A Writer's Woes -5

                                                     A Writer's Woes - 5

The story......a story he wanted to share. He had it all welled up. But it would never come out. Each time he thought about it, he could imagine each the threads he had woven so tenaciously. Yet when we wanted to bring it all together...he lost grip.

He lost the plot. Creativity, which helped him blend his ideas seamlessly somehow had deserted him. Inspiration, which put passion to his words and strength to his sentences had left him long ago.

He would sit staring at people...trying to decipher their many moods and expressions - for him an eternal source of stories. Yet somehow..all expressions and moods seemed the same. There was no longer that little extra which made the mundane beautiful..and the commonplace interesting.

Day after day, week after week, he waited. He felt robbed of something within his being...from where his ideas used to flow. That well-spring from where wonderful words and expressions used to emanate seemed a barren land... a desert. He saw himself as an aimless traveller...searching for direction, searching for that oasis where he could find at least drops of inspiration.

On the one hand, he felt a sense of scary desperation. The desperation one feels about an innate ability that deserts you when you need it the most. That "so-near-yet-so-far" feeling. On the other hand, he felt he had no option but do everything to re-discover his passion....he felt a loss of identity without creativity.

There was an empty feeling in his stomach that day too. A feeling of nothingness as his weary eyes scouted every face passing for a story. Life seemed like clockwork. People at the same place at the same time every time. That made him think. What is that design which set people to a routine everyday?

The milkman would pour milk to the same home at the same time everytime. So did the newspaper boy. People went about their work the same way. They left home and came back at the same time. He saw a pattern. A constancy about life that he had never marvelled. For them, to deviate from this constancy would be chaos. Yet for him, the lack of chaos meant a lack of ideas and expressions.

There again, a voice spoke in his head. Why did there always have to be chaos for him to write? When the whole world drifted towards a concept of stability, he wanted a deviation from normalcy and constancy for him to thrive. Was it this itch that had robbed him of his creativity? The itch to always see and write something out of the ordinary?

He stared at the world again. He now wanted to change the way he looked at the world. He wanted to appreciate the constancy. The beauty of stability. And from there would spring a hundred ideas. He would lose himself as an author again - in his stable world......

                                                                                                 - 5th October 2014