Category: Writing

Writing in the moment

Neera

I was going through my old journals and discovered that my best writing was when I was writing ‘in the moment.’ I was more aware of the my surroundings, was using the senses to feel and was expressing what was going through my mind at the moment. As a result, my writing was much more engaging.

“The water of the lake is reflecting the blue of the sky. A boat with orange mast is creating ripples on the surface which are travelling all the way to the shore. I am sitting in the back seat of my car which is my sanctuary for the week. I have taken a week off from work to rejuvenate after a very busy winter months both at home and at work. Parked at a secluded spot, I am soaking the sun and taking in the silent beauty of the Black Mountain and Lake Burley Griffin. In front of me is a bare tree with an occasional leave at the branchends. Its trunk is divided into several branches and I have been tracing its curves and bends for some time now. I can draw it in the sketchbook I have brought with me, I should, but I don’t. I feel tired and exhausted. Not physically, but mentally. Emotional roller-coaster ride has taken its toll. Everything demands my time. Work, home, my own hobbies. Drawing a tree will take time, even if it doesn’t have any leaves. And time is something I don’t have. Even though I have five days off work, I have so much to fit in them. A raven comes and sit on a branch making the picture complete. I reach for the pencil.”

‘Writing in the moment’ is like practicing mindfulness. It is a way of being intensely aware of what you’re sensing and feeling, without interpretation or judgment. You can start with simple words like ‘I am…” and off you go. You will not feel stuck because you are writing what you are seeing and feeling at that very moment. Add to it your sense of smell, sound, and touch and your writing will bring your readers into the moment with you.

“I am in heaven, surrounded by rows and rows of old books, music and soft chatter of people in the coffee shop. A friend reminded me of it last week and I decided to spend the day here, writing. Beyond Q is a second-hand bookshop, tucked in a local shopping center. You can easily miss it as it is one flight of stairs down from ground level. As soon as you enter you are hit with the smell of books, the kind which is faintly mixed with dirt. The front counter has a number of tiny-trinkets, you know the painted bookmarks, small boxes, things I like to hold in my hands just to feel their rich texture. I have been here once before, to buy books, but didn’t think of it as a potential place to write. I wonder why. The place has everything – old table and chairs tucked away in corners that can hide you from the view of the lady at the counter and also the new customers, all kind of books for constant inspiration and sweet aroma of coffee. I should come here regularly.”

You can turn a simple excursion into a writing exercise, and when you do that you will enjoy simple things much more and remember them more vividly than you would have.

“It is half-passed two on a balmy Sunday afternoon and we walk from Fiona’s place to the Murrumbidgee river to see the tiny waterfall about 400 meters away. Of all the days, I choose sandals to wear to come to a country property. I borrow a hat from Fiona but there is no way I can borrow her shoes. No one has as small feet as I. The stones and pine-needles at the riverbed looked threatening but there is no way I am going to miss the opportunity to see the waterfall. So off I went.

The grass on the front lawn is soft and cushioning but as soon as we pass the side gate the ground becomes brittle and broken. We slide through the wires of a fence, which is apparently erected to keep the sheep away from the river. It doesn’t seems to be working because we find the riverbed littered with sheep pooh. Walking carefully between the rocks I yell to Fiona who is way ahead of me walking comfortably in her gum shoes, “At some point the river must have been up to here?” “Oh yes, every year, water comes up to here when it rains.” We pass the stones of all shapes and sizes and even colours, soft pink ones with red line and tough grey ones with white liens.

The air started getting heavier, smelling of mist and pine. We hear the waterfall before we see it. Theresa reached there first followed by Moira and for a while we stand still, each one of us poised on a different rock, taking in the little miracle of nature. Gushing muddy Murrumbidgee river falling down just a meter and half, yet so mesmerizing, so beautiful, so loud, drowning every other sound. If you look at running water it always seems like one continuous thing yet it is new water each time. The shape it makes against the rock is always the same. Yet it is new water. It is continuously hammering down, endlessly. If I come here tomorrow, it will still be here, going exactly like this. Even in a month, a year, may be several year.

