Category: Neerja’s Writing Desk

Pieces and articles written in english.

Loss and its after effects

When a loved one goes away life seems empty and incomplete, but when a loved one is gone forever life just stops making sense. I will forever abhor 2016 for the teaching me this clear distinction.

You may find, in the first instance, that many things do not please you as much as they did before. Nothing will please you in the second. You will seek out distractions and industry in either case but in the first instance, you will find that you are thankful for it. However, mourning a loss of life tends to make you feel guilty and remorseful and ashamed at times for the same.

No matter how melancholy you are at the parting of a dear friend, you will never stop to find the resilience of life wonderous (or jarring or dismaying) instead you just marvel at the resilience of your heart and shake your head. A loss of life that was part of your own, will make you loathe that same resilience.

Then again, time is supposed to vanquish the first wound and only partially heal the other.

To all my friends and loved ones near and far, I say this, if I appear not my usual self, pardon me and bear with me, for I am finding navigating through a loss a whole lot more to handle that I ever imagined.

To my papa, I want to say this –

“The love where Death has set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
Nor falsehood disavow.”

Pitfalls of Fame and Wealth based Role Models

It has been pointed out that, those who have the ability to reach a large audience and influence people’s viewpoint, have an obligation to act responsibly.

Not every one, no.

Wanting to look up to people and seek guidance, direction, insights, hints, tips, what have you, seems to be an incurable human condition. The trajectory is laughably predictable, we enamor ourselves of an idea, locate some one who, in our eyes, embodies it, then proceed to create a pedestal, place the person on it and finally, inevitably, getting disappointed and enraged, demolish the altar and the statue; only to start all over again.

We did that with people with abilities ranging from physical, intellectual, mystical, and ideological; then we started settling with people who could speak well and organize and then, settled on those who seemed to amass wealth and fame. Inexorably then, at some point we, as a society, looked at our paid entertainers and found them appropriate role models.

We bestowed upon them our keen attention, bordering on devotion really, and wide-eyed enthralled following and somewhere along the way forgot, just simply forgot, that these are, when all is said and done, paid entertainers. We pay them to dance and act and jump and sing and lure us thousand different ways. The relationship is, or should be, very simple – I pay, you perform. If you do not like the payment, you do not perform, if I do not like your performance I hire another performer next time.

Instead, we string a veritable garland of socio-political expectations and wrap it around the performer’s neck.

Then comes the inescapable moment where we stop the strutting, twirling performer and ask him/her, “What is your take on Israel –Palestine conflict? Where do you stand on the refugee/migrant debate? Do you think our country is doing enough to battle climate control? Have we, as people, become intolerant?”

Cue the uproar, whatever the provided answer may be!

Space Symposium

I need to write a report about my fun, fun, fun time at the Space Symposium in Orlando before the year is over. For that I will need to dig out my notebook.

Yes people, I went to a space symposium and took notes on a the lowest of low technology thingy – a dead tree product if you will – and in process acquired three pens that Paris Hilton would approve of. Although, I think mentioning Paris Hilton may disqualify me forever from an event of this ilk.

But I digress, I need to write a short report. Not because any of the netizens may want to read it, but because i promised myself that I will do it.

Working on my novel

I am working on two novels and I have two more sitting on the side lines pretending to be mere ideas. Two of them are for my daughter – juvenile fiction I think they call them – and two are for me. I have a horrendous feeling that will end up with one very large and confused book which will hop between the genres of SciFi, History, Contemporary Juvenile and maybe a few more…all the characters will get tangled so it will become a story of a brave princeling, space traveling as a convict and finally settling down and opening his own bake shop on an M class planet in Epsilon Indi.

Any takers ??

To be in love with some one who is technically dead.

I am delighted by the brain’s capacity to create realities that are technically non-existent.  Amazed really,  by the mind’s insistence that mere facts should never ruin one’s custom tailored truth.

I am delighted and amazed because I am in the habit of pretending that Issac Asimov is alive and well and any day now he will realize that I was always the prime love of his life. He will realize this and come to me, begging for a date, which will, of course, happen because we are not letting the technicalities like my marital status ruin this glorious reality.

Observe that I say reality, not imagination.

Imagination, my friends,  is for squares. True Believers are not squares, they are non linear, like space and time and they revel in the existence of alternate realities and parallel universes.

Lewis Carrol is dead, long live Quantum Mechanics.

How about a Vampire Wizard kid and an interesting closet ?

I had just turned 11 and  visiting an obscure relative’s home in a farmland. There happened to be a huge cupboard in one of the empty rooms  and one day I hid in it to escape my fat bully of a cousin. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the cupboard was in fact a portal to a magical world and realized that I was actually a witch and a vampire – my true family had been slaughtered by a evil wizard – who was also a werewolf- named Lord Helsing.

Eat your heart out Harry and Peter And Lucy and Edward….my story is so much cooler than yours. Actually, so much more cool that the cupboard turned out to be a defunct refrigerator.

(My creative juices are a messy product of the outside stimulation I receive continuously and I am beginning to lose hope that anything worth while will ever pop out of my mind.)

I want to write a novel about cupcakes

It seems they are all the rage right now, as a snack choice as well as a writing topic. I want to write a novel about cupcakes and just like the trendy looking young women in the panty liner commercial, I would like a pink on pink cover adorned with a single, hep looking cupcake, frosted with, what else, pink, a delicate hand reaching for it, a manicured hand, a dressed in a solitaire diamond and charm bracelet hand. Title of the book will be printed on the top, something catchy and cute, such as “A Frosted Life.”
It would be written with the Goldilock Principle in mind – all things in it would be ‘just right,’ happy medium all the way. So, the main protagonist, female of course, will be not too young, not too old. She will be not too rich, not too poor. She will fall in love with a ‘wrong sort,’ – too rich, too handsome, too fit, and come to her senses and end up with Mr. Just Right . All this time will also be spent in a quest of self realization and self-fulfillment through, you guessed it, cupcakes.
I can not go wrong with this. I am already salivating with the ideas of Red Velvet Cupcake with Coca-Mocha Frosting and Strawberries and Cream Cupcake With White Chocolate frosting and the liquid brown eyes and brown hair of the moderately handsome guy…

Someone help me…quick.

Hello World!

Hello world, here I am, prompted by a near debilitating fear that I am loosing the writer inside me. I am loosing her to various distractions and diversions of life, I am loosing her to sundry responsibilities and ‘to-do’ lists, I am loosing her to sheer inertia …

Do you care , World? Will you read what I write ?