Writer's Block

FUCK.

It's been ages since I've heard the song of a lapwing. My feathered friend has probably flown off to other pastures. It must've thought its sweet song ceased to inspire me and so it flew away. I haven't written a single good story ever since.

**** 

Another night is here. I sit, all alone, in front of this office-issue laptop, watching silly videos on Youtube, trawling through the photo albums of friends on Facebook. Eddie Vedder sings Nothingman on loop. There's an unsaved, blank " New Document", whose bright scowl flusters me. When I opened it, I had wanted to fill it up with words. 1000 words at the least on a daily basis, Stephen King said. I can't write a single sentence. When the blank gaze gets too much to take, I push the blank page face down to the taskbar (meaning I minimize the window). 

This laptop and I don't get along one bit. There is no intimacy between us. There is absolutely nothing about it that I like. I don't like its touch. I hate its smell. It invokes no affection. It does not inspire me to write anything more than technical, embedded and non-embedded help content! It's like those barely functional marriages that some unfortunate souls find themselves fettered in. Not too far away, a train coos on its way out of this city. I wish I were on that train. I don't care where it is headed. Anywhere out of here would do me good. All I need is a little black book and a pen. Who knows, maybe the old fashioned routine will inspire me to write.

****

The night sky is bare. No moon, no stars. I remember those nights in the forest, outside the aircraft hangar-shaped cafeteria, where we sat and looked up open mouthed at the star-studded sky. The denizens of the forest sang lullabies for us. Each and every one of us felt like a poet then; I swear I could've finished a magnum opus under that sky. All I see now is a blaring television in each and every house in the neighbourhood. The night sky has its black cloak on, no doubt. But there are no stars. And I find myself staring at a blank page, unable to write. 

****

In my head runs a montage of the stories I had conceptualised. In my head, I flit between millennia, from story to story. One minute, I'm the star-struck Moriya boy who will someday be King; but am a student for now, in Takshashila, watching the armies of Alexander the Great as they cross the Sindhu river and advance towards the Hydaspes. The next minute, I become Russell Cabral, the godson of the Cabrals, sitting on the water tank of the terrace of the Cabral villa with his guitar, meeting Sarah's gaze, who stands at the window of her room in the Cabral Guest House.

I become Asok. Not the Mauryan Emperor; his humbler namesake. Who, in the moonlight, behind the walls that enclose the temple pond, makes love to Malli under the stars, as the war drums peal all night on the eve of the battle of Kalinga. And the same time, I become the laconic Comrade Balan, who awaits the arrival of the West Coast Express at the little railway station in his hometown, to flag off the train for the last time with tears in his eyes. 

I'm also Chandragupta II of the Guptas, with his knife on the nape of his brother Ramagupta's neck; as much as I am the journalist Aruna who, every time it rains, is reminded of her sister, the prostitute.

As Sultan Shamsuddin Iltutmish, I hear the curses of the bereaved mother in Gwalior; while as Jamaluddin Yaqut, the Habshi slave, I can't take my eyes off the Sultana, who I am infatuated with and whom I revere at the same time. 

Of all these tales, I have the first chapters. I've also completed a badly written first-draft of one of these. But not one of them is good enough to be continued with. And for the life of me, I just can't fuckin' write!

And so, like I've done countless times in the last twelve years, I switch off the laptop and go to bed.  

Yes. Twelve fuckin' years!

****