In Mumbai, you look far away into space by sitting on the marine drive. In Delhi, you look far away into time by sitting in front of old tombs and monuments. Both cities become tolerable because in one way or the other, both cities let you escape itself. You dream or you time travel.
A city like Bengaluru lets you do neither. Neither a door to infinity nor a window to history. It keeps you stuck in the present, sadly a chunk of in the traffic, the other chunk in the office, and the leftover chunk in front of Netflix or a gym mirror, and the only escape you have is travel. Travelling out of the city. Empty roads free from traffic seem to be the only escape. Unless, you don't venture out at all. There are only two ways of not letting a boring city eat you. You run away from it from time to time, or you don't face it at all. It's easier to leave Bengaluru than not facing it.-
People who make money by teaching you how to make money haven't really made enough money, else they'd have retired.
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My father is a poet & a fine writer. He has been prolific on YourQuote, while my mother uses YourQuote to pass time, writing anything that comes to her mind on prompts to increase the activity of this app, to help the app grow.
Father once came to me with the complaint: "YQ doesn't favour good writers. Look, how well I write and I must have written way more posts, and still your mother has more followers than me. Hers is 16,000 and I am at some 12000." I first laughed out, and then asked my mother her secret sauce. Her reply was just one line: "I like every post I see," and then she adds, "without even reading."-
My relationship with birds has been like my relationship with fonts. Passionate, ardent, but ultimately disloyal. I always dump one for the other. — % &The fonts in my life had a T phase in the beginning. It started with Times, the default MS Word font in MS Office 2002. It swiftly moved to sans serif fonts such as Trebuchet for a while, which I found digitally very readable, and then over to Tahoma thanks to being in love with Facebook in 2008. It was FB's default font.
After a while, the writer in me started craving for the print feel of serif fonts again. And that's when I had a brief fling with Georgia. Now I feel like I shouldn't have. Georgia lacked depth and I knew it was meant to end from the beginning. It was just a familiar stopover in between.— % &In retrospect, this was the G phase of my life, the longest but with just two fonts. What started with Georgia very soon culminated into a long term fulfilling relationship with the love of my life, Garamond. Garamond was a writer's font. Most of the old Books I loved would be typeset in Garamond and it made me take my writing seriously. It showed faith by making my writing look like it's a part of an award-winning hardbound novel. And its italics, what can I even say? To this day, nothing matches the italics of Garamond. It feels no less than live calligraphy.
Garamond was my life's first steady typographic relationship. The font remained unhinged from the top for good ten years of writing long form, 2007-17. Over ten million words must have been written in Garamond, five hundred or more everyday in those years when I'd be reporting, writing fiction, starting and abandoning ambitious novels, pitching my ideas and articles to magazines and newspapers, rewriting first drafts or finishing assignments.— % &Then I changed cities, from MS Word to YourQuote, and Garamond felt too thin to be readable on a wallpaper such as this. Frankly, I grew but Garamond didn't grow with me. It remained stuck on print, when most of my writing had turned digital. I no longer needed Garamond's validation that I was a writer. One becomes a writer by calling oneself a writer. Ten long years with words gave me the requisite confidence to call myself a writer, both to the world and within.
I switched to YourQuote's default, Josephin Sans, for good six months. I liked its crispness, its stylish tilted 'e', its spaciousness without wide line spacing. Sometimes, in between, I'd go back to Times, whose thickness looked good on prussian blue wallpapers but limited it to short poems. I slowly found myself gravitating towards Merriweather, a serif meant for digital medium. It felt modern, less printy, but sadly, too spaced out. Too much space, like too little of it, is a recipe for detachment. I lost interest. The journey was staggered, like a string of noncommittal relationships to get over the heartbreak, but ultimately, it took a relationship to help me get out of my Garamond fever. I met Newsreader.— % &Everything feels almost right with Newsreader. It is compact, stylish and thick enough to be legible. It does what it says. Unlike a book, it befits a newspaper. Text fits well. Sometimes, I do wish the line spacing was slightly more like Garamond's though, but I remind myself how it's unfair to compare it with Garamond for its deficiency when I'm not acknowledging and comparing its efficacy. I have learnt to accept Newsreader as it is, my new favourite, and I stay away from too much fuss. Time and age has taught me that love is not always about passion, but acceptance.— % &Birds in my life, unsurprisingly, have followed the same journey. The first bird I noticed was Black Drongo. It was territorial, assertive, sharp with its forked tail. To me, it had personality. For two days, I kept blabbering about its forked tail to everyone I met. Then I found out the raptors in Bangalore I always called as cheel and thought of as eagles were actually kites. I got obsessed with the majestic Brahminy Kites, their whitish grey against their rusty wings shimmering like silver when they'd roam like kings of a Rajamouli movie in the sky.
