Rhetoric has answers if you write them yourself.

I contemplated destiny a few months ago. I tore my hair apart with existential angst. I threw some questions out in the open. I thought their characteristic rhetoric will prevent me from finding answers. I thought I’ll never see the light at the end of the tunnel. Who knew someone had switched it off to save the world from global warming?

But seriously, when you think you are waiting for Godot, you know it’s an eternal wait and you habitually suppress all expressions of hope to go on with the life you hate. I did that for a long time. Until I was pushed to the very depths of depression. Until I realised that Godot was actually Mohammed in religious disguise. So I stopped waiting. And I went to Mohammed to find Godot hiding inside a coffee cup.

It was one end-of-the-road afternoon in a backyard coffee shop when a colleague and I looked into each other’s eyes and instinctively said yes. Yes to pulling all stops and beginning life anew. Yes to saying no to everything we had begun to loathe about the industry that employed us. Yes to continue giving it all to the profession we loved. But by stepping out of the confines of orthodoxy and mediocrity. By running away from bonded labour to start a veritable sweatshop of our own.

We began by defining our own rules. By waking up and promising ourselves we’d live our dreams. By swearing we’d find those darned answers ourselves. So we answered our “Then What” by letting go of a seemingly comfortable escapist existence and grabbing hold of a high risk low investment venture; our “Where Do We Go From Here” by going to all our friends and sharing our plans with them; and our “What Do We Do For Money” by crossing our fingers and hoping like hell that this would make us rich.

It’s been a ride through Hurricane Katrina and Tsunami Sunitha ever since. A race against time to learn new skills and refine old ones. An enormous shoechange from the hushed Havaiannas of an introspective writer to the modish Manolos of an aggressive entrepreneur. And a psychic peep through the eye of the storm shows our future smiling back at us.

I wouldn’t say it is something I should have done ages ago. But it sure is the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. Well, what else can I tell you? 1 month. 10 clients. No monies (yet). But all the peace in the world. I think I can safely say I’ve finally found the means to buy my soul back.

It's a black hole at the end of the rainbow.

I am rapidly scanning a friend's friend's website with photographs of famous Bangaloreans. And suddenly life is as clear as black and white. I am never going to grow up to be one of them. My name is not going to go up on that wall. And my mug shot is not going to sit on that table.

Surprisingly, I am not too disturbed by that thought. Is it supposed to be abnormal? Not for me, it's not. I know fame doesn't come from a burning desire to become famous. Or from focussing all of life's energies into doing something just to top all of shallow society’s over-the-top popularity charts. All I am interested in is doing what I do best and doing it better than anyone else.

Now that's something I could grow up to be good at. Sure enough, it’s a long way from here. Knowing that I don't know enough makes it even longer. But it's a start nevertheless. I don’t really know if that will make me famous. And when I see the number of big blokes next to me who fart through their eyes, eat with 10 fingers and stick ‘em all up their nostrils, talk pretty to dumb blondes and dirty behind everyone’s backs and get backpatted all the way to the top, I don’t even know if I want to be famous.

I’d rather sit on a random table in an obscure corner and watch the world stage the biggest and longest running show that can send Broadway and Nukkad to the back alley. With scripts more complicated than a coffee-table conversation with all the saas-bahus in the world, plots more twisted than intertwined Mobius strips, people outperforming themselves to outcast others and decibel levels beating on eardrums, what with the whole world rehearsing acceptance speeches, surely such exhibitionism needs an audience. And it's one role that would fit me like a red satin glove.

So while I am at it, I might even end up in Raghav Sreyas’s Table by the Window. The next time you race a speeding yellow auto to meet the old and the new and old and young Bangaloreans at Koshy’s, you can see my ghost-like image hiding behind the shadows, in the out-of-focus background on the right-hand corner that forms a blind spot in most photographs. Just so you don’t miss me, I’ll be wearing Prada.

The end is the beginning of the end.

I don't like watching movie trailers. Or reading book reviews.

