Forbes has come up with an excellent idea for an email time capsule. This is the email I wrote to myself. I shall receive it after 3 years.
Dear Anshu
You know how I (you?) find it extremely difficult to write the first line. Whether it’s a short story, a play, a poem (remember you used to write those free-verse poems in under five minutes – they usually involved a raven and a dead poet … I hope those two have now become your most famous and enduring creations), a text message or a letter like this one, I always struggle with the first few words. So much depends on the beginning; it defines everything which comes before and everything which will come after it. The first line is like a first kiss (and even though we know that things only start looking up after the third kiss – once you have figured your way around the shape, structure and style of the woman’s lips, tongue and the inner sanctum of her beautiful mouth – the first kiss usually seals the fate).
Damn! This is difficult.
Let’s be analytical about this thing and break it up into sections.
This is where your life stands on 14th November 2005
My (Your) Belief System
Just cause you're hung like a moose doesn't mean you gotta do porn.
-- Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
What’s Up with You?
You are working on another novel (which one got published first?)
You are planning to move to UK.
You are single and ready to mingle but not actively mingling.
There are too many mosquitoes in your room.
You only hate one person with all your being (did you ever forgive that evil frigid cow?)
Recent Happenings
You realised you are not always right about others (you can also get emotionally hurt in a gym – oh! And you have recently figured out that you can get emotionally hurt).
Your already weak faith in arranged marriages is completely shaken.
You judged dramatics in IIT.
Babe (also known as Death and in certain quarters Piggy) has published his first research paper. It’s an elegant review of Strain Field Calculations in Embedded Quantum Dots and Wires. You brag about it to anyone who’d lend you their ears willingly (or unwillingly) and you are so proud of your boy that your heart might explode any minute now.
Vintage Suds just duped his prof and packed his MS thesis project and joined a job.
The Hawk is working his arse off (ok he is just working) in Houston.
Your Short/ Long Term Aims
Publish! Publish! Publish!
What Were You Thinking Before Writing This
You were thinking about the word Anonymous. You were remembering how in kindergarten a teacher told you that Anon was a famous poet who wrote a lot of poems. Dad then told you the correct meaning of the word and you had blasted the living intellectual lights out of the teacher’s head. Even today you are an egoistic bastard and you are proud of it (for your sake I hope you are; I warn you I’ll go medieval on your arse if you are not).
Then you were thinking that you had recently come across a blog (by accident) which seemed to belong to the anonymous poetry lover (Anon1) who left beautiful comments on your blog. You are 93.7% certain, but since you want to maintain the veil of mystery that surrounds your interaction with Anon1 you have decided not to revisit her blog.
There is also an Anon2 (who doesn’t like you by the way). You are not entirely certain whether Anon1 and Anon2 are different people. Anon2 likes to leave scathing personal remarks about you. She also brings out the one quality in you that you hate as well as crave the most. Your anger (an outcome of your tickled ego – it cannot really be hurt, your ego that is) results in such an amazing outpour of words (which are very caustic in nature, mind you) that they destroy everything in their way. There is however the stamp of ingenuity on them, the mark of superiority, which you want all your words to carry. It’s a shame that anger is your greatest creative catalyst.
You were also thinking about ZZ. She hasn’t mailed you in a long time and you don’t really expect her to. You don’t really expect anything from her. But you would like an occasional line or a reason for her withdrawal.
You were also extremely hungry and were about to have a midnight snack.
I hope your life is chaotic and you don’t dream too often. That’ll happen only if you fall asleep when you are dead tired or when her (the tall, slim, 34 D hot intellectual’s) embrace is irresistible.
Cheers
Anshu
Dear Anshu
You know how I (you?) find it extremely difficult to write the first line. Whether it’s a short story, a play, a poem (remember you used to write those free-verse poems in under five minutes – they usually involved a raven and a dead poet … I hope those two have now become your most famous and enduring creations), a text message or a letter like this one, I always struggle with the first few words. So much depends on the beginning; it defines everything which comes before and everything which will come after it. The first line is like a first kiss (and even though we know that things only start looking up after the third kiss – once you have figured your way around the shape, structure and style of the woman’s lips, tongue and the inner sanctum of her beautiful mouth – the first kiss usually seals the fate).
Damn! This is difficult.
