Nothing!

I am writing this sitting comfortably in the chair car of Karnavati, on my way to Ahmedabad. This is how I ll be celebrating Diwali. Its my TOEFL tomorrow. I had booked a chair car thinking I ll be able to prepare for the test on my laptop in the train. Turns out, I cant! There’s too much movement, too much chaos around…. I tried doing some reading comprehension but finally gave up when this kid came close to spilling water on my lappy. So now, keeping an eye out for irritating toddlers, I ve decided to do something that’s long overdue… Write!!

I wrote this thing about New York (the movie) about 3 months back… It was my 2nd post ever. And after that, I got a writer’s block!! (And imagine, an aptitude test I gave in std 11 said I should be a novelist!!) I tried to but couldnt write. Was too lazy. Too busy. And at times too boring. Not to mention the huge complex I got seeing the wonderful and at times awesomely incomprehensible musings of my fellow bloggers. Who’d be interested in what I ve got to say about boring, mundane stuff when there are people talking about smoking, hanging God (nice one Pareek :)), estrangements, enchantments and so much more…. I did try some stuff but fell asleep halfway through writing it! So now, with nothing better to do while I wait for Karnavati to reach Karnavati, I am attempting this again.

Topic.. topic.. topic… why do I always need a topic? Why cant I write about anything, everything? Why do I have to be so fastidious? Why always organise my thoughts and present them as if I m giving a seminar (November 7th!! : my seminar )?? No I don’t. Its my blog (ours actually!!), I can write what I want… So here it goes… I cant believe I ve written close to 300 words already, saying nothing!!

Since I am being so open I thought I’ll share with u the different topics I thought I’ll write on before finally deciding to write about: Nothing.

I wanted to write about the flu.. Naah not the swine flu. Swine flu is passé! SVNIT has seen a new outbreak… Blog-Flu!!! Every other day, I saw a new status update among some friend on my gtalk contact list mentioning his/her newly minted blog.. I was happy!! I felt I had the perfect fodder for a biting, sarcastic article ripping the newbies off. But, much to my astonishment and dismay, almost all of them write well. Too well actually. So instead of the biting and self-invigorating post I had envisaged, all I got was self doubt, a complex, and more self doubt. The ‘roller coaster’s, the ‘i got my answer’s, the ‘oneamongdruck’s , and the ‘expiredbond’s bowled me over; not to mention the veteran ‘allpartoftheplan’s, the ‘faultythought’s, the much publicized (or should I say publicizing ?? :)) ‘blogging park’ and of course gauravpareek!! And how can I forget our very own blundering malice!! I felt small, silly and dull in front of these awesome bloggers… So I chucked the idea and decided to wait for something else..

Aah!! then came the three lettered golden goose… GRE! I gave my exam and got a decent score. The score was decent enough to be mentioned on the aforementioned blundering malice. It was like being mentioned on Aaj Tak or India Tv!! I was over the moon!! So i decided to write about GRE. I was sure I could write pages and pages on GRE. How to build vocab, how to not touch maths till the last week, which books to use, which classes to attend et al… But again, God (Pareek had not hung him till then. If u don’t get this pls refer to http://gauravpareek.wordpress.com :)) had other plans… Just as I was about to complete the post, I googled “GRE help” and realised how redundant my things were. Anyone who had access to the net and spent 5-10 mins on google could write what I was writing. Another thing I found was that there were hundreds of people out there who had done much much better than me. So it was chucking time once again…

So now I was a bit low on self-esteem. Quite low actually. I got thinking about all my failures and came to a conclusion. SVNIT sucks!! I realised I had got nothing out of this institute except contempt, anger, helplessness, and increased sleep… Ya ya I did get great friends and all that cr*p… but still I was too depressed to look at the brighter side. One day when I couldn’t keep my emotions to myself any longer, I decided to write again. I decided to trash SVNIT, its pretentious people, the endless sycophancy, the obscene nepotism. And a whole lot of other things I don’t even remember now. So I wrote and I wrote, for a full 2 hours… Again, the yet-not-hung God decided to stop me in my tracks! It was joyfest!! Joy of Giving week. People out there were doing great deeds, playing with young children, giving them a great time, playing guitars, donating bikes and so much more. Almost every third person on orkut expressed his/her contentment with life. People were in love with SVNIT! I felt marooned on an island while others made merry on the mainland… It was clearly not the time for my explosive, venom-spewing post! I deleted what I had written and decided to find some Joy (not the Barot guy) for me too… On a serious note, hats off to the joyfest guys. U guys gave me atleast some vicarious satisfaction of having done something good!

There were many other passing ideas too. Gandhiji on 2nd October, Barack Obama when he got the nobel, why i want to leave Gujarat forever, Kareena, Israel, etc were some of them. I don’t want to go into details for lack of space, time and intention. Suffice it to say that I chucked everything I wrote or thought of.

So here I am now, writing about ‘nothing’ so that the confluence guys atleast don’t throw me out! 🙂

I ve crossed baroda now and am feeling up for a nap.. So I ll end it here. See u in another 3 months time I guess! Dont miss me too much. If u do, there are always other blog-flu affected people u can look up to. 🙂
Cheers!!