Vacancies

On the roof of Indian railways
Now no crouching passengers by rule

So when a 12295 arrives
Full two hours late at 2 am
With barred doors and grilled windows and not an inch of space

The lousy students at the lousy junction
Instigate a hullabaloo

The constables cow, crowd the crowd, and the station master cajoles
With authority
And when the voices settle down
And the train is flagged green, the doors kept locked
The lousy scholars wait for a lousy 16468

'There will be room for everybody in its extra special dabba'

Sure, they'll reach an hour late for the test
Section D will go untouched
But the banks this year,
How many positions they have to fill, as such?

Releases

Releases from a constipated belly
Are long, coarse,
Abrupt.
For what its worth,
They show
There is more to you than what you ate since Monday morning. 

Maula, Oh, Maula

Defeated, dejected.

This field beyond all shapes and ideas,

Beyond even dimension of dreams,

Where you and I, Rumi,

Drink heartily in my sleeps,

Can I believe my rueful voice

Travelling in that space?

Don’t songs there of a dervish singing

Reverberate?

Maula, Oh, Maula,

At your disposal, my Maula.

How It Works: Random Scribbling

How It Works: Some Identified States

1. Fuzziness: 2-9 days. State of cluelessness and bad hopeless ideas. Where should the story head? How? Digression. Books, authors currently-reading/recently-read corrupt most in this state.
2. Epiphany: 1 day. Identification of previously unseen problems with the novel, precise solutions, clear and distinct visuals of the forthcoming piece. State 1 to 2 traveled by Will.
3. Euphoria: 1200 brilliant words: one night.
4. Follow-through: 800-2k words: 1-6 days. Confident, venturesome, but possibly careless and sloppy. Revisions and the work will be includable somewhere in future.
5. Missing "feeling" - a wall of dissatisfaction, disinterest, waning motivation. Moving away from the novel: 1-15 days. The state exists because new problems have developed in the work. How to waste less time here? Revise what you recently wrote. See how it fits, what it changes. THINK.
6. Resumption: returning to the novel. Mindful of the factors that drive to writing. Basic reasons for writing This particular novel >> the force of all the factors that put you off from writing. But words don't come alone because you have decided to return and fight. State 6 will lead to 1: a period of subconscious meditation.

Observation: States 5, 6 and 1 often merge together or are indistinguishable.


The cycle may exist for a while, causing binge writing and wait for inspiration, but the time spent away from writing must must must recede. Number of words in a sitting, a session, a season, a State, must increase. Identifying the present state and acting accordingly should help. Problems - tensions - arise by lack of mindfulness. In State 1, for example, one wastes time by stressing on actual "writing", on Future of the story: the events to follow, while clearly the state exists primarily due to a lack of transparency in the Past of the novel.

How it happens

Quick tips: 

 1.Read

 2.Revise

Water Cooler

Between two ticklish ticks of clock,
a teeny tiny instant of electric shock,
struggle, surrender.
Yes, I won't be surprised to see
in the next day's newspaper,
"Boy, 28, found frozen by a water cooler"

Death, a deja-vu.

Basic Tenets Of Writing

1. First 10 words are harder than the next 100 words.
2. Writing session starts with pre-writing activities: ideation, planning, unconscious writing etc. Acknowledge them.
3. Writing session is a period of stillness, intense focus and awareness - threat to the normal mode of mind. It will get in your way.
4. Regularity gives strength, irregularity breeds guilt.
5. It is courageous even to keep sitting on a chair, not writing - making this choice over distracting oneself in the event of non-writing.
6. Protecting writing schedule ruthlessly gives big returns which can be acknowledged only by looking back.
7. Challenges of writing do not melt down because you have figured them out, met, conquered them previously. They come afresh every single day and you have to battle out all over again. There is no other way.
8. Solitude, silence -must.
9. Reading helps you get in the mood for writing. Music can help set the mood for reading/writing. Music can enthuse you, pacify you; reading helps you recall all that you know about writing. Use them wisely.
10. When you sit down to write - enter the battlefield that is, you feel unarmed.  It is only when you fight it out that you find your weapons again: they come as you need them.
11. A good period of writing is too precious to terminate when satisfied. It is rare, be in it for as long as you can; utilize it.

(11, because the back side of the used paper was over. Will append, when and as they come)

Grave Matters

Two meters into two meters
What we gravely fight for.
Quarter to two I am,
And you are little too;
Land enough for two graves?

Hence, unedited

This, this period,

This now,

This I forget

Wilfully.

What do you do

Before you do?

The Bride's Father

And indeed, what could be done now?


The seven pheres have been taken, the vows of fidelity have been exchanged, and all the mantras have been unerringly chanted: for the next six lives and this one, the daughter of Lakirdas will serve as a wife to this impostor - an ugly, elder cousin of the man who was supposed to marry his daughter. Had the sehra, the customary veil of bridegroom: his flowery deception, been lifted before the rites were performed, Lakirdas would have beaten him to death in a single blow of stick. But now that this man is his daughter's keeper what could be done or undone?


Surrounded by only his closest relatives, Lakirdas cries cursing his fate at a corner of the party lawn. They chide him, console him, and then, they counsel. The TV, the fridge, the jewelry, the household items - all of them will be used by his daughter, but what use could an air conditioned car be for this man? He works on a farm, not in any computer company in city. Don't let him have the car, they say. These fraudsters played with your trust, they had the gaunt to cheat you on your land, in your village, you can't just let them have it all.


Lakirdas agrees.


Having cried all his tears already, he now hastily bids his daughter wishes and rushes towards a truck parked at a distance. The car needs to be smuggled out or rumors here will spread.

Whining Is Not Acceptable

Running breathlessly
- for that's how I run -

I may run out of breath,

or trip, tumble, topple, 

- the trek a cinch isn't -

leagues before the top,

then fall flat on my face.

You can jeer.

Jeering is acceptable.

But, idling in your farms,
fenced and too familiar,
- as in the tired allegories of yore -
whine not about absence of adventure
while I still venture:

whimpering worries the winds,
the winds worry my heart.

Running breathlessly

- for the air there is thin -
I may run out of zest,

and weaken, wear out, wilt

- the trek a cinch isn't -

leagues before the top,

then tread back with a lost face.

You can jeer.
But, sitting sullenly,
in your farms,
fenced and too familiar,
whine not.
Whining is not acceptable. 

Two Minutes

In the midst of this sport,
this mirthless sport of survival,
of striving for survival,
- the survival of the grittiest,
a gladiator puts his armour down
and appeals for a time-out

Two minutes, he says
Just two minutes
to quickly drop his pants somewhere;
and ejaculate in a jiffy

He may not survive the next blow

Two minutes, he says
Just two minutes.

He won't keep the audience waiting...

At my desk

While a bunch of baboons,
quarter-consciously,
engage in homosexual buffoonery

Black gets greened
Beauty gets breathed in,
breathed out
Patterns of the mind of god
get pinned down and
put to use
And the power,
that captivates, inebriates
the quarter-conscious quasi-humans,
gets entrapped
(only a fraction of it,
 but daily)

Each day,
at my desk,
I become stronger, wily,
contemptuous.