Less than a week into my determination to write a post a day that will meet your and my approval, I am blessed with an excuse to not write. Discomfort. Not sure it has anything to do with anything, but from yesterday, I have developed a not-nice physical sensation made worse by sitting at the computer. When it struck me last night, I experienced a secret moment of relief, that I can take today off from my writing challenge without any sense of having let me down. I happily occupied myself otherwise, helping Hyderabad poetry lovers to get to listen to Neal Hall and Rochelle Potkar read their political poetry on June 21, and it wasn�t till now, early in my afternoon (it is just past 10 a.m. IST), that I sat to take a look at my schedule for the day and what�s left of the week. I almost crossed out my artists� date item, when it struck me I was actually pleased I didn�t have to write. So I sit, Dev in arm.
A few years back, we made the acquaintance of a talented poet whose obsession with the art rapidly made us friends. Expressive and vocal, able to draw us quickly into deep and meaningful conversation, not an easy task, it made for a fun friendship. At one point, this poet was traveling on work, and after a couple of days silence, there was an update on social media. It was something to the effect of �I feel like dying.� Of course, poets say it very differently. Knowing obsessive nature and the depth of this person's struggle with expression, we were naturally concerned. There was a storm of �whys?� and �what happeneds?� from friends. When the poet finally did respond after several agonizing hours, the explanation was not having written anything in over three days. Come on, now!! I don't get to play my organ every day, ever heard me complain?
Like most good Bengali boys, I read and wrote poetry as an adolescent. Almost every day, or more accurately � all the time. In Bengali and in English, more English, but wrote many years in both. I was fortunate to have a mentor in my father, who guided me to the masters, and by the time I was a teenager, I had read a lot of what I wanted my writing to measure up against. I struggled till my early 20s, and by the time I was in my late 20s, I gave up. I gave up writing altogether because I realized I would never be able to write what I wanted to, the way I wanted to, that it was beyond my abilities, especially so in my mother tongue. I resigned myself to the fact that I was not the guy I wanted to believe I was - in Bengali, English, Dakhni or Esperanto. Additionally, I discovered material success could buy you purpose and meaning faster than poetry could. Or so it seemed then.
I did not write anything of consequence for the next 15 years. I felt awkward whenever friends and family would ask me if and what I was writing. I would write the cursory one or two poems a year, on birthdays or when great change took place in my world, more habitual wordplay than true poetry perhaps. The important thing here is in all those years, I never felt the urge to write, or experienced any distress about the fact I was not writing. So when I read my young poet friend�s social media SOS, I realized how differently the call to write affects different people. Anyway, let�s return to what we were looking at.
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