Update

In January when I left my job, I was unsure how things would unravel for me in the near future. I went in to experience free fall. Yes, there was the book (a novel) I wanted to write and I feel a great deal of affection at my commitment towards it. I would get up at 4.00-4.30 in the morning and after writing 250-350 words go for a long morning walk, thinking about the plot and how I could make it more interesting. Some days it was a pleasure to write. Ideas would tumble out of my mind hurriedly and it would be difficult to contain all of them, so I would pick the one which appealed to me the most at that point of time. On other days, I would struggle to write even a sentence without feeling frustrated.  But the book kept me engaged. Someday I would like to chronicle the writing process. It can be deeply satisfying and extremely annoying. At all times, it is all consuming. You inhabit the world of your characters and sneakily look for events in everyday life which you could, with a bit of exaggeration, include in your book. It’s exhausting and at the end of each writing day you might feel a subtle satisfaction, like how a cook might feel after cooking for a dinner party. If it’s working as you intended it to, you do not seek external approval, knowing very well that it’s the best that could be done by you and also may be your effort could be bettered on another day but that’s alright.

Incidentally, those very lines that you write in a – let’s call it fit – of inspiration can later read really, really bad. An indication perhaps that you should not completely trust yourself when you feel inspired. Conversely, sometimes when the writing feels a bit laboured and you are having to think a lot, or the progress has been sluggish, precisely such paragraphs read better the next day and you’re glad that you’re not horrified to read what you’ve written.

But when you read what you’ve written – whether in a state of ecstasy or evenness – after say 10 days, it all reads the same and you feel what happened to your masterpiece. By that time however, you have invested so much effort and time on it that the only way is to keep on writing.

I also attended a Vipassna course and someday I would like to chronicle that too. Suffice it to say that I am glad I went. In my opinion one should attend this course at least once in a lifetime. More on this later.

After I came back from my Vipassna course, I got the bad – but not unexpected – news that my Elder Pishi (my father’s sister) has passed away. The whole family for feeling a wave of sadness because she’d not had the best of lives and especially towards the end she suffered a lot.

My writing was also not going on as I had expected it to. The ideas stopped coming and the writing increasing felt like chore and not as enjoyable as I had experienced when I started. That’s when I started to look for a job, which has been edifying in its own way.

However, tomorrow I have another (6^th) interview with one of my previous and I must add best employers. I am looking forward to working again with Hansa Research, largely because the management’s way of functioning and my own are in sync.

I also hope to finish writing my book, however long it takes. Right now I have reached 26,000 words. I am guessing another 50,000 (gulp) words to go. And when I start writing again I hope to include some of my recent most experiences with life, which for all its finger-wagging lessons has been an emotionally wrenching one.

To more life!