The love for the powerful was soon hijacked by the love for the cute. Purple sunbird appeared in front of my eyes one day in the park and completely stumped me. What a tiny bird! I could keep it in my pocket, inside the loose grip of my fist. Its melodious cooing and its nimble hopping made me always want to locate them inside of parks. Then Gokarna to Goa solo walk happened and everything I lay my eyes on before was whitewashed.— % &The bright brown wings on Greater Coucals took me by surprise. What a stunning yet shy bird! Its coos sounded like metronome and it looked at once inviting and frightening. Coucal infatuation didn't last long as I discovered the sharp stroke of the eyebrow of an Asian Bee Eater, which was perched on wires of remote villages north of Gokarna. It gifted me infinite joy when I was able to identify them after learning about them everywhere. It was the new favourite for sure but little did I know it was going to be shortlived. On way to Goa, I spotted my first Kingfisher. Uff, the icy blue just like the cocktail. It was my new favourite bird. What started with a common kingfisher in Goa soon turned into an obsession to find more species of it. In Thattekad in Kerala, I spotted a white-throated kingfisher and the extremely rare blue-eared kingfisher. There's nothing like the colour blue on a bird, this time also on the ear. In a lot of ways, I found my Garamond. — % &To compete for attention, new pretty blue birds came in my line of sight. The shy Nilgiri Sholakilli or the Asian Fairy Blue-bird in Munnar, but none of them could compete with the size and the shape of kingfisher. Its long pointed beak (inspiration behind the design of bullet trains) seemed like its sharp nose. It manifested a belief that like most writers, a kingfisher was opinionated and original, fearless and formidable. That it didn't copy what other birds did and was courageous enough to dive head-first into water to fish. Nobody gets the word king in their name without reason, no other bird shapes humanity like it has. I had written a ten-mark-essay in my head to defend kingfisher. As if it were my thesis.— % &But today, during birding, something happened. I snapped out of Kingfisher's spell. Just one sight of a new bird made me question my loyalty. A new bird dethroned the Kingfisher instantly and I didn't even feel guilty. I realised my love for Kingfisher was not heartfelt but reasoned. My mind was in love, not my heart. Funnily, I didn't have to change cities for this bird, which I found today in the heart of Bengaluru itself.
Along the Muthanallur lake on Sarjapur road, I saw an utmost shy blue and light brown bird arrest my attention like nobody before. With earlier birds, when I spotted them for the first time, I'd feel grateful to nature for showing it to me. For this one, I felt grateful to nature for making it in the first place. For as long as it was visible, I couldn't blink. I followed it on my binoculars until it disappeared into the horizon. In my viewfinder, its blue wings flapped on slow motion, and felt brighter than the sun. I'll not say more but I will just share its name and the picture with you. You decide: how can one not fall for this beauty named Indian Roller? — % & — % &-
CLOSE FRIENDS
I come across an Instagram story from you. You're someone I barely know but have met socially a number of times to add each other as "close friends".
It's your birthday today. Your story has pictures of you celebrating. At the stroke of midnight, your parents, pets – a pug and a pomeranian, partner & pals, everyone is celebrating the tryst with destiny that is your birth. A one-foot-tall chocolate truffle cake is unveiled in your honour. You look happy. A couple of stories later, truffle has painted your cheeks, leaving the tip of the nose glowing, like a tiny LED. I smile and press the heart. Fast forwarding reposts of your friends wishing you a happy birthday on old & new photos with you, I stop at one. It's the repost of your partner's story: a collage of you two since college to now, your eternal love for truffle dripping from your cheeks, the leftover tip of the nose shimmering like a faded star in those.
I wonder if I should wish, if it's discourteous to just like and not wish. What manners are expected from a close friend? But then I let go of the thought. That's the thing with Instagram's close friends. It makes one feel close, but not so much a friend.-
1. The start of every new thing—a new activity, a new startup, a new novel—will be as difficult as it is for any beginner even if you have done it before. It might be easier for a beginner rather, because they don't have to waste time to unlearn the hardwired beliefs that might not be helpful.
2. Talent is overrated. As is hardwork. A hardworking or talented employee in an organisation with unempathetic leadership won't grow. What is not overrated is courage to stand up for oneself, and the consistency to constantly improve. Courage with consistency is deadly. It will make you choose what's best for you & drive you to be your best.-
A GRAMMAR GYAAN I JUST LEARNT:
"Between" is used for two people.
"Among" is used for more than two.
E. g.
1. Distribute these candies between these two class monitors.
2. Distribute these candies among all the students.-
I'd record your voice and mix them up on Garage Band, turning them into songs that had just one word as lyrics. Sometimes, it'd be: Why, sometimes, it'd be: Ass, and sometimes, it'd be: Loser. I'd save them as MP3 & mail them as attachments titled: Voicemail, 1. 2. 3 and so on.
You'd laugh listening to yourself say God ten times with heavy metal drums and electronic piano going crazy in the background. I'd ask you to bang your head to the beat and you'd ask me to bang my head to the wall. For being this ridiculous composer who turned your every word into a song.
Last word you spoke that I turned into a song was: Leave. I never sent you that song. There was no drums, no background music. It was just the word in your voice and its echoes in my head. It was a sad song, not the kind that would have made you laugh. I just mailed it to myself, with the title: Voicemail, Last.-
How can one write a poem
about a garbage van?
A poem is
beautiful, fragrant, mellow
whereas a garbage van
is anything but.
Unless, you leave me
taking away
all my early writings
to you, with you
and I look back,
years later, remembering
the beautiful, fragrant, mellow
garbage van
that came to take away
what I'd anyway throw away
when I grew up.-