Let’s be analytical about this thing and break it up into sections.
This is where your life stands on 14th November 2005
My (Your) Belief System
Just cause you're hung like a moose doesn't mean you gotta do porn.
-- Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
What’s Up with You?
You are working on another novel (which one got published first?)
You are planning to move to UK.
You are single and ready to mingle but not actively mingling.
There are too many mosquitoes in your room.
You only hate one person with all your being (did you ever forgive that evil frigid cow?)
Recent Happenings
You realised you are not always right about others (you can also get emotionally hurt in a gym – oh! And you have recently figured out that you can get emotionally hurt).
Your already weak faith in arranged marriages is completely shaken.
You judged dramatics in IIT.
Babe (also known as Death and in certain quarters Piggy) has published his first research paper. It’s an elegant review of Strain Field Calculations in Embedded Quantum Dots and Wires. You brag about it to anyone who’d lend you their ears willingly (or unwillingly) and you are so proud of your boy that your heart might explode any minute now.
Vintage Suds just duped his prof and packed his MS thesis project and joined a job.
The Hawk is working his arse off (ok he is just working) in Houston.
Your Short/ Long Term Aims
Publish! Publish! Publish!
What Were You Thinking Before Writing This
You were thinking about the word Anonymous. You were remembering how in kindergarten a teacher told you that Anon was a famous poet who wrote a lot of poems. Dad then told you the correct meaning of the word and you had blasted the living intellectual lights out of the teacher’s head. Even today you are an egoistic bastard and you are proud of it (for your sake I hope you are; I warn you I’ll go medieval on your arse if you are not).
Then you were thinking that you had recently come across a blog (by accident) which seemed to belong to the anonymous poetry lover (Anon1) who left beautiful comments on your blog. You are 93.7% certain, but since you want to maintain the veil of mystery that surrounds your interaction with Anon1 you have decided not to revisit her blog.
There is also an Anon2 (who doesn’t like you by the way). You are not entirely certain whether Anon1 and Anon2 are different people. Anon2 likes to leave scathing personal remarks about you. She also brings out the one quality in you that you hate as well as crave the most. Your anger (an outcome of your tickled ego – it cannot really be hurt, your ego that is) results in such an amazing outpour of words (which are very caustic in nature, mind you) that they destroy everything in their way. There is however the stamp of ingenuity on them, the mark of superiority, which you want all your words to carry. It’s a shame that anger is your greatest creative catalyst.
You were also thinking about ZZ. She hasn’t mailed you in a long time and you don’t really expect her to. You don’t really expect anything from her. But you would like an occasional line or a reason for her withdrawal.
You were also extremely hungry and were about to have a midnight snack.
I hope your life is chaotic and you don’t dream too often. That’ll happen only if you fall asleep when you are dead tired or when her (the tall, slim, 34 D hot intellectual’s) embrace is irresistible.
Cheers
Anshu
8 comments:
Nice blog. Looks like you write quite regularly.
the other interesting way in which you could use the email time capsule thingie is by talking about what you think you will be/ want to be x years from now. Do this for multiple years. I am now very different from what I thought I would be like ten years ago.
Unratiosenatic - thanks dude!
And yeah the email time capasule could be used in the way you described ... I just wanted to capture my life in its present state (like a snapshot of it) and view it many years from now
* capsule
Hmm.
As you have stayed out of mine, I will stay out of yours.
But dammit, there is a story here, I can smell it, as pungent as the vomit in the 1:54am, saturday night dorm bathroom, 3 doors down.
Should I apologize for reading both of your back and forth? Nope.
A dear dear friend just wrote a piece on stasis.
In a nutshell, all I will say is... there is very little coming, or going away... you can however, take a walk.
Sigh. Why do I get nostalgic everytime I come here to you? Probably because....
[and even tho its late, I cant be that off]
... your growing up is busy mirroring mine, or mine is mirroring yours, or both are shooting bamboo dreams at a star that just started falling... something.
damn you, anshumani ruddra, I hate getting mushy and now look.
Email to self insufferably narcisstic. However spelt. Ha.
PS: Forbes, like RCA, NBC and the CIA, is evil.
EVILLLLLLLLLLL!!!
With smelly socks.
:D
Brain working at 0.05% of usual capacity ... therefore kindly to explain DnP in mail
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