PAPER DREAMS

My first post for the year – :). An update into the last 21 days if you will.

2016 has been a ho-hum sort of year so far. Professionally I am doing well – enough writing and editing assignments to keep me busy. A bit too busy to be honest. But the world continues to nose-dive into oblivion, as though hell bent on destroying itself before some meteor hits it. Global markets crash, students commit suicide, terrorists kill innocents, more soldiers die. I could have been talking about last year or the year before that. The news update is the same. We are going to the dogs from the looks of it.

However, on the personal front, I like where I am going. This is the first time that I have not bothered to go through the sham of making resolutions. I have anyway never kept one beyond five to six weeks at the most. But I have started out on things that have been on my to-do list for way too long.

I am going to be a year older tomorrow. There are slivers of wisdom that have pierced my decaying armour of youth. Not that it makes much of a difference. I am still repeating old mistakes and making new ones on top of it. But there has been some growth too.

After nearly 13 years in Dubai, I am finally learning Arabic. I know… shame on me! I should have done this much earlier… but my motto in my 40s is – better late than never.

I have read The Land of Seven Rivers by Sanjeev Sanyal (will be reading that one again), Wild by Cheryl Strayed (highly recommended for lovers of treks and hikes), The Roundabout Man by Clare Morrall (I liked it a lot… the way she writes especially) and have started on The Public Intellectual in India by Romila Thapar. While the Sanyal book was a carry forward from last year (I just had one chapter to read in 2016), everything else was done in the last 20 odd days!! I am amazed.

The Dubai Poetics group have accepted two of my poems for their anthology. You can read my submissions Stay a While (https://binusivan.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/stay-a-while/) and Don’t Send Me a Memo (https://binusivan.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/random-musings/) on my blog if interested. Will keep you updated on that.

On the novel front – it did take a back seat to my bread and butter writing these last three weeks. I feel like a procrastinating heel. But am back at it with a vengeance now. Sada – thank you for those links and encouragement.

Sometime last year, I began to enjoy cooking… for about a month. That feeling soon passed. Nothing has changed in 2016. I still don’t enjoy cooking. I think my cook is the most important man on earth. Apologies to the husband, father, brother, Modi and Obama. And off late, I am beginning to hate even regular housework with a vengeance. My new cleanliness motto is… actually, I have two – ‘Chaos and mess beget creativity’; and, ‘It is not dust; it is star dust’.

Incidentally, I have stopped colouring my hair. I am letting it go grey. I want to know how I will look.

So, hopefully, 2016 will be a year choc-a-bloc full of great books, poems, writing, freelance jobs, and maybe, just maybe, a deeper acceptance of who I am.