It’s been a while since I last wrote, and I know the reason why. I’ve been busy. It takes a lot of time to think clearly. For some time now, I have been aware of a certain fuzziness in my thoughts that wasn’t there when I was in sabbatical in Jabalpur.
It seems that an artist needs to suffer if he (Pardon the ‘he’ instead of he/she, it’s just easier to write) is to create something. Happiness is just not conducive to art. My huge edifices of thought that I built up in Jabalpur were due to the result of intense conflict, and struggle. I have never risen to a greater height, and am woefully aware of my inadequacy now.
Nonetheless, I have felt some creative urges coming up in me for some time now. But this means that I have to struggle to fit in time for creativity, into an already overburdened schedule. I’ve cut off superfluous interests, and still don’t’ have time for what I have left. I’ve given up chess, for me, the most poignant and romantic game. I’ve given up Japanese, and any new language. I’ve given up painting as well. And yet, I struggle to find time to play the guitar and sing, do my Tai chi, and read as well. Now I must juggle one more activity.
Nonetheless, it seems I have been learning. Apart from the huge learning in my office, and professional life, I’ve been tasting the undiluted experiences of being in a committed relationship. I haven’t yet got much time for reflection on what I’ve been going through, because I’m still going through it. There are several challenges. Getting used to the fact that the person you live with has their own life, and their own personality, separate from yours, trying to juggle your work life and personal life, coming to terms with the other persons character traits, and accepting them for what they are.
I’ve also been relearning things about myself that I had forgotten. It’s not as if the relationship has taught me anything I didn’t know about per se, but just that I’m now walking the talk.
I’ve been doing my fair share of reading as well. I think my new favorite author is Feodor Dostoevsky. I had given the guy a whirl with Crime and Punishment, earlier, and thought nothing great of him. But when I read ‘Brothers Karamazov’, I was blown away. The man is a genius. His insight into human psychology is worthy of a Freud.
On the other hand, I’ve almost finished reading ‘Anne of the Green Gables’, by Lucy Maud Montgomery. It reminds me of how much I have lost.
I was walking home yesterday after a particularly rotten day at work (On a Sunday dammit), and it suddenly occurred to me that when I was peaceful in Jabalpur, I didn’t know the people I am working with now, and I hadn’t conceived of the project I am involved in now, and at that time, even without knowing about them, I was perfectly content. So surely they could not be that important. I look upon my Jabalpur experience, full of pitfalls though it was, as the time when I was closest to myself. And maybe wisest, though I have the feeling that after all my recent experiences, I will be wiser still, at some date after I have assimilated all that I have been through. Time.
So after this realization, I slowed down my walk, and began to look around with a lighter heart, and all at once I noticed things on the road that I had missed before, even though I have been travelling that very same road for 16 years now. A little bust of some guy, (a stud, I have no doubt) at the corner, a gap between houses filled with sand, beyond which there was a wall, which just invited climbing over and exploring, dozens of little alleyways, which some child will call home one day, and look back on with fond memories. It was delightful, and for a moment, I caught that which I had missed. Myself.