This is a slightly meaningless ramble from a week ago that sat comfortably in my drafts read by just me. Some words from my favourite writer Jhumpa Lahiri and poet Nikki Giovanni convinced me that these are important times for words. Lahiri's message about the importance of conversation and words and Nikki's reminder on the power of words and dreams, showed me the way and helped me set this small piece free.
“Rather than interpret this malady, resist it. Stay home, connect through conversations. Let words become pathways to new spaces. Let them prevail over our isolation. Let them be the air we breathe.”
~ Jhumpa Lahiri
"I think words are the most important thing, period. We forget how powerful words are and how they give back to us. I think people forget how important it is to talk to each other. That's what you do, you learn to show that what you love and that's what words do. It's always interesting, what we find important and how we place the emphasis.... I want people to say to themselves, 'it's really okay to be happy about something, it's really okay to love something, it's really okay to remember something and it's really okay to dream of something.'"
~ Nikki Giovanni
For a long time, I couldn't muster grand gestures for writing, like a separate room, or a finite desk for its infinite expanses. But no matter what, words almost always found their way to me. Sometimes waking me up from a deep dreamless white sleep, at others, slowly cradling me into thick, dark, dotty slumber, words were almost always a step away.
Sometimes they would come sprinting at me, barefoot, glistening from the window when the sun poured in in the morning. Almost as if they could sense my meditative morning routine was only my way of making space for them. On borrowed laptops, new notebooks, on the back of old library books, on scraps of paper, ATM receipts, I would scribble sweet nothings to no one in particular. That was the way the romance was between the words and me.
But it has not always a puppy, gooey affair. On occasions, I've sat with a blank page before me, the pen between my thumb and forefinger, doing a quivery dance in anticipation, but they wouldn't come. I'd sit on mornings with a notebook and pencil in hand, waiting for them to make an appearance on a particular topic, and they won't materialize. I'd wait, frustrated, scowling, dissatisfied, wanting to tear apart old pages, trying to calm the rage down in my stomach by drinking mugs of chai, yet they won’t come.
But on most other times, momentous or not, I'd find them peeping at me from a misty window. I'd roll down the windowpane of the moving vehicle of life, to find a dribble descend from above. And with it, a merry small dance of words in background. Aiding me understand life, sift better through experiences, rummage through old heartbreaks and distant friends, words would always come to rescue.
Words in language of their own, all of them, germinating as uncalled for thought bubbles that I would then make arrangements for to stay for as long as they wanted. Words as guests, words as lovers, words sometimes as parents and mostly as friends. Sitting on the mind's eye like mildew, and dancing in the air all around like cotton weeds, words never left me alone. Innocent, yet stubborn, confused and responsive, words were there, a crutch for me to better navigate through the cackle of it all.
I’d sit with meditative resilience, train the words on page, make them dance to set tunes, but they were wild babies. Not listening, yielding only when they deem fit, most of my tribulations with them are circumspect. Sometimes I try to backtrack the lineages, the linkages between all these words and me. A certain affinity, a leaning, an inclination displayed by one of my ancestor’s in this field, has got me here, I feel. And I have to behave better, with more caution. Because words can hurt too.
“When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
There were windows when words did not turn up. Effectuated by moments of occasions that extremely taxing, negative emotions such as grief, anger, mourning, a death or shock, words would either dump me in a cold, cobalt blue darkness or just keep hammering me in the background, not letting me be present. I'd be vexed, thrown out of place, so frigid, I'd go hunting for them. Sitting at hours odd and known, with chai and rum, I'd wait it out. I'd muster patience and love for them, and if that wouldn't work, I'd chase them, with meaningless, feverish, animal rage.
Taming them back to my fingertips, on pages of notebooks, or on blue light screens, I'd seek them before me. Words like fireflies, words like moths, like butterflies. Words without which life would be empty, a hollow siren song, a murky dance, a city without city lights. And then they would find their way back to me, grubby pawed. A strange, lyrical voice to them, that would, at first, haunt me like a musical refrain, and then take over my senses. I’d give in to the merry making.
“I imagine writing a story guided by the atmosphere of the particular resonance of a particular human voice — her voice — no plot in mind, just trailing her tone, timbres and composing phrases as if music and superimposing them, transparent layers, over hers.”
These words are a patience test from the heavens, I believe. They are my cure and redemption. I write because otherwise I simply cannot live. Some nights I stay up till sunrise, only to be able to write at the ‘break of the dawn’. Words are my coda. Sifting through life as a writer is kind of tough, I have strange ideas that people around me find cliched or tedious. I’d be experiencing an emotion, and that’ll trigger an idea. And I’d be caught in the winds, a dilemma before me – to experience or to jot. Most of it, then doubles up as incantation, and you can then, just wait for the words to come and find you.
For its words that help me make sense of it all, they guide me, comfort me, and outrage me. I would bring them back as a translator of all the emotions, feelings and knowledge of the world, allowing them to sequester me, console me, eclipse me, transfix me. Words as tranches, building blocks, ditties, stepping stones, fractals, inside the cauldrons of my mind, stirring up and blending in. Sometimes I am their mentor and they my acolyte, on others, its vice-versa. All I know is that it’s a botched-up life, and words make me.