Perhaps I'm being inspired to just write freely because of a co-blogger who has also just done so. To be honest, it's something I've very much missed in my own writing. The capacity to simply write freely, without being reticent. Reticence has somehow continually crept in and made itself a home in my writing, and I guess those who are my writers would perhaps perceive this in their own ways, noting how I tend to write quite ambiguously.
Now after all the months and years, I'm not entirely certain I can dissect the way I write: ambiguity and reticence seem so entwined together they are almost one, and both are entirely part of who I am, at least the who I am that is me, the writer.
See what I mean? I'm not able to just write "simply", I suppose, as someone once complained. And this may come as a surprise to a few of you: my writing self and my conversational self are two different people. I'm very outgoing and plain-spoken when I speak in person. I'm not spouting profound soundbites or big words. I, in fact, find it difficult to convert complex thoughts into spoken word; perhaps it is that additional inconvenience of having to send extra neurosensory commands to the areas of my brain that are responsible for the physical movement of my mouth. That capacity isn't as agile as my that of simply converting thoughts to written words, through my fingers. Maybe I should practice.
And this reminds me of another thing I lack in practice: speaking hindi. I've often told most people that I sound so horribly 'gora' when I try, that I don't try. It's embarrassingly faux pas, in a way. But I am not really able to speak it aloud, because I don't really have much practice, and I don't practice simply because I sound so gauche. Another Catch-22 of sorts.
The odd thing is I am again more confident with reading and writing the language - even the script - as long as it stays in my head. And then again, I'm able to sing hindi songs and apparently sound like I'm well spoken in the language, but then again that may be because I do have practice singing Hindi (from a very young age) versus simply speaking it.
And seeing as I'm on the theme of ironies in life, this one also just occurred to me. After years of urging a certain friend to stop eating take-out food all the time, and try to make something at home, I realized how things have changed when I'm now urging them to take a break from cooking everyday and order something from outside.
There is definitely something truly profound I could unearth from all these observations -- it's tingling back in the recess of my mind and waiting for me to come open that door and explore, but for some reason, I'm not going to. Put it down to mental lethargy perhaps, ..but it's not even just that. I don't know, but there you have it.
