The Phoenix - I

The Phoenix – I
(Unfortunately a true incident)

1st Year Vacations…

I still surmise the day when I wrote my first poem. The only four lines of my very first limerick smelt rose and bled with the prickles in a nip. I laughed at myself and went to bed. I was oblivious that a poet was born in a boy who abhorred rewords and poems. A juvenile guy, who hardly knew about Keats and was once, caught unaware sleeping in the class when her very girl friend recited eternal lines of P.B. Shelly. The next day I made a verse out of almost everything I saw. I envisaged and conceptualized every thing around me in the form of poems. I had heard that empty mind was devil’s work shop, but this time it was exactly the opposite. My vacant mind was a poet’s work shop. A poet, who loved some one in some peal of time and was departed, detested detached and exposed to time. After being overjoyed, I was frightened with the changes coming in my perspective towards things. My brain became a churner, churning feelings finding characters and constantly matching rhymes of odes. A guy, who was ignorant of a place like Crossword, started killing whale of time there. The Dexter in me allowed doing so as it was the time when every one of my college mates was enjoying with their social cluster. And it was I who had traveled the endless journey of discovering me in an aboriginal sense.

3rd Semester…

The odd semester trashed in with some heart wrenching news floating around. We were all exposed to the semester scheme for the very first time in our lives. The quad lined verses now took the façade of a full fledge poem with a stroking in the end. I questioned myself about the central character of my poems and every time the answer came in a poetic way, hinting her presence around me. I still remember the day when I saw those brown eyes in my college. It was the day that marked the commencement of what we call reading vacation. The cupid struck me hard and the poet in me espoused the cupid. Technically speaking, reading vacation is an eon of 30 days, the only 30 days when technocrats open their books and pump their heads in. But it was opposite for me. Early in the morning, I used to sit with my textbook of electronics and even I didn’t recollect when I eschewed the book and opened a new file in MS Word, depicting a verse around her. Even I don’t know what happens to me when I sit before the computer screen with my fingers roving on the hieroglyphic keys, printing, weaving and rhyming a poem that was never heard, never thought of by me in my life time.

4th Semester…
I was jolted by the dates that calendar dated, it was the judgment day, and our grades came in. I felt like what a drongo felt while submitting the annual financial report. I swept the past list of toppers, but the only question that haunted me was the damn raison d'être machining this. A guy who divulged his reading hours in penning poems stood second in his own class comprising of geniuses. One may articulate that these grades of mine made me travel beyond the land of poems. But I still didn’t figure this alteration in myself. There were continents of stories beyond the barren waters of inky poems. I began penning short stories with me as the hero and she as the heroine. Finally, I paid the price of being an introvert lover. I discovered her throbs beating for some one else in her very brown eyes. My dreams were shattered to smithereens. This added more vim to my ditched pen and it penned scores of poems and stories. On the academic site things were getting worse and on the psychological site things were aiming new zeniths of agony. My pen echoed everything, even my heart…

Some one of my friends mocked at me and asked me to write a book if I had the real pain in my pen. I was fetish in my job from day one as an author. I selected 34 odd poems and 15 odd stories for my book, but every time I was provoked by the thought of dissatisfaction. And then my pen penned the story of my life, a saga portraying how I coveted to subsist this verve and I was subsisting? It was christened as ‘The Timed Love Series’ formulated in 10 parts, the only thing that gave my book a façade of a distinguished piece of art. The book was named after the core idea of my first story that was tipped by my pen in the early days of my secondary education. The book was christened as, ‘My Infatuation- Love Demystified’. Unlike others the book was in the form of an e-manuscript. Everything was written on the hard disks of my personal computer. The mad obsession of mine refrained me to take a back up of the electronic data garnered in that junk… I was unmindful of the thought that Bill Gates and Charles Babbage would together stab me in the back in a nip…!!!!!

