Journal Entry #1

By Vani P Nair -


JAN 2ND 2022 SUNDAY 

    It is another beautiful winter evening. I am sitting at my table, my laptop open, trying to delude myself into believing that the past ten days were productively spent. It is an exercise in futility, as I am well aware. But I need to make an attempt to get out of the rut called routine. It is dangerously reassuring and unsettling at the same time. Lets leave it at that. I can hear my mum watering the plants and dad typing away something on his laptop. The niggling in the pit of my stomach will soon takeover my sense of peace. I need to write a little before that happens. 

    Sometimes things happen to us in our life, things that can make you question the permanence of the sense of security that you would have taken for granted otherwise. You begin to appreciate a lot of things that must have come across as insignificant, not worthy of attention. So the question is, is it a good thing or a bad thing? Frankly, I don't know. My professor back in college used to repeat a quote of Virginia Woolf that goes somewhat like this: "Life is not a set of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end". Well, she did not repeat the whole thing, just the first half. I didn't think much of it at the time. But life has a funny way of making us see meaning and sense in things from past that we seldom even want to commit to memory. It gets dredged up unsolicited by circumstances. Rude awakenings that can leave a lasting impression like scar tissue. 

    My college opens tomorrow after the winter break. If you are wondering, I am the teacher. I teach. It feels surreal even after three months of this activity. Not because it has been the cherished ambition of my life, but because I still feel like its a detour on the journey to my actual calling. A few weeks ago I got a message from a female acquaintance of mine. A beautiful woman. I cherish the rare conversations we have had. Both of us have majored in the same subject. She has more experience teaching too. When I shared my reservations about this vocation she responded like she knew precisely where I was coming from. The details of the conversation are not for common knowledge though. 

    I can hear the leaves rustling in the strong winter winds. Writing the direction of the wind would have made my writing more sophisticated. But the idea is to keep everything real. I can google and write it down. But then it would defeat the whole purpose of scribbling these things. Whatever they are. I turn to the row of windows to my left. They are all closed. I rarely open them. It gets really dusty with the wind blowing in. The beige colored curtains look crispy and clean. Mum had them washed last week. She does that on the last month of every year. No one can tell that they fifteen year old curtains. Still looking brand new. I sometimes feel mothers are magicians, (not in the corny sense mind you) they can, to a great extent, keep us safe from the grasping claws of time. Make us feel wanted and loved like a newborn. But then they can make us feel like shit on some days too. 

        It would be really fun to be able to read people's mind. Edward Cullen could do that. I should have started writing from yesterday. Initially I thought of writing a post for the 1st of Jan before writing this. The need for everything to fit in place precisely has stopped me from doing a lot of things. Lack of order bugs me for some reason to the point of distraction. The desks and benches in disarray in the classes I teach would disturb me in the beginning. But I am kind of over it now. But when I have exam duty as invigilator, I rush to the allotted room way before the time to arrange the furniture. World is a better place when everything is in their place. Or should I say my world. Missing the first day of the year in the journal entry is still irritating me. I am going to focus on my writing and stop bothering about the date for now. Hope it helps. 

    

    

    












Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

RAINY DAY (Poem)

By Vani P Nair -
Image
The smell of earth awakened me, cool breeze caressed me, water drops dripped down from the roof, it silenced my favorite pony's hooves.                           Roses were darker like the lovers lips,                           sun lighter behind the velvet veil of clouds,                           shed down to earth tiny bright arrows,                           from a seven colored bow far from west. Shrill cry of peacock echoed in the meadows, where a hundred thousand gems glittered, ...
Read more

SHADOW

By Vani P Nair -
Image
  SHADOW   Directionless, I walk through lighted corridors, I force myself to move along, Unyielding to the luring offers of the shady corners, Heaviness slows me down to a crawl, Let me stop, bleed away a little of my beingness, Reduce myself, shrink myself to naught, Make myself light, I look down and realise there are two of me, We meet where my feet begin, I run back and forth to no avail, Can’t seem to outrun it, My constant creepy companion, Reluctantly I lie down, And we became one in an embrace.  
Read more

THE BOY WITH KOHL RIMMED EYES

By Vani P Nair -
Image
    I didn’t know if I was his friend or just somebody he talked to over the phone when he did not have anything better to do with his time. Whatever the case might be, I had gotten a good and patient listener to my rantings and whining in him. Most adults will agree to the pricelessness of such an acquisition in life. Also, he never seemed to judge me, mostly on account of the fact that he simply didn’t care. His aloofness was comforting to me for some reason. In his words, he lived in a bubble of his own making through which he did see the world, but chose to observe only what he felt was worth his while. It’s been ten years since that message I sent him on a particularly depressing day, during the first year of my bachelors. Now, years later, I was beginning to read Truman Capote’s novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s when his descriptions jogged my memory, and that day when we met for the first time as acquaintances after spending eight years in the same school as ...
Read more

Journal Entry #2

By Vani P Nair -
Image
  JAN 12TH WEDNESDAY 2022 CLUSTERFUCK!!!!!  I cannot think of a better word to describe the past Sunday. Whenever I have let others take decisions for me in my life, it has more often than not turned out terribly. This was just one among those classic instances. The very thought of it disturbs me viscerally. I don't wanna talk about it. But, what really struck me is how perceptive my parents are. I had braced myself for the volley of questions awaiting me from my parents. Even as a child I used to share every little incident with both my parents. Actually, I used to talk with mum more, considering she was the one readily available. She would always be there awaiting my return every evening from school and later college. Unlike other mothers she wouldn't rush me into doing my homework. She loved listening to me speak about my teachers, friends, enemies, and several such insignificant things. Sometimes I would feel that she was living vicariously through me. Growi...
Read more