Many times over the past week I have thought of writing about certain moments of the last few months that have come to hold a certain meaning for me. I save draft after draft--all of them empty, and soon these memories would most likely fade away too, much like my (ever dwindling) motivation to sit down and finish four posts in one day.
I've wanted to write about how on a cloudy, noisy (as is quite uncommon within the confines of our college) Saturday evening I went with two of my friends (insofar as walking less than a kilometre to near the chemistry lab to spend thirty minutes detailing memes of days past can be termed as 'went') for a cup of coffee and to discuss the sorry states of our lives before a quiz. I went into sorriness overdrive, then, and ended up drinking two cups of coffee. (After that I went into caffeine overdrive and became a pretentious pale-faced pixie who believed she could still sing well.) My friend subsequently called up at least five people frenziedly to ask if they were bunking German class (they weren't, much to his dismay and annoyance--he did, anyway).
I've also wanted to write about how three of us sat under the tree behind the girls' lobby (known to most of us first years primarily as 'The Tree'), made weird faces, and Snapchatted them to every batchmate of ours within a Snapchatting radius. Or how as I walked along the road beside our mess hall, at midnight, while reading a presentation about meiosis, then went inside (my fingers were frozen; I was scared my arteries would burst, quite frankly) to find people I see solemnly entering class every morning--to their own credit, and to that of their roommates'--dancing and clapping their arses off (bad imagery?) because it was someone's birthday.
Birthday celebrations here deface the cake more than the person whose (un)lucky day it is, contrary to vox populi. A sad wastage of delicious, sumptuous, luxurious chocolate and vanilla frosting, if you ask me. Not that I don't deface the cake myself, sometimes, when everybody else pastes frosting onto the person's face, like rouge, except here, the purpose is seldom beautification.
Occasionally I have felt like detailing the impact a single pizza box had at around eight at night, when I was (as far as I remember) starving and about to treat (read relegate) myself to an extraordinary amount of paneer and butter-less tandoori roti, while my roommate would look on with increasing doses of wistful nonchalance (at the paneer, not the pizza--I shared the pizza, I'm not a jerk) while she finished her masala dosa and rolled her eyes at a friend who said she wasted food. Pizza is love, pizza is life. Pizza is elixir. With soda (in particular, Sprite--my dad introduced me to Sprite when I was seven and just beginning to explore the legendary and much-lauded world of cold drinks) and a bit of that yellow garlic sauce you get at Papa John's, pizza and I would be a match made in heaven.
Writing about these lone (or not) incidences is quite an arduous task, however--not in that one does not find the right words to describe them, but because how do you distill all this into words on a page? It seems almost as if you are disregarding the sanctity of what happened; you expect that, through a series of not-so-finely divided letters and spaces, you will convey adequately to a reader what those happenings mean to you and your cronies. After thinking about all this, the question that might bug your entrails the most is: why do we write at all?
Do we write as a method of self-actualization? To stand out from the pack? If everyone wants to stand out of 'the pack' (what is the pack?), would not the action itself become meaningless? Do we write to be remembered, and if yes, why do we think that people will remember something they read on a random blog post ten years ago, and who wrote it? Memories become hazy over time, and truth and perspectives are too relative. Do we write for the others in our lives or for ourselves? Do we write as selfish skunks try to spray mercaptans all over our beautiful gardens, or do we write to serve?
Maybe, as is with everything, each of us writes for a different purpose. Some of us write because we want to share our happiness, some to share their pain, yet others write because they see no reason not to. I think I write because I fear that I'd forget these things someday; and that day would be a sad, sad day (sadder than most others, anyway). The only thing we could do, I believe, is to keep writing, so that when we are old and about to leave our planet and universe behind, we could give the keys to a secret drawer to our children, and their children, and tell them, this is where you will find my heart when I am gone. This is where you will find me: in my writings. Writings never perish; as long as words live on, so do we. And it might so happen that one day, when I am but another star amongst a million others in the night sky, someone might look up and say it was nice to have a cup of coffee.