Because I start seeing things in my head. I see an off-white mongrel with a black eye-patch and a muddied tan, sunbathing atop an antique wooden recliner in the red-cemented front yard on a hot, dusty afternoon; the languid and chronic creaking of the punkha 20 feet above ground level, blowing warm wafts of air in 5.65-minute intervals; the hard-boiled heat piercing through sloping asbestos sheets that paint the white, dog-paw stained walls with a golden glow; the monotonous hiss of the broom sweeping away the sand, the leaves and all the ill will out of gigantic gates that temporarily enclose the free, innocent minds of the little imps who just arrived on ship from England and who dot the summer skyline of every home in Mount Lavinia. All this, the moment I read "Ceylon, 1942" at the backside of a book.

I begin to hear voices that tell me that Jason Raj Malhotra Bourne does not die in the movie. So when I see him exposing his macho, hairy chest with the tattoo of his mother’s name on it, and supposedly dying after the attack of a dozen baddies and their clones wielding AK-47s and shaking with evil laughter to aid the trajectory of the aimless bullets, I know that in the end, he will come out of a hole at the other end of the world, change his identity with a thick, bushy, curled-up moustache so that even his Siamese twin won’t recognise him and will round up the said baddies and their clones who were happily celebrating his death by chewing on groundnuts and with deft dishoom-dishooms, will drag them to their graves after mouthing vengeance-for-past-atrocities-induced blood-curdling soliloquies.

And so, I shut my eyes tight and stick my fingers in my ear and mumble prayer-like mutterings to drown out the majestic baritone that has made many a voice over artist rich by simply uttering inconsequential inanities like "Before the end of the world, there will rise a hero who will save mankind from doom" (and womankind from Paris Hilton's unreal reality shows), the whip-whoosh of graphic supers appearing faster than the speed of light and disappearing behind your ears, and the fast-paced theme song of the flick that gets faster and faster as it progresses from title sequence to background music for racy car chases that are scripted with the sole intention of being ranked the fastest car chase in Anyletter+ollywood history. Similarly, I shut my eyes and flip a book that’s lying face down.

More than anything, I hate the fact that a 3-hour or a 300-page work of art can be stripped naked and made to stand in front of a highly opinionated audience who will waste no time in making judgements from what they can see or read in 3 seconds. It's an insult to the art form and the artists. To the author and his imagination.

If life can be surmised with a mere Veni, Vidi, Vici, why would we spend hours in a queue before the opening of a big show? Or wait a year in advance for a popular book to release. And if we really do all that, why take the life out of it by knowing well in advance who dies on Page 436?

Contemplating destiny

I’m stuck in limbo. All I can see are questions. I know the answers to some but they don’t exactly solve anything for me. And when I find answers to the others, I know I’ll be hit by more questions. It’s a worrisome state this. When you begin to question your own existence.

After years of selling my soul to a profession that hasn’t given me anything in return, I’m beginning to wonder if I should pull all stops and begin life anew. ‘Yes’ would be an answer I could start with. But it’s not that simple, is it? A ‘Yes’ leads to a blatant “Then what?”, an existential “Where do I go from here and what do I do with my experience, my supposed expertise?”, a discarnate “What then of finding a deeper purpose, a meaning to life?” and a more pragmatic “What do I do for money?”. In the end, it takes me back to square one. A potential nowhere. A place I’d rather leave a.s.a.p. But for those darned answers.

Tongue-tied and Text-twisted

I have a blog site. I should be blogging at least once a day, if not every 22nd minute like most bloggers do. But I’d rather play Text Twist than think of something to blog about. As I write this, I can see precious seconds eroding in front of my eyes. Seconds that I can spend scoring another round at the endless game that I am hopelessly addicted to.

I’m so addicted, I open the page almost as soon as I walk into office every morning. It’s what I am seen doing when anyone walks over to my table at any time of the day. I’m so addicted, I’ve even gone beyond trying to minimise the window when someone walks past. Even if it's the CD. Or the MD. I’m so addicted, I can't keep my hands off it even as I am trying to type this piece. I’m so addicted I hear letters when people speak. I’m so addicted, I can spell add, aid, ace, aced, ate, eat, tea, ted, tie, tied, die, did, dad, died, diet, edit, date, dated, dead, dice, diced, ice, iced, cad, cat, cite, cited, ade and addict from ADDICTED. All in less than 10 secs.