Each one of us find spot to get comfortable and to write in the moment. The sun is shining through the pine needles which are not able to provide much of a shade, but the dried bulk of them on the floor definitely provides the cushion to sit on. I pick one and break it between my fingers. Dry and brittle, it breaks easily. The river water looked darker and colder when clouds covered the sun, now it looks lighter and little warmer. Little black ants are walking on my bag. Some have even gone inside in search of food. I should have zipped it. They are so fast. A white bird swoops down the river for a drink.

When I finish, I take off my sandals and dip my aching feet in the water. The warm liquid touches the sore bits and takes way the weariness. For a moment I am one with the nature.”

Recently I started using the technique to write about my day in my daily journal. It has made my journal come alive.

I suggest you give it a go. Any time you feel procrastinating or feel stuck, try writing ‘in the moment.’ Just jot down “I am…” or “It is half passed…” and describe where you are and what is going through your mind. And when you are done, share some of your writing here. I would love to hear from you.

Story of a tribal artist

Neera

I found Bhajju Shyam sitting quietly on a shelf of the Airbnb accommodation at my recent trip to Edinburgh. Of course not in person but in a book. If there is one thing I like about Airbnb, it is the unexpected discoveries I am going to make there, particularly of books.

Normally I wouldn’t have picked up this book in a bookstore. It was too thin for a coffee book, too simple as an art book and too scanty as a memoir. Yet it had something going for it that I read it in a single sitting, took photographs of it, researched the artist and writing a post about it a month later.

What was so special about it?

To start with, it’s the title, The London Jungle Book, based on Rudyard Kipling’s famous The Jungle Book it invites you to the adventures of a jungle boy in a different jungle. Then it’s the cover of the book, where a rooster is merged with Big Ben. The freshness of the story is the hook the alerts the reader to a new perspective on the things we take for granted. The beautiful narration by two polished writers (Gita Wolf and Sirish Rao) is also praiseworthy, which captures Bhajju’s voice perfectly, never overpowering it with their own. And finally Bhajju’s unique creativity and use of his traditional art form to express it. The book is a delight.

Bhajju Shyam is an artist from the Gond tribal village of Patangarh, in the forests of central India. “I never set out to be an artist,” he says in the book, “My mother painted the walls of our home, as is our tradition, and she would ask me to paint the parts she couldn’t reach.” The family sent their three children to school but were too poor to put them all through the full term. “One of us would have books, the other would have a uniform and the third would have a bag. If we were all one child, we would have made it through. But we were three and there wasn’t enough to go around.”

But Bhajju had something going for him. He had the opportunity to work for his uncle as an apprentice. His uncle happened to be Jangarh Singh Shyam, the most brilliant Gond artist of the time, and the one who brought Gond art from the wall of the village into the public eye. Bhajju started by filling in the fine patterns on Jangarh’s large canvases, but when his talent became apparent, Jangarh told him one day that the time had come to strike out on his own.

When Bhajju came to London his creativity got ignited through the cultural shock he experienced. Everything was different. He was feeling so many emotions at the same time. He expressed them in the only way he knew, his art.

“I have drawn my own face with 50-50 expression and all the thoughts tangled in the strands of my hair. I am thinking of everything I will leave behind, and I show these things using Gond symbols. The radio: the music I like to listen to when I work; the porcupine: our symbol to ward off danger; the cow: prosperity; the cart: contain all the necessities of life; the plough; the land that feeds us; the mango: my food; the rooster; the keeper of my time; the cot the palace of rest; the tree: the forest; the mouth (with the word language written in Hindi): my language; the other images are my children, my parents and my home.”

His naivety about the common things, things we take for granted, is a breath of fresh air. At one place he says,

“I had never been on a plane before, so I kept trying to get a glimpse of the machine that would carry me to London… The way it happened was like this. It was night and I couldn’t see anything outside. Inside there were only queues and lines of people. So it was queue up, get a stamp on a document, sit down on a row of seats, wait. Then queue up again, another stamp, another row of seats. After this had gone on for a while and we had sat down in one more row of seat in a sort of long waiting room, I asked the man sitting next to me, “When are they finally going to let us get on the plane?” He looked at me strangely and said, “My friend, we’re inside it!”

