Bemused.

I am up at 6am after ages. These days I am mostly asleep all day and I hardly do any work so I can’t really complain about my erratic sleeping patterns. But what makes this morning special is not this faint and vain hope of setting my bio clock aright. It’s special because this one morning ushered me into a realization of sorts. So I decided to write about it before I dozed off into my routine 'day slumber' and killed it.

There are these moments in one’s life when one can quickly trace one’s steps back to defining moments in one’s life- important decisions, academic and otherwise and they appear as fleeting images before one’s eyes like those little toys that play picture pages with the turn of a key. So as I turned this figurative key of my memory, it showed me several pictures that make me bemusedly calm. They made me think about my stay at Valsad where I had made the best of friends. I also had a brush with my ex-boyfriend and some lost friendships and I realized how I hate the whole idea of being an ex. Somehow a broken relationship or a friendship always leaves a secret kernel of guilt and shame reinstating each time you are referred to as ex that you could not secure a convenient place in their lives. Yet we continue to keep wishing them well and not linger on these pictures longer. We keep turning this metaphorical key to play pictures, to revive our memories, to smile at some and cry a little.

It also made me realize why I love literature so much. I have never endorsed that literature is meant for people who manage to dissect, analyze and deconstruct everything they read, or is meant for people with finer ‘eyes’. I hardly regard it as a subject. In fact, I believe it’s an ideology that one cultivates ever since one is born. It is innate. So then why do some pursue it as subjects meant to carve out a career while others don’t? Well that is because there are some of us willing to cultivate and broaden this ideology and have incumbent roles to play that is to dole out our developed ideas to the ones that chose to broaden and cultivate other ideologies, also innate and vice versa. I believe (I don’t say this like most of our insolent professors with an air of superiority) the moment we all realize this, education would make more sense. So there, I love literature because it is for everybody. It is capacious yet intriguing. And this love is only getting stronger by the day, no matter how many death blows at my academic career try to douse it.( This would make sense to people who know me.)

I am currently reading this book called Nine Lives : In Search of the Sacred in Modern India by William Dalrymple. Yes  he is one of the notable organizers of the Jaipur Lit fest and once you read him you will feel truly indebted to him as an Indian reader. I can’t stop thanking Souradeep for making it happen to me even though he demurred at first because he is selfish when it comes to sharing an amazing reading experience such as this unlike me, I am more selfish *wide grin*. Yes  I will come up with a book review for sure because I really want to document my reading experience.

P.S- I know this is a rather incoherent post because my mouth feels sluggish, I am hungry and 6am is an unearthly hour for me. And writing at this hour, is a feat in itself. Thanks for reading me. Have a nice day.