Sui Generis

I realised something. Sitting in the departure hall of terminal two in Heathrow two hours early, I read a book -- Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto -- to kill time. Opposite me are a British (I think) couple, probably in their fifties, with eyes peering through their spectacles at the ipads held between their slightly stubby fingers. And here I am, reading a small, thin novella, 150 pages, with a glaringly pink cover. As my own tired eyes (five hours in the bus is no joke) and foggy mind struggled to comprehend the printed words, relaxing and unwinding, a thought, quiet as a passing whisper, struck me like a gong. I've always enjoyed reading physical books where I can touch, flip its pages and smell them, feel its weight in my hands. Electronic devices like tablets have been introducing new features with each new model; the feeling of flipping a page, the sound of flipping the page, all without the hassle of weight and with extra capacity. But, obviously the very experience of reading an...

I've not been writing a lot lately, and have even found writing to be an utter chore thanks to having to meet deadlines and keeping to rigid, specific styles that 'sound' correct. I've forgotten what it felt like to write from the heart. I guess you could say I'd lost that certain spark from long ago. I've been watching films for inspiration while doing my writing assignments, and right now as well (when I should be writing my quota of 1000 words a day). I've watched about four films this week when I usually wouldn't even watch a film a month. I have to say this has really helped me out of my 'creative drought', as I would call it. I watched Whispers of The Heart  just now and I was utterly surprised at how it took me back to my high school days when I was obsessed with writing stories in my many brown, exercise books. I didn't care about the grammar, or whether it sounded 'correct', but I was all bent on spilling my heart and soul ...

Imagine yourself at a library. You’re walking past the many shelves of books and come to the section of your favourite genre. Your eyes scan the many titles of a various thickness and size, written by thousands of authors. Your index finger brush against the spines of books that sit neatly arranged in rows for its next reader to take home. You pick the first book out —intrigued by its title— open its cover, flip a few pages, and return it to its place. It wasn't a book you wanted to invest your time in. You move on to the next one that catches your fancy. This one has pages slightly weathered, its cover dented in a couple of pages and some stains that could possibly be coffee. Or brown paint. The bright colour of the cover had taken your attention. You do the same: take it off the shelf, give it a quick glance over, then shaking your head you put it back. This continues on for the next several books. After what seems like a long time, you’re worn out, feeling hopeless that yo...

I do suppose it's that time of the year again, where reflection is, I would say, the most adequate to do. 2015 has been a blessed year. When I mean blessed, I mean for myself. I've been given crazy opportunities to travel; far more than I can ever dream. It may have given me a brand new perspective in life -- a new mind, perhaps. At least that's what I hope I've acquired after all that. Thinking back on the year, I do suppose I've achieved a lot. I graduated with a second-upper; made my family, friends, and myself proud. I traveled parts of Europe; an experience I never imagined myself doing. I spent ten beautiful days in Japan; a dream I had convinced myself wasn't going to happen, but it did. I was accepted for that Masters degree; an opportunity I've never considered taking, but did. Wonderful relationships were made, celebrated and mourned over; a truly humbling experience. The world is also not without it's fair share of increasingly frequent...

Don't let a person with a cold heart fool you. They were once warm too Till the coldness of fear came and  held it firmly in its steely claws. Or perhaps, They heard stories Of how cruel the world is And shut themselves in. Slowly they begin to change First their thoughts Then their actions And their words When there is nothing left They wished they were warm Again. But it was far too late, For they felt nothing. All there was,  Was ice And the long chill settles after a blizzard.

‘Mama, my feet are cold.’ ‘Come warm your little toes by the fire, darling.’ I’ve always had cold feet. Colder than anyone else’s. Though not corpse-cold, but enough to have to keep wearing thrice the layers of socks as  anyone else during winter, and occasionally during the warmer months. When I became a teenager, my cold feet syndrome  kept me from joining the others in the pool, fearing I would catch a case of frostbite. Or rather, just about anything that required removing my shoes, basically. ‘Why are her toes purple?’ ‘They look like they’re about to fall off.’ ‘Maybe she’s a zombie.’ Or rather, I was just afraid. Of everyone else. It wasn’t as though I had no friends. I made plenty. There was a girl, Marie. She was just as different as I was. She had cold hands, like dead fish. And another, whose name was Lydia, had a complexion so pale, she could’ve very well been a vampire. Together, we set our own rules and ab...

Life just isn't fair, is how it used to strike me. Some people can work their butts off and never get what they're aiming for, while others get it without any effort at all. [...] I think this viewpoint applies as well to the job of the novelist. Writers who are blessed with inborn talent can freely write novels no matter what they do--or don't do. Like water from a natural spring, the sentences just well up, and with little or no effort these writers can complete a work. Occasionally you'll find someone like that, but, unfortunately, that category wouldn't include me. I haven't spotted any springs nearby. I have to pound the rock with a chisel and dig a deep hole before I can locate the source of creativity. [...] But as I've sustained this kind of life over many years, I've become quite efficient, both technically and physically, at opening up a new hole in the rock and locating a new water vein. As soon as I notice one water source drying up, I can mo...

A freshly procured book - complete with that new-book smell - is like an open puzzle, eagerly awaiting its reader to take it apart and recreate something entirely different. Would you deny it its aching aspiration? Because, honestly, what proves your existence more than a book with traces of you in it? At that precise moment, when you write even a single letter on its pages, you are the only one in the entire world who owns a book like that. That book is yours to claim as one of a kind because you wrote in it. So make that book yours - your own personal means of understanding the world and the people in it. Scribble in it. Write notes in its margins. Underline words that resonate. Don't fear defacing your precious literature. In the end, what is an empty canvas worth? A lived-in book serves more purpose than a brand new one that appears as though it has never been touched.  And after all that, you'll find yourself feeling impossible to read that book the same way agai...