Back home

When school was over, I though I would be eternally depressed for the rest of my life. Seriously, the guys from my class were the coolest – and I would cringe at the thought of leaving all of them. But that hasn’t happened. I’m happier than I’ve ever been before…the guys (and girls!) in college are equally fantastic. I’m learning to play table tennis from friends, and learning to play guitar from another friend who is equally interested in string theory as he is in guitar strings. Friends may change, but friendship is here to stay.

But now, I’m back home after a five hour journey by train. Suddenly, everything comes back washing over me like a torrent of freezing water. The moments spent dreaming, reading Fundamentals of Physics and science fiction instead of school books, gazing alone with a telescope. Today, as I went past the countryside, I saw two boys in uniform standing under a sunshade sipping juice packets. An ordinary sight – but it hurt me like a stabbed heart reminding me of childhood happiness.

I will be going back to Trichy by bus tomorrow. It is strange, being just a visitor to your own home, isn’t it?

Writer’s block

I once heard that the great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once had a writers’ block, and it was the worst ten minutes of his life. Apparently, my writer’s blocks last much longer than Asimov’s. You know what it is like when you simply stare at the blinking cursor for minutes together, wondering when it would move rightwards in a flow of Times New Roman characters…I felt in such a mood for a really long time. Maybe its because life has changed dramatically, that I am no longer as contemplative as I once was. It was then I remembered these lines from the movie Finding Neverland, which finally brought me back to the keyboard again:

Peter: I still have no idea what to write.
J.M. Barrie: Write about anything. Write about your family, write about the talking whale!
Peter: What whale?
J.M. Barrie: The one that’s trapped in your imagination and desperate to get out.

Sharp and crisp, don’t you think?