Gaurav Parab
The much insulted 'mundane existence' smothers deep questions that pop up in moments of longing alone or of heavy drinking with ghosts from our past and friends of the present.
Why do I do the things I do? What's my purpose here? Or who the f are we all ? (This one usually comes when staring at enormous scale - like an ocean approaching a beach, or stars on a clear summer's night)
Not entirely a bad thing, I have realized over years of a demanding high pressure day job, self imposed deadline weary night writing, necessary and unnecessarily travel, occasional this and that and on and on I can go. One life to live, won the universal lottery, got to do as much as I can every moment has set my agenda. I know it is more or less the same for almost all readers of this blog. The pressure to be busy, to be seen trying, to be seen dying trying.
Less the time for such questions, the more focus you can put together on the task at hand. But the questions do come up, don't they.
What the hell am I doing with my life, being the headlining theme.
And as we struggle with this uninvited guest, which like a stick raking through dying embers of a bonfire finds sparks and unburnt wood, you feel hope about something new just around the corner , and yet you also feel momentarily frozen in your tracks - disappointed in all the wonderful things you have achieved so far and frustrated you could have done so more.
When these questions on existence overwhelm us, we long for ordinariness - a simple day in a pair of worn out pajamas, legs up, cold beer in one hand, reading something brilliant like Rustom and the Last Storyteller of Almora and not working on anything. A day, a moment when you are a child with no homework, a moment when you busy adult are not up to something.
How I long for such a day, a moment when there is no thought squatting in my mind.
I, and this has been my secret for years ... I... feel jealous of those who live through entire days, months, years simply putting one foot ahead of the other. The celebration of routine, day in and day out. The disdain for curiosity, and for exploration of anything out of the way.
While I devour books to unlock the secrets of a mind at peace, these chaps are just born with it. Here they come, on time to work, on time to leave, on time collecting kids from school, dropping old parents wherever old parents want to be dropped, watching one movie per fortnight, two days of box cricket per week, binge watching the coolest thing on Netflix, and an occasional drive to Lonavala - stripping to their baniyan going around the first traces of a paunch when a waterfall comes along.
What a sorted thought process, I tell myself whenever I come across someone like that. All ambition handicapped by disinterest.
God I wish I was that.
On the surface, such a person has no great gifts or interests outside of the work , but deep inside I suspect it is perhaps that person's greatest gift.
Not giving a F about anything unrelated to putting food on the table.
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Why do I write
Because it is the only way I can mourn my dead. The only way I can laugh out from somewhere so deep inside and out of sight that it exists close to the only real part of my soul. The only way I see the glory of the Sun breaking through the darkness is when it does so from a piece of paper and not through my window. It does not serve me well with people and with life in the moment, but it makes me feel immortal.
The Gods have nothing on me. The Devil shivers. I sit down and I go about creating and destroying worlds in seconds when some of the most powerful men have tried and failed over thousands of years. It does not pay the bills, but it helps me buy back all the soul I have sold over the years.
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#ThatWriterFromIndia #GauravParab
Gaurav Parab is the author of Rustom and the Last Storyteller of Almora [Hachette 2015] and The Sea and All Its Parts [Speaking Tiger, To be published 2020]
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