His fresh perspective about everything is enchanting: viewing England from air for the first time and seeing it like a green sari surrounded by sea creatures; perceiving Big Ben as the timekeeper of London and comparing it to rooster, the timekeeper in his village; thinking of Bus number 30 as a dog, a loyal friend; the London Underground a giant earthworm, and English people as bats that come out to play at night.

So impressed was I with Bhajju’s work and his story that I decided to visit the restaurant where he had done the work. His work has a beautiful mix of innocence and sophistication.

Bhajju’s work began to be known throughout India, and his first international exposure cam in 1998 when he was part of a group exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. Since then his work has been shown in the UK, Germany, Holland, and Russia. In 2001, he received a state award for Best Indigenous Artist.

Since then Bhajju art is captured in many books The Night Life of Trees, The Flight of the Mermaid, Alone in the Jungle, Creations, That’s How I See Things.

If you get a chance do get one of his books. Also read Maria Popova’s post The London Jungle Book: What an Indian Tribal Artist Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Capacity for Everyday Wonder.

Words are better than 1000 pictures

Neera

On my recent trip to the UK and Paris, I took thousands of pictures but whenever I think about the trip none of those come to mind. What comes to mind are the moments that were not captured in any of the pictures.

Photos are wonderful and we take so many of them when traveling but there is something about the written word that evokes a stronger sense of place and person. The little entries I made in my diary transport me to those places instantly.

Here is one:

“It is six thirty in the evening, I am walking back from Stonehenge. Sun is still bright. White clouds against the blue sky look magical. Sky is so low here. I feel if I keep walking I will be able to touch it just at the edge of earth. There is something special about this place and it is not the sky. Not even the landscape. It is the silence. Even though the place is full of tourists it is still very quiet here. May be it is the silence of the dead.”

And this one:

“It is five in the evening and I have made it to the top of the Arthur Seat in Edinburgh. The wind is so strong that both my husband and daughter decided not to climb the top rock. It is hard to find footing on the pointed and irregularly shaped volcanic rocks. I haven’t come so far to give it up now. Before they can stop me I start climbing, inch by inch, carefully balancing on almost vertical rock. Rock was not that dangerous, it was the wind. I get to the top and get the photo taken. I do not climb for the photo. I climb to test my resolve.”

But the accompanying photo does not capture any of that.

Neither do any of the photos capture the smell of the highland air, the taste of the Scotland water, the thrust of the Oxford Street crowd or the music at the Paris pub. I couldn’t take photos of my aching feet which made me regret every day that I didn’t pack my hiking shoes with ankle support.

I was not fast enough to take pictures of the double rainbow I saw from the train while going to Paris, neither was I ready to capture the fireworks which started unexpectedly when we were at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Those pictures are itched in my memory forever without the aid of the camera.

You can’t taste a snapshot.

“I am in the Selfridge, sitting in a cupcake eatery, order a cookies and cream cheesecake which my husband are going to share. I take the first spoonful; the creamy sweetness melts in my mouth. I get up declaring ‘I want one all for myself.'”

Bang! the memory floods back and I am back in the eatery tasting the cheesecake once again.

Did I take any pictures of the rude guy who double-parked his car just behind ours making us wait for half an hour, in rain, at Glenfinnan where we stopped to see the Harry Potter bridge? Even if I did, it wouldn’t have told the story.

Or these stories:

“We are walking back from a local pub in rain, hoodies on, umbrellas up, and between my daughter’s constant moaning that we didn’t let her call an Uber for a ten minute walk back home. My son-in-law is warning us not to step on dog-pooh and next moment he steps on one. The drama that followed afterwards was fun to watch. “There is one thing I ask you each time we go out, not to walk on dog-pooh, and you can’t even do that,” goes my daughter. At home, my son-in-law thrusts the shoe under her nose, “Would you like to smell it to make sure it’s dog-pooh and not just mud.” His action starts another row. Half an hour later, husband wife team is still on balcony trying to clean the shoe with wet-ones and earbuds.”