The Phoenix

The Phoenix – II
(Unfortunately a true incident)

23 September, 2007
8:00 pm.
I still wobble when I think of this peal of time. It was the day that marked the instigation of our ‘mid term vacation’. I was labeled as Shayar in the college. I talked about my book openly in the campus; every one was taken aback by my new incarnation. My blogs proved my worth. Some of my friends mocked my ideas, while some proffered me luck. I got a eulogy as well as malice in the talks of my friends. I was giving final touches to my master piece. And the computer system crashed… What devil opted this out!! My computer dangled and showed some nasty operations. I had an inkling that this might be due to the e-files of my seminar. I was no maestro in computers, so I rebooted the computer, but it showed signs of vacated caches of memory. I was collapsed. 15 minutes. My senses were paralyzed. I hadn’t formulated any back up. The talks of my book rocked the campus. My sister called the computer engineer. I must say that he was a real drongo. He rubbed the memories of my hard disk with a pirated bootable disk of Microsoft XP. 39 minutes. My computer showed no signs of ‘My Infatuation- Love Demystified’. I lost my senses. I felt as I was stabbed by the three scimitar hands of time.

I gazed at the clock hanging on the wall in front of me. I comforted myself, but in futile. I pondered that as it was mid term vacation, I would rewrite everything. The next day I switched on the computer with a plain mindset. I could not even pen nine lines of the set of 98 poems written by me. It was almost unworkable to live those feelings again It is impossible to evoke. But again the fighter in me never pronounced die. I roved the outskirts of the city for software that would get the formatted data back. My friends from I.T. and C.E. proudly pronounced their verdict in a negative tone. I again rocked the stores of various software shops. Everything was in futile. My family members expressed their grievances. They were happy deep in their hearts as I would not divert my reading hours penning my book. My friends demanded more blogs, but no body knew the ultimate source of the blogs was crashed out. My heart was in my mouth and the seas were in my eyes, making my petals wet and pinching it with the salts. I was powerless to extenuate the hour.

The confidence in me kissed its zenith in the descending direction. I thought I would not be able to pen anything again in this life time. I even thought that my book was the font of my success in the academic arena. A font, which could not be rewritten, could not be reworked again. I mislaid almost everything in life. Those seven days were the worst days of my life. I could not heal myself from the sores of time. The persona that I discovered in myself had strayed somewhere onto this gargantuan orb. I locked myself in the basement of my house for hours. My siblings were tensed. The only spunk in my life had been aired by the stormy winds of time. I zeroed that time was ominous for me, but then I evoked of an abstract of my book pronouncing hard work over time. Opprobrious thoughts were the crux of my cerebellum. Every elderly face from my cluster opined themselves over the issue, and I gave a deaf ear to all of them. One day, I was playing with my fountain pen and suddenly I penned that a thought. It said: Everything and anything done with an added emotion show cases your weakness towards the job. This thought again jolted my brains hard. I again began the unending expedition of getting my data recovered… The phoenix of a writer was in formation.

I sauntered to a shop behind the edifice of our college. I purchased some software to get the golden data back. But I didn’t count on the software as I had tried hell lot of software till date. I slipped the CD in my computer and began the process. To my surprise, I saw it recovering some of the files. I called my friend’s elder brother who was a Network Engineer. He helped me a lot in interpreting the software. 2 days… He shrieked his success and I thronged his house. Like a proud Hitler, he gave words to his triumph. I checked the files and hastily zeroed that the data was back… But, after killing 8 straight hours before the computer screen, I discovered that ‘The Timed Love Series’ and the short stories were corrupted by the data base. Moreover the articles on time, love and success were recovered in machine language i.e. 0 and 1. But this time I wasn’t feeling down, because I had evoked some of the rosy time of my life. The time of my life that was versified by me...

The mad notion of mine that connected my work with my feelings wiped out. I now set goals and get my works done. I have digested that emotion in execution of any work doesn’t fruit at all. And with this story I have again begun the eternal endless journey of mine, i.e. again rewriting my book and getting it launched by an established publishing house…Oh God! Don’t bestow barrels of fortune over me; rather shower some of the strengths over me so that I may recreate the magic again on the pages of dire love and inks of mammoth desires…!!!!