Global Chilling

After living in this city for almost four years, I, like many others, faced the rather unpleasant surprise of experiencing a chilly Mumbai. The city is actually cold these days, with the wind piercing through my bones when I am travelling or walking through an open space. I believe the temperatures have gone down up to 11 degrees over the last one month... And it’s not been a single day phenomenon.... And its not only Mumbai... A number of cities (except poor Chennai I guess) have been a victim of this untimely cold waves...

This has been a rather depressing time for all the Mumbaikars. The city has not only turned cold for us, a few people are actually threatening the existance of the large population of migrants... I could not help but wonder, if Mumbai today was cleaned of all the outsiders (bengalies, norh indians, south indian, sikhs... every non-marathi that is), what would happen. For one thing, the city would be much less crowded. But will the cabs and the autos run? Will we get roadside chats, kebabs, sandwiches and Chinese food? Who will do your domestic work? Who will do the construction work? Who will clean the buildings? Who will sell the thousands of essential items around the corner?

Why is this city becoming such a cold cold place? What is with this growing intolerance and hostility towards fellow human beings? Why do I have to feel unwelcome in some part of my own country? And why should some fellow countrymen be mistreated because they look different or speak a different language? Are we really justified in insisting that in order to file a police complaint I need to be able to speak the local language? Is it essential that the public transport have destinations and numbers written in the local language? How will changing the names of cities help in retaining their ‘identities’? Why are we so insecure about our vernacular film industry that we take the drastic step of banning all other language movies in our theatres?

I do not have the answers for this. And something tells me that the propagators of this mass hatred and foolishness don’t have it either. I do believe that this problem too has a solution. And as always, it is in our hands only. The next time someone tries to bully me or someone aorund mebecause I am supposedly an 'outsider' to myown country, I have pledged not to take it lying down. Such an act requires fervent protest from any sane mind. And I shall do my part.

Writing

Over the past couple of months, I have been toying with the idea of initiating some serious creative writing... As a kid, I used to often write what is called 'chhoda' in bengali... Small rhymes I guess is the best way to describe that... The closest I have ever come to writing a prose has always been the essays that we had to write for homework. I used to always chose the more 'personal' topic... Could never rely on my general knowledge to pull of an informative one you see. I guess I also once tried to write a crime novel for kids when I was 10... That one never saw the light of day after about five pages...

So now I have started feeling the need to write some prose again... May be a little story... Just to see if I have the capability of building a plot, building charecters and dialogues and narratives around it, and turn into a pleasent read.... One of the reasons I started writing this blog was also that... I wanted to figure out the nature of my writing... And of course, much to my dismay, I realised that is quite erratic, just like myself....

I was having a chat with someone who had recently started the serious writing practice for herself. She was telling me how she things blogs are not perhaps the best way to explore one's ability to write meaningful/creative/imaginative prose... While she sited a number of examples where bloggers have moved to become authors, she also mentioned that the quality of their work has not necessarily translated into something beyond ordinary. She said that most of the times we end up restraining ourselves while writing on the public domain, thus stiffling the creativity itch that would have prompted us to write in the beginning. And then it struck me... This is perhaps the best explanation of my never-ending writer's block... I have complained to myself and on this domain a million times that not only do I often face the block when I try writing here, I also often feel that the content is lousy... I have felt that the end product of my attempt has been of rather poor quality, poor sontent, and ofcourse, quite borning. There are times when I look at some entries and cringe... God knows what i was thinking when I wrote them...

It is not possible for a lot of us to pour our hearts out to strangers. It is a ctually a scary thought that my darkest thoughts are being published in a webpage... Easily accessible by anybody and everybody... So I guess I will revert back to my old habit of maintaining my journal... Like I read somewhere, there is already enough crap in the literary world, dont add more to it... So I have decided to keep my crap to myself...