So, why do I do it? 'Cos I don't have anything better to do. Rather I don't think there's anything better than mindlessly spelling out words from the same sets of letters. I have done it so many times that I know the exact combinations I need to type, to fill in all the empty squares. And I can do it with my eyes closed. Yes, I’ve tried that as well.

I genuinely think it’s a psycho-something problem. And like all psycho-anything-osis date back to intense childhood trauma, I am self-diagnosing that deep down somewhere, I still haven’t gotten over my parents whispering in letters when they didn’t want me figuring out what they were saying. And so I resort to Text Twist as a way of getting back at them.

So now, if you'll excuse me, I have a lot of getting back to do. About the blog, it’s just too bad I can spell only bog and log from it.

The inadequacy of feeling Less.

The world is less than perfect. I can live with that. But what I cannot come to terms with, is feeling less than comfortable with myself. And somehow, that’s how I feel right now.

The Lessness of being has come to haunt me increasingly in my waking hours. The pointLess pursuit of satisfaction in a job. The meaningLess much ado about everything material. The useLess universal truth that urges us not to think beyond ourselves. The senseLess stupidity in expecting others to understand that this the way I am. The ruthLessly rising ratio of people and circumstances that make me feel totally worthLess and utterly ridicuLess in front of the world.

They say that in order for me to feel less Less, I need focus. That I cannot walk around without a clue in my head about what to do with my life. That I need to set targets, aims, goalposts, milestones, deadlines, ends of the road, destinations. And move towards one of the above, before it leaves me thoroughly confused about which road to take.

They say I need purpose. That everything I do must have some meaning to it. That the world has meaning. That nature, nations, nincompoops, love, laughter, leeches, armenians, art, arteriosclerosis, science, sledgehammers, sycophants, serial killers, even the birds and the bees, they all have meaning. And that I just cannot spend six and a half hours on getting a painfully beautiful tattoo that doesn’t say anything about me.

They say I need money. That I cannot spend long hours at work, doing what I like best and be satisfied with what I get. That it’s the age of asking for and even demanding more than what I deserve just because innumerable incompetent imbeciles are drawing more salaries than I’d ever earn in a lifetime. That it’s not about survival anymore, but about acquiring apartments, cars, expensive holidays, wealth and the wrath of our neighbours. That if I am not rich and famous by the time I am thirty, I should either resort to pretending that I am rich and famous or that I ain’t thirty yet.

They say I am not aggressive enough. That doing my work quietly is not sufficient until I shout out from leaking rooftops that I am doing my work. That humility and silence mean stupidity and snobbery, in that order. That I should have been born in the 70s and that I am just not smart enough to keep up with this speedy world.

They say I am not good enough. All the time. Always making me feel Less and Less good about myself.

And when they’ve said it all, they say I need a baby.

But they just don’t let me be. And what I am is a drifter. A nomad. A bohemian. A rolling stone. An offbeat tune. With no ambitions. No aim. No meaning. No purpose. No passions. No opinions. No biases. No qualms. No hassles. No greed. No hatred. And no intentions of making babies.

All I really have is a mind that is open to anything the world throws at me. And a heart that is a sucker for the people I love and the profession I love. But it seems that's not enough. It seems there’s more to life than just giving.

So while I blindly listen to everyone around me, I begin to live their lives too. Because that’s what they want. They want me to see what they see, taste what they taste, feel what they feel, live the way they do.

Perhaps that’s why I feel so inadequate. In this tug-of-war with the world, I have become so elastic, that I’ve forgotten the touch of my own skin. I’ve lost my sense of self. I’ve lost my spirit. I’ve lost my innocence. I’ve lost hope. I feel like I am living with something missing. In a vacuum. Somewhere between the stranglehold of suppression and the open arms of expression. It’s leaving me so empty, I’ve forgotten about the part of me that makes me me.

But I know it’s only a matter of time before I get back on track. Before I turn a deaf ear to the world, turn over and go to sleep. Before I go back to being myself again.

And when I do, I will know that the more we long for, the Less we live.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

There used to be a time when that was the best line we copywriters could come up with. Probably because no one really knew what it meant.

