA, so are the simple facts of altruism and cheaters. For a successful altruistic group, each member of the group must be able to perceive and feel the benefit of contributing to the group. Secondly, simple group dynamics such as population size and contributions of members determine how much cheating a group can withstand. A queen bee "gets away" without contributing to the "work" that the drones put in only because her single contribution to a beehive "earns" her that right. Ensuring reproductive success is, to the workers, more important than being another individual collecting nectar. Population size is a simpler dynamic. In a group of four workers, one cheater is unlikely to get away uncensored. In a group of hundred, it is much easier for the slacker to get away with it.

This is where I feel grassroots movements of political and social change have a far better chance of continued success than a single, radical, nation-wide move. In a single village, kin selection is a stronger force than in a country. And it is far easier for a group of villagers to see the immediate benefits of honesty, volunteerism and forward-thinking. As group sizes increase, there is an exponential decrease in the perceived benefit of doing good relative to the effort required to do it. Here's a simple example- Taxes and traffic laws were made to benefit society. They were put in place to ensure a common standard of conformity that benefits every individual who is part of that society. Yet almost every honest, upstanding citizen would have jumped a red light or crossed the speed limit when they were in a rush. Simply because the individual benefit far outweighs the price of sticking to group rules.

A bill like the Jan Lokpal Bill seems unhappily laughable in this context. A democracy that is of the people and by the people now demands that the people stand up and answer to the rest of the people. We took a handful of people and gave them power, the license to be corruptible, then let them get away with bribery and unimaginable crimes. Now, we clamor for a bill that asks for answers. But who is asking for these answers? Another handful of people. Another group identical to the first in its origins, that 'we' will put in place to serve as "our" representatives. In exchange for their serving society by monitoring corrupt politicians, we will turn a blind eye to the corruption that is likely to permeate from the upper levels to the lower, when the rich politician tells the poor 'representative'- "Here's a few acres of land for your daughter's dowry and a college degree for your son, now let this one bribe I took slip, ok?". And once again, the immediate, individual benefit far outweighs the cost of sticking to the principles the 'aam aadmi' stood up for in the first place.

Does this view make me a pessimist? I still have infinite faith in the individual. Even in this unhappy scenario, a friend tells me of the auto driver who asked for an additional 20, but returned it when she told him she was heading to the park to join the protests. I have faith in that integrity in that person, and every other human being like him. What I lack is trust in power and laws and hand-waving about bills. Society did not evolve top down. And I don't think it can be improved from the top down either. To those at the bottom of the pile, the trickle of benefits just isn't worth the price of the sacrifice. Like the single cells that evolved into us, I believe we must start at the beginning rather than the end. If there really were enough individuals who truly believed that there is no room for corruption, no tolerance for crime, we would not need a bill such as this one at all. Let us start with making the single incorruptible individual, and the chorus that democracy should be will emerge.

(Despite the opinions voiced here, I would still like to hear why this bill would work where other anti-corruption laws and the basic principles of democracy have failed).

Endorsement

Hear me, all voices cry.

This is ME. I like cola,
and designer labels
I think Vuitton makes the coolest bags!
I LOVE Sunday mornings..mmm.

Hear me, they shout. Echoes in a crowd and screams in silence all want only to be heard.

I stand for human rights.
I run for AIDS.
Shaved my head for cancer research.
I can't STAND liars!
Peace, bread and the land.

In endorsing a product, a viewpoint or a preference, voices gain personality. This is ME. This is where I stand out from the rest of you even as I fall in with others who share these ideas. Given a space, every voice wants only to fill it up with itself. (Like this blog.)

I prefer private affirmation to public endorsement. With the spaces we now have, too often it seems like we clamor for causes and choices to fill them up with.

Petty rants we would otherwise forget, if we didn't write them down right away.
Half-formed thoughts that seem erudite in the silence in our heads.
Advice to people who will never read it. Like "Get the ball _!!! Ugh, Does _ need a runner, why is he moving so SLOWLY?"
Join my cause! Support _ and end corruption!

What confuses me about the latest wave of endorsement is this: Everyone I see is geared up for a fast and a protest and a show of hands, screaming their lungs out on Facebook and Twitter to end corruption and make the difference. Either I am missing something or they are. The last time I checked, even a revolution that began with a tweet ended with real, live people. People who bled and burnt and died, flesh mingled with the land they were trying to change. Where are the people, apart from the show of hands? I hear demands that various celebrities support the cause, but feel confident that no price will be exacted if they don't- the media and the crowds will love them anyway.

And on a far more pessimistic note, I have little faith in the cause itself. It's simple enough- a bill for a cleaner government. Accountability to a public board, made up of people like you and I. But so very much of the government is made up of people who were once you and I. I have little faith in the integrity of the individual when integrity is so hard to hold up, and cheating such an easy way to prosper. In a country of billions and billions, the bill only feels like a way to make room for more power play and more corruption.

In principle, I support the idea. Let's end corruption. Let's make India Shining happen. But practically, how do we do it when the evolutionary cards are stacked so deep and high against us?

Contradictions

Only when I am quiet can I realize the sounds I fill my life with. For someone that craves silence like a drug, I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time speaking of irrelevant things. How do I decide what is relevant,worth an investment of time, emotion and effort?

My usual way is to shortlist people. These are important, the rest aren't. The important ones I invest in without thought, and the rest are casual conversations. But would I do that with other assets? Say I were to choose a company to invest my money in. Would I continue to pump my savings in if the company started making obviously foolish choices and squandering my hard-earned cash? I doubt it.

It's simple enough to say: People aren't companies, relationships are worth far more than money and such parallels are inaccurate. Of course they are inaccurate, and relationships and emotion are far more important. So it stands to reason that I must find an even better metric, does it not?

