I must confess

That I am jealous.

Not the garden-variety type of jealous – but the kind that gargles, bubbles and slowly froths deep within the innermost pit of your belly. Somebody turned the internal espresso machine on – and left it unattended.

If I must admit one thing it is that I’ve always wanted to write a book. As many kind and incredibly biased people have told me – apparently I can write. One would hope so considering that I used to be a copywriter in my past life. But the thought of short pithy lines always left me hungry for a little more. The courses I’ve taken on short fiction – have been great and truly encouraging. But the thing is, I lack the fundamental characteristics that are required of a writer: persistence, perseverance and the mojo to keep going regardless of all else that flitters through your world.

My mantra is: one of these days….hopefully in the next 5 years.

So my “book” (insert air quotes here) was always going to be about my relationship with Sri Lanka and the many threads that bind me securely to the country of my birth. And perhaps the underlying reason that lets me embrace my good friend, procrastination, is that partly – I haven’t figured out the seed of my union with that little chaotic jewel in the sea. My one style technique though was to utilize the thirrukurral – hardly a unique tool but in my mind, it all made sense.

And then I picked up this book called Love Marriage by an incredibly talented young, Sri Lankan author. And there in plain daylight was one vein of my story laid out interspersed with verses from none other than the thirrukurral. And my heart sank. The first thought I had was: uh oh, I guess I did wait too long.

But I went ahead and tried to keep an open mind as I sat down to devour the book. And I kept stumbling. Now initially, I chalked it up to my childish nature – so maybe I was a little bitter that someone beat me to the punch – although the rational me did realize that my punch was entirely different but set in the same context. And that’s okay. A trillion books have been penned about India – and yet, there are still a trillion more stories to tell. So no worries – right? Right, said the right side of my brain. Umm okay, whispered the left.

So last night, I climbed into bed in my comfy jammies and tried to crack it open again. One deep breath, then another and I still can’t seem to motivate myself to get through the book. I’m embarrassingly on page 35 or something silly like that after a week of “reading”. I’m still working on it. And I realized the reason last night. I lean towards people who can write pictures. Yup, I’m a traitor.

I tend to eagerly fall into the arms of writers who are firmly rooted in imagery. I get lost between the letters that breathe life to vivid pictures where I can choose the colours that would define the emotions being discussed. And I tend to write like that – flowery and filled with pictures. It’s the only way that I feel anything for a character – when I can identify with them.

And this writer – she is far from flowery. Her craft embodies the poise of rewriting. Everything is composed just right – the simplest language tied together in the simplest ways with a distinct tone of voice. But to me, that voice sounds empty. I’m reading her book about a topic that I feel incredibly passionate about and yet I feel nothing. I don’t relate to the characters even though one of them has my name. I can’t get past the clinical nature of her language. It’s no-nonsense. It’s to the point. It’s got little to no punctuation – let alone punctuation play. It’s void of any emotion and the tamasha of life that you create when you play with words and punctuation. Mind you I’m on page 35 only. And maybe it gets better. But right now, it’s a hard mountain to climb – this coming from someone who tracked this book down and threatened more than one person to ensure it got to me in one piece, as soon as possible.

But I’ve got to cut her some slack first novels are always an experiment in tone and voice. And you know what, just because I’m not into straight shooting writing with little to no punctuation doesn’t mean that it sucks. Far. From. It. But then I think of Arundhati or Jhumpa and I’m back to my own sheltered belief of words being the brush you outline pictures with.

I wish I could close my eyes and start afresh.

And maybe that’s exactly what I need to do. Shut it out. And retry in a few weeks.
Maybe round 2 is where the magic meets the mind.