Tag: inspiration

The NaNoWriMo Adventure

The month of November has been a wonderful trip to another world. It all started one blustery autumn evening when I decided to brashly sign up for the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) adventure with encouragement from the husband and some friends (Krishna Srinivasan in particular). What has happened since is amazing. I had a target count to achieve for daily words written. Give me something like this,  and you will find me walking around with the flame lit till done.

In the first week, I must admit things were harder than I thought. I found I had practically finished all I had to say by Chapter 3 (I exaggerate as usual, but you get the drift.) That would not do, would it? So, I expanded the story line, and brought in little snippets from the past and built back-story. In short, I had the time of my life. Inspiration is a funny thing, for it graced me when I showed up everyday, and struggled and it graced at me at the most unlikely of times (Read 2 a.m., and that would keep me awake planning the next day’s writing till 4 am. and of course, do a poor job of it the next day.)

The funny thing is that I have achieved the target of 50,000 words in 25 days, but I have not finished the story arch yet. I think I need at least another 10,000 words for the first draft to finish. Nothing panned out the way I visualized – the story yanked me from under my navel and pulled me along like a tug boat headed somewhere uncharted and all I could do was hang on and write the best I could. Even the novel heading started out as something else, but I think I have a better title now.

2013 Nanowrimo Certificate

2013-Nanowrimo-Winner-Certificate

I have visualized the end, but as I write, I will know whether it is a suitable end or not. I have always been fairly regular at writing, but the necessity of doing a minimum word count everyday was another marathon altogether. Like running a marathon, this is a journey just worth finishing, for no one can take the joy of the journey from me.

nanowrimo stats

 

PS: Just to give it perspective, a typical blog post is about 300-400 words, and I had to write approximately 2000 words everyday.

The beauty of questioning

I spend a lot of time vacillating between an agnostic secular person and a religious person, who doesn’t believe 80% of what my religion has become over the ages. Suffice it to say that the days I spend in my former state far outnumber the days I spend in the latter.

Here is my problem: I like to believe in the power of hope and if belief is what brings hope, I am all for it. On the other hand, over the ages, I can categorically state that religion has done more damage to mankind than good. The moment religion ceases to be a personal experience, I can see it wreaking havoc.

I quite like the idea of finding yourself. Easily, that is the path taken by all the “founders” of religion – be it Buddha or the Sufi saints of Islam or the Bhagavad Gita. But how does one explain “finding oneself” to the masses? That is where the problem begins. So, the explanation became finding one’s moral conscience – still good. But a few centuries later, moral conscience evolves into a set of rules written by the elitist community of the religion. Slowly, the congregation becomes more of a unifying force, one to forge your identity with, than to use as a tool to better yourself.

At my wedding, the priest was a person who was my grandfather’s friend. My grandfather was a kind-hearted, generous, loving, able teacher, caring husband/father and he was a pious man. But somehow, whenever people described him, they put his piety ahead of his other virtues. This priest came to my wedding and said he would do all it takes in his power to make sure that great man’s grand-daughter lived a fantastic life, and put us through the most grueling wedding ceremony in recent times. I didn’t understand more than a few words of what was said – there was no need for me to elongate the proceedings by asking for clarifications in between on a hot day in front of the fire, with no food in my stomach. The ceremony lasted a good 9 hours of listening to things I didn’t understand. Everyone who came to congratulate me, said the priest was excellent, he hadn’t missed a single thing – who would understand how my intestines were reacting at the time? Which religion?

What I am trying to say is, some people are ritualistic by nature – to them, rituals become religion – this isn’t orthodoxy, this is just an interpretation of their own religion. It is also show-case worthy.

I have spent my growing years chanting some prayers that my mother taught me on the way to the school in the morning, as we ran for the train. That is all I know today, and probably that is all I will ever know – who knows? Every now and then, I think that just because I am part-agnostic, I should not deny the experience of a religion to my daughter. So, I take her to the local temple. She asks a million questions along the way as usual. We are in the temple, and she looks at the statues and asks – “If Ummachi (God) made everything and gave us everything, how come he isn’t even moving?”

I savoured the question – the beauty of questioning always delights me. I am sorry that when it comes to religion so few people still have the power of questioning left in them.