Saturday, February 20, 2010

same shit

She sits up and decides to write. a post is long overdue and she wants to type.

She decides not to worry about how her writing is always personal and the protagonist always a ‘she’. But she promises herself that she shall not make it overt and complicated. it has to be simplistic, and hopefully lucid. Her lack of technique and inability to beautify words will not make her write a ‘seemingly’ complicated, grammatically flawed sentence. (Although she could rebuff this as a purist’s accusation right away, she decides now is not the time)

She decides that even though she spells out the most clichéd thoughts and repeat words, it would not stop her from writing. For that matter, even the lack of plot will not make her budge.

If need be, she will write about how her parents are sitting in the other room, and talking about seemingly unimportant things, ranging from the grocery-walah’s banter to papa’s office anecdotes. How their routine life, despite its undercurrents and patriarchal–conservative family narrative, resonates with familial joys and innocent laughter as they take a dig at each other’s relatives.

She will write about how Regina Spektor is singing in the background. As she types she tries to hum along but a note falls and she stops. She cannot sing and being alone in the room does not make her less conscious of the fact. It will also, quite predictably, make her more aware of her lack of talents and unclear (glum?) future.

She is not happy. Not happy with what she is writing and the general there-is-nothing-to-write state. But she will not use the backspace key.

And even as she types all this, she decides that she will not write about her, for she is not real. (Or perhaps, she doesn’t want her to be real.) She cannot be real because she stands out even when things are not about her and fades everyone else into the background even if she merely walks by. And she doesn’t understand this. She most certainly doesn’t.

She wishes this was all a movie. (She partly believes it to be so.)


She sighs, and types some more.