Cause I had to write..

(..Otherwise my child wouldn't)

Recently I read something. 

Someone asked Stephen King how he writes so much, so fast. 

His response was simple. He said he aims to write six pages a day, done and dusted. So if he was to write a 200/ 300 page novel that would be like finishing a novel in matter of weeks. 

That makes absolute sense. Doesn't it? Except procrastinators like me sit and wile away day after day, week after week, that runs into decades to end. 

So what's it with revamping our procrastination profile? Lately, when I work and see how the world works, I see that it is more common than we think - this habit to procrastinate. Another genius modern thinkers of our time - Robert Greene - opined that we need to have a sense of urgency to tackle life and what we intend to do, because life zooms past before we know and we also never know when we are called back.

As we speak, I sit here with my 9 yr old, trying to make her do what I had been absconding for a while now. "We need to write everyday" I tell her, It is very important to keep our commitments to learning. 

We were supposed to write about making our lives into a movie, with the plot intact, but add characters from fiction to enhance our plots. 

Like I would want Harry (potter) to be my best friend. Well, I wouldn't assume the role of Hermione. Let's leave her alone and not water her down. And may be I'd want Albus Dumbledore to be my mentor. Would it be safe to say that I'd want JK Rowling to write my life plot?

Oh wait - Let's approach Mani Ratnam. And make him sprinkle his leading men (and ladies) around me to enhance my procrastination laden excuse of a life. 

No - I should loiter around Imtiaz's characters. Aditya, Sejal, The Matargasti duo - forgot their names. I remember someone telling me that they would want Murakami to write their life story. Speaking of Haruki, I have to confessions  to make about my 'to read' hall of shame. I commence and re commence to read him and I stop around chapter 3 - like one would let go of the gym and eating healthy resolutions made on Jan 1st right around the time valentine’s day approaches. 

Yeah right. Write!

And read.

Life - is too short, to even be little!

Retrospect

 The other day, I was speaking with one of my friends, someone who's known me long enough to know me well - and told them that if there's a spirit character of mine, it has to be Geet from "Jab we met"

"Are you your favorite then?" the question came before I could blink. 

Except I went speechless. After a long pause came another question.

"Then why do you call her your spirit character?"

I didn't have an answer. I went into a thinking spiral and said "Yeah, I don't know why I identify with her the most of all the characters I watched"

The conversation drifted to other topics, Though My brain didn't. I wasn't sure why I thought Geet and I had the same spirt, albeit with surface differences. I am not as lively as her, and no I don't chat up random strangers and go on a talk marathon - but when I connect with someone, I have the tendencies to be a Geet.

Around 3am our time, the thought of "Why am I like Geet, if I am not like Geet" was on a loop in my nocturnal head. And then something happened.

I pulled up my phone, squinted in the dark. 

"Geet didn't love herself, she wasn't her favorite" I texted to my friend who resides in another time zone.

"Why so?" came the instant response with a surprise emoji in tow. 

And thus, triggered the subtext of what Imtiaz Ali would have meant when he morphed into Geet and made her say what she said. In the context of the dialogue, a morose Aditya is just warming up to the very extroverted  Geet. When she exclaims how she would have fallen for him, had she not been into a committed relationship and adds something in the lines of "Just imagine - me falling for you" Aditya says - "You love yourself don't you? and she responds in her characteristic enthusiasm saying "Main Apni Favorite hoon" - a tagline that probably launched a thousand memes, and that many more oohs and aahs, to a point where it arguably became the one liner that the film got identified with. 

So where did we miss the subtext bus with this line? What do people that love themselves do when they are faced with rejection? Do they become frail shadows of their former selves, forgetting to talk, smile or even think of the family that would coddle and comfort them in times of crisis? Then why did Geet say she is her favorite? Is it just an involuntary confirmation she offered to Aditya without meaning what she said? - quite possible right? 

The Geet that Aditya thought he saw would have done one of the following in the event of being dumped.

* Do a live session of the gaalis then and there, when Anshuman rejects her. 

* Move on, say nothing - just show her disappointment to him and return home by the next quickest transportation available , do a customary little grieving  if that and move on to her next adventure, with or without a guy on her arm. 

'That would not make the plot the plot' - you might argue. What if I said, it wasn't there for the plot but for real, and Geet didn't love herself all along! She was too vested into the world - She was concerned about the long face of a fellow traveller, she was bothered when someone she just met missed the train. She didn't shrug her shoulders and go on with her self love when Aditya didn't seem to be interested in her banter. Geet wore a mask of self love. For real, she had love for everyone and everything except herself. She needed another person to come pull her out of the slump of rejection. Geet didn't love herself. She didn't!

Imtiaz did put a little red herring in there, with that "Main apni favorite hoon" - it is probable that many givers like Geet are led to believe that they are indulging  in themselves when they give love. It is probably how the Geets of the world end up, in a slump when the love they project onto the world doesn't reflect back onto them. It is probably why the likes of me and many more identify with Geet though they don't gaslight themselves into believing that they are their own favorite. 

So what did Geet learn in the end? 

And as her spirit human, I aspire to learn it too!

 

Love is a superpower that saves the world. And when we give it all away and don't save even a little for ourselves, we render ourselves broke. We lose ourselves.

Let's be our favorites - all while saving the lost ones on the brim of giving up, while making sure others don't miss their trains. 

    Let's mean it while we say it!

Reminder

 

I lot of things got on to the back burner lately, and the cocoon that this little soliloquy of a blog is supposed to be, got off the burner all together. So as the sixth day of the ninth month arrives, the little caterpillar does a little wiggle inside - remembering that the metamorphosis is in progress.