Or this one which will be told in dinner parties for years to come.

“I am standing in a line to go to toilet at Louvre museum. The line is so long that it is flowing out of the female toilets, into the corridor, way past the men’s toilet to the outside lobby while men are in-and-out within minutes. A young guy is trying to persuade his female companions to used men’s toilets. “What are the danger’s of exposure?” asks one of his lady friend. “Try using the first two cubicles,” he advises. Next minute a number of women raid the men’s toilet including me. Once you are inside there is no going back. Only empty cubicle was number 4. So I dash to it, praying all the time that when I get out there is no one using the urinal.”

I remember once reading about a kindergarten teacher who taught her class of five-years-olds how to take mental pictures at a beach excursion. “Take a good look at the sea… and the sky… and the clouds. Notice the color. Now close your eyes and try to see them with your mind’s eye. Take a deep breath and smell in the salty air, feel the wind on your cheeks, hear the sound of the waves. Lock all these in your memory. You will never forget it.”

I think this is the way to take pictures on holiday. With the ease of mobile phones, we spend all our time taking pictures rather than taking in. Maybe in your next travel, we can use the kindergarten teacher’s technique to take a mental picture and enjoy our holidays even more.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Edinburgh – The Writer’s Museum

Neera

Edinburgh is perhaps the only city in the world with a huge monument and a museum dedicated to its writers.

Home to many famous writers — Robert Burns (1759–1996), Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894), and Sir Arthur Conon Doyle, to name a few — the city has more than its fair share of literary giants.

When you approach the city, no matter in which direction you come from, the first thing that catches your eye is a Gothic-style building looming high in the skyline. I thought was an old chapel. As we got closer, it turned out to be a memorial build to honor the city’s favorite son and noted writer Sir Walter Scott.

It is the biggest monument ever erected for a writer anywhere in the world.

If that wasn’t enough to excite me, the next day, I found out that Edinburgh also has a Writer’s Museum. Needless to say, I wanted to visit it. It is not easy to locate by, my daughter found using her superior skills with iPhone. It is housed in Lady Stair’s House in the older part of the town near Edinburgh castle. 

Once a grand mansion near the Royal Mile, the Lady Stair’s House is a four hundred years old, multi-story building. The story is that in the 19th century, when the old buildings were being demolished, a conscientious town planner embarked upon an ambitious renewal program. 

Lady Stair’s House was about to be demolished when the fifth Earl of Rosebery (1895) bought the mansion and gifted it to the city of Edinburgh for use as a museum.

The mansion has gone through many renovations since then and has a writerly ambiance to it. 

Tiles with quotes on the way to the Writer’s Museum

Though not very big, the museum has enough to entice the literary kind. 

It had three distinct areas, one dedicated to each of the three famous writers.

 Each area has a display of some artifacts from writers’ lives, their stories depicted by banners and photographs, and excerpts from their writings.

Robert Burns

Robert Burns was a poet, a romantic kind, who was famous with ladies. He is regarded as a pioneer of the romantic movement in English literature.

He later became a great inspiration to liberalism and socialism. His most famous poem is To a Mouse.

In his later life, he collected Scotland’s folk songs and wrote many of them himself, which are still sung in pubs around Scotland.

Some of his famous poems and songs of Burns that remain well known across the world today include A Red, Red Rose, A Man’s a Man for A’ That, To a Louse, The Battle of Sherramuir, Tam o’ Shanter, and Ae Fond Kiss.

Sir Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott was a historical novelist, poet, playwright, and historian. Many of his works remain classics of both English and Scottish literature. Famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Old Mortality, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian, and The Bride of Lammermoor.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson was a novelist and travel writer, most noted for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and A Child’s Garden of Verses.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes character, though was not born in Edinburgh but was educated at the University of Edinburgh. 

A café in 71 -73 York Pl, claims that the famous writer used to live close by.

Alexander Graham Bell

Another notable person born in Edinburgh was scientist, inventor, engineer, and innovator Alexander Graham Bell. 