This is dummy copy. That’s the closest we got to saying it in the language we knew. Layout after layouts came and went, with beautifully set text in just the right amount of space required of the body copy. Which had only one thing to say. This is dummy copy.

But we didn’t stop there. We wrote good dummy copy. We filled ads and brochures and annual reports with inane gobbledygook. Absolute mumbo jumbo that alternated between erudite prose and dreamy poetry. Before it staggered back to drivel that could drive any Copy Supe up the wall.

The good thing about putting our hearts (Not our souls. We had cut them into little pieces and sold it to the group head, the creative director, the account executive, the client servicing director, the media executive, the branch head, the research agency, the hundreds of housewives in fake focus groups, the brand manager, the big client and the big client’s wife who has the final word.) into writing nonsense was, that no one read it. It was a secret that only copywriters shared, while exchanging silent smiles when we bumped into each other on our way in and out of the creative know-it-all director’s cabin.

Besides, it acted as a secret weapon in our endless battle against the suits. So that when they insisted on telling us what to write, we could thrust our personal masterpieces in front of their eyes and mumble meekly (when we were actually dancing the tappankoothu), “You turned a blind eye to this. Smirk. So why should it matter what goes into the ad? Smirk. Smirk.”

But at the end of the day, we wrote so much dummy copy that we finally figured how to write. It was the one thing that kept us living. When as trainees, we weren’t supposed to have lives. ‘Cos we were scummier than the black muck stuck between the nail on the little toe on the left foot of anyone else in the agency. When after hours and hours of proof checking actual ads and brochures and annual reports, our sight went so wonky, that the only way to get it back on track was by staring at the black muck stuck between the nail on the little toe on the left foot of anyone else in the agency.

I chanced upon “lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” after many moons and I almost began to think the art of writing dummy copy has died. But on second thoughts, methinks it’s in fact a thriving business.

It's called blogging.

To blog or not to blog.

My answer was no. For a long time. And I found plenty of reasons to keep away.

Blog? Nah. I don’t blog.

In a very nose-up-in-the-air, I-don’t-believe-in-doing-what-everyone-does sort of way. Or like it was something my mom did and I didn’t want to be thought of as oh-so-last-generation. And so dissent met commentary and I resorted to violent dysentery every time someone even whispered blog.

Blogism. Solipsism. Not my cuppa teaism.

I believed blogging was a self-induced need in everyone to satisfy one’s self-indulgence. A “read-me, read-me” phenomenon, which I didn’t want no part of. I was not pro-publicity. I never was. And I wasn’t going to turn into some extroverted over-the-top self-obsessed pseudo-significant egotist all of a sudden.

Anyone with any sense in their heads doesn’t blog.

The pages and pages of limitless word-spewing. The hours and hours of mind-speaking. The raving. The ranting. The mind-numbing. The mind-fucking. Why would a sensible bloke waste so much energy? And where does he find so much time to waste?

Me? I am too passive. Dispassionate. I read. But I don’t have a Catcher in the Rye to swear by. I watch plenty of movies. But frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. I couldn’t be bothered about what ate Gilbert’s grape, who framed Roger rabbit and where all the copywriters have gone. And I wasn’t going to pretend it mattered.

But that’s only what it all sounded like. Truth be told, it was the exact opposite. I didn’t think I was too big for a blogger’s shoes. No. In fact, I thought I was micro-tiny. Too insignificant. A mini maggot in blogmire. Such a small speck, I might as well not exist.

More than anything, I was too shy to speak my mind. What if no one liked what I wrote? What if people thought I couldn’t write? What if I begin to question my living as a writer? What if? What if? There were too many self-denying what ifs, Goliaths and holy cows out there. And they scared the shit out of me.

Then it struck me. I am not here to make a point. I am not here to be read. And I have no intention to make this public. At least, not yet.

So, I choose to remain a small speck. Like that tree in the forest that fell when no one heard it, I am here to write about nothing. And for no one. So do I exist at all?

That’s for me to decide. But now, I have a new fear to face every day. And a new face to fear when I look at the blog-me in the mirror.