Words fascinate me. Not the difficult words, but simple words which have great importance in our lives.
Each word has its own picture in my head. There are phases in my life when a particular word resides in my head for a long time and strikes it every now and then. It happens not because of the word or its meaning but because of the 'persona' it creates for itself inside my mind. You may call it infatuation. But actually, it's something more elusive. It's like them being guests to my mind, who come, stay, make their presence felt, alter my thinking in their own subtle way and then they go. In this age of Atithi - tum kab jaoge, I ironically enjoy the presence of words as my Atithi.
I don't quite remember when this process started, because I started noticing it quite late. However, I would like to share about some recollections from recent times.
Last year, around summer, this word called 'gift' was my guest. It stayed in my mind for almost two months. All day, whenever I contemplated, I would think about this word, its different connotations, how this world would have been if this word had not been there, how could we describe the feeling of being 'gifted' in something, the feeling of having the gift of 'vision' to see the beauty of the world around, the gift of nature, the gift of God and so on. The gift that I am talking about cannot be conveyed in all of its figurative forms by any other words like present, endowment, talent. Hence, I felt the word 'gift' is rare, it's specifically designed and has its own purpose and destiny.
I came up with many one-liners during those phases to convey my crush with the word 'gift' and what it means to me. Some of them are:
- Something can be called your 'passion' if it can make you lose your sleep; something can be called your 'gift' if it can make others lose their sleep for it.
- You happen to be the best gift God has given to you.
I even developed a plot for novel around this word 'gift'. It revolved around the story of a boy from Bihar who studies hard and makes it to the IIT, only to realize later that his real gift is writing and he is in a wrong place. It then relates how he drops out of the college to pursue a career in literature and his parents and relatives ostracize him, saying it has lowered their status amongst their peers. His only support is his girlfriend, who stands by him and makes him realize his destiny. And again the same happy ending stereotype, when people are made to realize that everyone has his own gift and the true destiny is realized only when one follows one's own passion. The movie 3 idiots brought out this message quite effectively, and that too at a much larger stage than my novel would have, through Madhavan's sentimental scene at home, and thankfully, I am liberated from the 'I-should-write-about-it-and-make-people-realize' feeling, and I am splurging my mind into a different plot.
Talking about now, I am infatuated with the word that is popularly known as 'ideas', as I am boggled to see how this word called ideas work. It goes on and on, one idea links to other and weaves itself into another idea to create a massive superset. It's like a chain reaction and the moment of joy comes when the flash of a fresh idea occurs. It just happens. It can't be explained, it just occurs. You don't really need to think about how to do it or so, because it will occur automatically, if you just streamline your thoughts in a particular direction. I can give you a simple example to demonstrate this, by relating how plots of short stories occur to me. Once I was reading a story in a magazine and it ended with a 'To-be-continued' at the climactic scene, which was supposed to be very disappointing to me. And then I thought of writing a story myself, which you can read here and appreciate the feeling of how inspired-ideas work. Sometimes, ideas don't tend to follow such structured patterns and that is when you realize that it just happens, and this is the most amazing thing with ideas. I even constructed some one-liners around this word 'ideas', which are mentioned below:
- An idea can change your wife.
- It is more important to have a mind full of ideas than to have a mind full of knowledge. The world is full of people brimming with knowledge. Interestingly, they are the ones who work under the directions of 'the men with ideas'.
- Ideas act like nuclear reaction - one idea leads to other and the chain reaction starts, for eternity.
- One is never short of ideas for the person who means to you.
As I am working on two levels now - one as a story-teller(writer) and the other as a budding entrepreneur(about which I'll disclose as and when the right time comes), I am astonished to see how I can find links between the two kinds of ideas, which have different origins but a common source i.e. my mind and my thought-process.
So this is a brief history of how words shape my thoughts and if I consider my long history many other words like passion, love, hard-work, dreams, value, book, story and even the word 'words' have been a part of my mind's journey. I just hope this journey continues, with such words shaping my mind on a constant basis and my blog seeking your tryst with your favorite words.
If you would like to read more of my one-liners, you can visit my blog called Witty Shit, here - wittyshit.blogspot.com/
P.S. If you've any such mind-probing experiences, I would really love to hear them. Comments most welcome.
