Pages

15 Feb 2011

Nowhere, now.

I'm 26. That's a nowhere-age. Sure, there are folk my age who have it all figured out, but that seems incongruous somehow. Professionally, I'm diligently chasing my parents' dream-job, preparing for the Civil Services exam in June. Physically, I'm back in Kerala, back home in Trivandrum. Emotionally, I'm alone, and probably better off than I'd be in company.

Today morning, Mom called and said she's finally managed to catch hold of an agent for me. I've waited 6 months for that. I've waited 4 years (and counting) to be published with a novel that has aged cancerously. What now, cosmic prankster? 

I'm working on a new novel that I quite like, something that doesn't echo with the ebullient enthusiasm of my early twenties. The first three chapters wrote themselves; my writer's senses were on over-drive. That was 8 months ago. But things changed with the unlikely arrival of the Other Woman - ambition. Ever since the possibility of publishing my abandoned first novel reared it's shiny head,ever since I moved back to Kerala to study and get my career back on track, the well has dried up. I have ceased to excite her, to conjure up in her wanting or even interest.

Is this how it's meant to be? Are creativity and pragmatism mutually exclusive? Don't doctors write novels, engineers make films? Am I so dependent on aimlessness for inspiration? Now that my days are full, and my mind in constant use, I have no drunken conversations at the pub to elaborate on, no late night bumpings-into to romanticize about.  Does that make me a leech? Are writers merely parasites with a better turn-of-phrase than the average prostitute?

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. I don't feel the need to be anti-establishment anymore, I caved in. It's the intellectual equivalent of a rectal collapse, watching Hugh Grant marathons on HBO and wanting desperately to be with someone. You're ashamed, everybody around you is embarrassed and the stench of shit is everywhere. It permeates your being as you drunk-dial your ex, it seeps into your skin as you wonder where it all went so horribly wrong.

Still, there's always the morning-after. And being a nowhere-age. And the statutory cigarette-packet promise of an early exit. Maybe, I'll get back to that novel after all.

             In spite of all the danger - The Quarrymen (Nowhere Boy OST)

2 comments:

Baliga said...

getting to the no where age myself and not having anything figured out (as usual) is freaking the fuck out of me. to put it mildly. and yeah i still blog.

Unknown said...

realy? i thought u'd be all settled down with job, kids, marriage, cats by now. lol. i wouldnt worry about it if were u (though i do, lots)- clued up people are just plain boring.