I've wanted to write about how on a cloudy, noisy (as is quite uncommon within the confines of our college) Saturday evening I went with two of my friends (insofar as walking less than a kilometre to near the chemistry lab to spend thirty minutes detailing memes of days past can be termed as 'went') for a cup of coffee and to discuss the sorry states of our lives before a quiz. I went into sorriness overdrive, then, and ended up drinking two cups of coffee. (After that I went into caffeine overdrive and became a pretentious pale-faced pixie who believed she could still sing well.) My friend subsequently called up at least five people frenziedly to ask if they were bunking German class (they weren't, much to his dismay and annoyance--he did, anyway).
I've also wanted to write about how three of us sat under the tree behind the girls' lobby (known to most of us first years primarily as 'The Tree'), made weird faces, and Snapchatted them to every batchmate of ours within a Snapchatting radius. Or how as I walked along the road beside our mess hall, at midnight, while reading a presentation about meiosis, then went inside (my fingers were frozen; I was scared my arteries would burst, quite frankly) to find people I see solemnly entering class every morning--to their own credit, and to that of their roommates'--dancing and clapping their arses off (bad imagery?) because it was someone's birthday.
Birthday celebrations here deface the cake more than the person whose (un)lucky day it is, contrary to vox populi. A sad wastage of delicious, sumptuous, luxurious chocolate and vanilla frosting, if you ask me. Not that I don't deface the cake myself, sometimes, when everybody else pastes frosting onto the person's face, like rouge, except here, the purpose is seldom beautification.
Occasionally I have felt like detailing the impact a single pizza box had at around eight at night, when I was (as far as I remember) starving and about to treat (read relegate) myself to an extraordinary amount of paneer and butter-less tandoori roti, while my roommate would look on with increasing doses of wistful nonchalance (at the paneer, not the pizza--I shared the pizza, I'm not a jerk) while she finished her masala dosa and rolled her eyes at a friend who said she wasted food. Pizza is love, pizza is life. Pizza is elixir. With soda (in particular, Sprite--my dad introduced me to Sprite when I was seven and just beginning to explore the legendary and much-lauded world of cold drinks) and a bit of that yellow garlic sauce you get at Papa John's, pizza and I would be a match made in heaven.
Writing about these lone (or not) incidences is quite an arduous task, however--not in that one does not find the right words to describe them, but because how do you distill all this into words on a page? It seems almost as if you are disregarding the sanctity of what happened; you expect that, through a series of not-so-finely divided letters and spaces, you will convey adequately to a reader what those happenings mean to you and your cronies. After thinking about all this, the question that might bug your entrails the most is: why do we write at all?
Do we write as a method of self-actualization? To stand out from the pack? If everyone wants to stand out of 'the pack' (what is the pack?), would not the action itself become meaningless? Do we write to be remembered, and if yes, why do we think that people will remember something they read on a random blog post ten years ago, and who wrote it? Memories become hazy over time, and truth and perspectives are too relative. Do we write for the others in our lives or for ourselves? Do we write as selfish skunks try to spray mercaptans all over our beautiful gardens, or do we write to serve?
Maybe, as is with everything, each of us writes for a different purpose. Some of us write because we want to share our happiness, some to share their pain, yet others write because they see no reason not to. I think I write because I fear that I'd forget these things someday; and that day would be a sad, sad day (sadder than most others, anyway). The only thing we could do, I believe, is to keep writing, so that when we are old and about to leave our planet and universe behind, we could give the keys to a secret drawer to our children, and their children, and tell them, this is where you will find my heart when I am gone. This is where you will find me: in my writings. Writings never perish; as long as words live on, so do we. And it might so happen that one day, when I am but another star amongst a million others in the night sky, someone might look up and say it was nice to have a cup of coffee.
