A Writing Room

Dear Reader,

I don’t have a poem today. While poem-ing has been my main occupation this month (from reading to writing verses), I am not much of a routine-person. It’s not a concept I enjoy. Being this way brings its own share of miseries, but not being this way will perhaps bring an unfathomable agony. It’s not like I haven’t tried to be a creature of habit, but only to fail miserably.

I’d say I’m lucky to be able to choose the luxury of being this way. But more than that, it’s a rebellion of sorts. Against everything that follows a system, everything that tells you if you aren’t a certain way you aren’t getting anywhere. So, my inner compass almost always, points in an opposite direction.

Hence, no matter what, I am going to poem the way I want to. And if you tell me long poems are the flavour of this season, be sure to find me writing single-line verses. Why just routine, I think even obedience isn’t my cup of tea.

I have been adequately complemented by a nonconformist life partner. The problem with challenging the status quo arises when it’s not you doing it! A den of mavericks isn’t always an ideal place to be.

Consider the ones in my terrace garden. The pothos will scale all the heights not meant for it, the red ixora ignores all pruning, throwing its red clusters everywhere, and the coleus refuses any sort of form or shape. I am tired of the Sisyphean futility of trying to tame them. They have their own logic that I jokingly call the sun and shade logic. But whatever they do, even if it’s at the cost of disobeying my rules, I cannot deny it works. Sometimes it’s best to follow your heart. If nothing else, you aren’t drowned by anxiety, societal pressures and an internal feud of sorts.

What gets me to talk about my plants today is a lovely book by Anuradha Roy that I just finished. Called by the Hills is a memoir about the author’s migration to the tiny suburban Himalayan town of Ranikhet. But to enjoy this detailed prose about the flora and fauna and the inconsequential population of animals and people in a town with few inhabitants, one must have either seen that kind of life or should be contemplating it at some point in time. Or, if none of these, you should have an affinity for mundane living. I borrow the title of this post from a chapter in the book in which the author details how she was once asked by a reputed magazine to send her picture and they shared sample images from other authors, which were all in very writerly nooks of their homes. She lays down her struggle with capturing such a corner in her very tiny house, which must wrestle with the vagaries of a hill town—sudden rains, leaking roofs, incorrigible langurs and other things. It got me thinking. I move every two years due to my husband’s job and have struggled to find a peaceful writing space for myself. Mostly, I manage to put a table in our bedroom bereft of books or shelves because there’s only that much space in the accommodation co-inhabited by people who are like chalk and cheese and must fit very different things in the same room. With my plans to move to the hills in a few years taking some shape, a writing space is at the top of my head. I don’t think foreign magazines will vie for my picture in a very posh writing room, so that’s not really the target, but perhaps only the ‘Virginian fulfilment’ of a dream. Or, maybe the room will pester me towards a routine and make me a purist writer, who knows!

If you’d like to read a handful of poems that I’ve written this month, please read HYPERMETROPIA, TANKA TIME, TO THE GOD OF SENILE MEN, BECAUSE I CANNOT BE SPRING

Until we meet again, the river will continue to cut its own canyon.