This is where I lose my footing. How do I find a single (or a few) measures that I can apply simply to my relationships, without having to constantly evaluate each move and the necessity of it? There are only so many hours in the day, and my heart goes flying to each of these people I deem important, for every little thing.

I want to yell in response to drama- queen tantrums from one. I want another to learn to be truly quiet and realize the importance of inner peace- there is a difference between not saying anything and being quiet. I want the third to stop yelling at me and his mother every time he is upset. I want another to be more involved with her choices and less with the gossip of others. And the other, who I wish would stop cribbing and realize that if she worked, she would achieve all the happiness she craves. I want _ to be kinder, gentler and more open. I want to pick up the phone and demand answers from _ that no one has had for the last 20 years. The list is endless.

For each of these people on my list I know what I want. I see their lives so clearly and wish they had my crystal clarity to solve their problems. And each time they cry out, I don my wings of sympathy and hope and solution to plonk myself into their lives. But what does it do for them or for me? I'm fairly sure the answer is either 'Not much' or 'Absolutely nothing'.

And these are just the important people, the conversations I choose to get involved in. So how do I evaluate when to invest how much in a relationship? And how do I find the silence I crave when I am so smothered in these voices I invite into my life?

Thoughts on being/ becoming- II

When I was thirteen, I had a serious crush on a married man. My best friend at the time and I spent months on end collecting every single bit of information we could about him and his wife. In pre-internet times, that meant literally combing every bit of information in his books and the scattered mentions of him in other people's books and drawing timelines of his life. We loved him as much for his mystery as for his writing.

Now, there is this-

"__ is a science writer and a professional dancer and mountain climber."
"__ is a writer who has been bitten by tarantulas, lived inside a volcano and jumps off planes to make the rent money."


Suddenly, I am overwhelmed by proofs of diversity and uniqueness. Why is passion and talent insufficient? How is the curiousness of their experiences relevant to the quality of these people's writing?

Why does it matter, whether they moonlight as street performers or astronauts? No two people that go through the same experiences come out quite the same as one another. What one learns from watching a candle flame the other may be oblivious to after racing through a forest fire. So why decide that the one who lived through the forest fire is the more 'interesting' writer? And why must the scars from the fire serve as proof of the conviction behind the words? The words are convincing, and that should be enough.

I miss the days when people were mysterious. When I didn't know where the people I looked up to had acquired their perspectives. When a piece of writing had to move me enough that I was willing to spend hours hunting down the story behind it- "Where did he learn this? What sort of person was this?"

Writing is a lot like a first date. First touch my heart. Then tell me about yourself. Otherwise, spare me the bio.

Thoughts on being/becoming - I

"I'd always been writing, but I didn't know whether I knew how to write."

Someone who has been writing for the last 10 years used these words, and I had to pause to think. Is it possible to do something but be completely unaware of whether you are doing it correctly or not?

On the one hand, I can understand the viewpoint, having experienced similar self-doubt with dancing and writing and cooking. One can write from the time you learn to use a word and a pen, and one can hold dance like a secret lover, in whispered confidence and moonlight trysts. But are either of those- unrelenting practice or a cherished idea- enough to make one a writer or a dancer? I am easily annoyed by people who use words carelessly, who think of themselves as writers but have not learned to cast a sentence effectively. People that claim to love words (or dance) but have no clue what power they hold are to me like children left in charge of power plants- Seriously dangerous to the plant and to themselves.

On the other hand, I believe self-aware confidence and work can make anyone achieve anything. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be doing what I do. Believe in your heart that you know nothing about writing and have much to learn, but believe also in your limitless potential to learn. There are all shades of writers and dancers in the world. The writer who has stopped learning is the one who does not know whether they know how to write. I think that applies to most professions.

What is a poem?

Someone recently claimed my writing was too metaphoric and vague to be comprehensible, and hence termed it 'poetic'. I am not a trained literary critic, so the opinions here and in the pieces that will follow are obviously not those of an experienced observer. They are just impressions of what I like and dislike about certain poems. (And hopefully they will explain why I don't agree with calling a vague, incomprehensible piece of writing 'poetic'!)

In trying to answer the "What is a poem?" question the way I see it, I found it easier to begin with what I think is NOT a poem. I don't think a poem is a string of rhyming words. Likening your girlfriend or lover to a blooming springtime in an ABAB rhyme scheme does not always qualify as poetry. Unless you're Tennyson or Keats, that usually ends up being a string of pretty words held together by vague sentiment. (According to me, it works for them for different reasons, and I'll get to that later).

I am also not a fan of overly confessional poems. Grim reality and the underside of life can be portrayed effectively, if not beautifully. Teenage thoughts of suicide and how the world sucks are better left to people who have grown past them enough to articulate effectively. (Paul Simon in 'I am a rock', for example).

For a poem to be effective, it must be:

Strong: Strong images, a single (or few) emotions. It has only a few words, so each one must stand for something.

Bright: Sharp, bright words that stand out are essential. A poem that squanders its breath on decision-making is dead. "I was looking at this gorgeous sunset, it reminded me of my ephemeral youth which will dissolve into the world's apocalyptic end" - A good poem picks ONE thread there, not all three.

And true: Any poem worth sharing is true. It may be a fantasy of princesses and dragons or it may be the tale of an Auschwitz survivor, but a good poem believes it is real. And it has something vitally important to share, and the words it uses were the most effective ones it could find to say that one thing.

And what doesn't (always) make a poem, and often breaks it?
Metaphors.
Being vague.
Stylistic tenses.
Bad grammar.
Not using capitals.

The list is long, and as with every poem, there are exceptions ;)