Alexander Bell’s most notable invention was the telephone.

Needless to say, I had a field day in Edinburgh.

Who are you writing for?

Neera

Who are you writing for? Yourself or others?

It is important to know the difference because the process and rewards vary significantly.

Rohan’s blog A Learning a Day has a wonderful post on the topic which helped me clarify my thinking when I started this blog.

The act of writing and publishing regularly can have a transformative effect on your life by pushing you to bring the discipline of writing and sharing every day. You become accountable to yourself, think more clearly, reflect more often and synthesize what you learn.

When you write for yourself, the process takes a lot less time. Since you are writing primarily to clarify our thinking. You don’t need to worry about polishing or distributing your content. You just start a blog in a small corner of the web and get on with writing. As part of the thinking process, you focus entirely on optimizing your learning versus trying to figure out what your audience would be interested in.

So, you focus on iterative learning by writing, to think and to improve how you think over time. As a result, you get to treat everything you write as a hypothesis and don’t worry about the consequences of being wrong.

In comparison when you are writing for others you are basically solving some problem, educating or entertaining your readers.

When you write on your favorite social network you have to be careful what we are writing, how your audience will take it, what reaction you will get and how will you handle any unintentional harm caused by your writing. Then you need to carve out time to respond to readers’ queries, objections, and alternate views.

Like all decisions, this choice has accompanying consequences. The consequence of writing for yourself is that the rewards are almost entirely intrinsic. You might earn yourself a few subscribers over time – but, your subscriber count, follower count, website visit count, monetization (if any), fame, etc., will likely never be anywhere as good as someone who focuses on writing for others.

If you started out writing for others, expect less intrinsic benefit.

Like many things in life, I find that this misalignment between expectations of process and outcome drives most folks to quit after writing publicly after a couple of months. While they might have set out to write for themselves, there often are unsaid expectations about building a massive subscriber base – or vice versa. The end result is a disappointment.

So, if writing publicly is on your goal, you need to take time to clarify the purpose and your expectations on process and outcomes.

I am primarily writing for myself. My long term goal is to get better at writing and get over the fear of publishing something with my name on it. Life is too short to listen to my inner critic. I want to build the courage to get my writing out there regularly whether they are unpolished or need proofreading. If I could keep the discipline, I am sure I will get better.

While I can’t say much about writing for others, I can say with reasonable confidence that the long term benefits of writing for yourself are extraordinary.

Now I guess the question for you is; who are you writing for?

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

We are all going to die one day

Neera

The biggest irony of human understanding is that we know that we are going to die one day but don’t accept it.

The truth doesn’t sink in.

We live as if death is something that happens to others while we will continue to live for a foreseeable future.

We never talk about death. Especially our own. It is a taboo subject. Not only we don’t talk about it, but we also don’t even think about it. Like a scared kitten, we close our eyes to the only certainty of our lives.

Yet we are all going to die one day.

It is not a matter of doom and gloom but a realization that our time here is limited.

If we continue to waste it, we will never be able to do what we want so much to do.

Do whatever you wanted to do, now. If you sit around and wait for the right time, it might never come.

Feel the urgency. Now or never.

If you don’t know what you want to do, find out.

You are sent here as a human being with far more intelligence than any other species. Don’t just be content with earning a living and raising children. Even animals do that. Make your life count.

Figure out what you can do to make his world a better place than how you found it whether by planting trees, cleaning streets, writing books, feeding the hungry, protecting endangered animals or any cause worthy of your attention.

If you need a constant reminder of the inevitability of death, read obituaries.

Obituaries aren’t about death; they are about the life of the person. “The sum of every obituary is how heroic people are, and how noble,” writes artist Maria Kalyan.

Reading about people who are dead and did things with their lives makes you want to get up and do something with yours.

Steve Jobs said,

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fears of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.”

Has Steve Jobs’s statement made you stop and think? Have you found a way to leave the world a bit better than how you found it? Want to share here to inspire others?

Drop me a line in the comments section below.

Photo by Wei Ding on Unsplash