Waking asleep

There is music playing inside my head. It's 03.29 a.m. I can feel every second of the night passing. I had been sleeping all day these days and wasting my nights.

I am growing fat. I can feel it. I haven’t exercised since I don't remember how long.

I need some discipline. 

All I have been doing these days is trying to write a story and I am not proud of my productivity in that either.

Productivity increases when you keep yourself busy with some or the other activity. You should not keep thinking about what it is you want to write next but actually write or just give it a break and stop thinking about it for a while. You should let the subconscious do the work. If you consciously keep thinking about it, it will remain in your conscious mind. You have to let it seep into the subconscious. The subconscious is where everything gets solved on its own. You must keep your conscious mind busy with some other activity in order to not keep pulling it back into your consciousness. You’ll be able to write better.

I have observed that I have been talking to myself. It is easier at night, to be honest with ourselves for there is solitude, complete. This paper is like a mirror that observes my conversation with my own myself.

I am writing so I can build on my thoughts to find and reach my destination. I feel it’s just like mathematics. When the steps of approach to a solution are written, it is easier to correct yourself and you don’t have to memorize many things. Keeping things in our conscious memory is like holding water in a fist. It slips away, seeps into the subconscious.

Subconscious is difficult to navigate in. In the subconscious, we easily drift away. Some memories are so deeply entrenched in it that you come across them whenever you try to navigate in the subconscious.

I think of Dad. You are everywhere in my subconscious mind. So maybe I should ask you to help me navigate.

I have grown stronger emotionally. I don’t consciously think about him much. I believe he would have been proud. The time is 04.29 a.m. It never stops. At least if I get some work done, I will be happy.

But I have more time. I shall make the most of the moment, every.

Even if I try I can’t fall asleep immediately. I shall keep writing.

The milk lady comes at around 05.30 a.m. She amazes me. She has been bringing milk packets and freshly picked flowers for my grandmother every day for at least the last 13 years. I don’t think she has ever missed a day without informing us. Our meeting happens only on the days that I wake up before 05.30 a.m. and those are rare. There are gaps of months or years at a stretch between our meetings. Every time she has seen me, I have been reminded of how long it has been. I am reminded of how I have grown. I have seen her couple of times in daylight hours too, on the road, crossing. Then I think, there are so many worlds that exist and we do not know. 

I remember from my days I spent in Kolkata, how I particularly used to want to visit the worlds behind those numerous closed doors visible from the windows of a bus, moving. I wished I was invisible so I could have gotten to see each of those worlds. Now I realize, even if I were invisible, I could have been at only one place at a time while the world happened everywhere at the same time. That makes it not much different from my original situation naturally. I can’t even imagine how I would have processed if I could have been at multiple places watching multiple things at the same time.

It feels good to be in this limited body itself. I remember one of my favorite teachers at college, Arjun Mukerji once told me, the greater the constraints for a design, the easier the choice. Arjun was different in the sense it can’t even be defined. I should not attempt. I wonder.

I stayed in his room for a couple of days. I remember the color of light in his room, the cats and his generosity. It was all a part of what I have become today.

Its 05.26 a.m. and now I am wide awake. The birds are chirping. The sounds are so clear and the air is so cold. The more I write, the better I get at writing. This is the best time of the day. I should make use of it every day. I should either wake up early or not sleep the entire night. I shall have to sleep early or sleep in the day. I can’t change my body clock abruptly. I will see what happens today.

I can hear some sounds. My mother must already be awake. She must have kept the door open. The milk lady must have already come and gone. The daily activity has started. It’s just a matter of time before everything is taken over by the machine.

It grows difficult to write as we enter into the day. But I am not satisfied yet to stop writing. I write to grow. By the end of a story, I should have grown in comparison with my earlier self. So I write till I reach a point where I can compare.

With every story, I draw an imaginary path that I can bend. There comes a point at which the path comes across where it had started in the first place. It doesn’t even have to make a closed figure.

If it is the incompleteness that the writer wants to achieve and has been achieved, the story is complete. If the writer is satisfied, the story is complete. It’s up to the reader if he can feel it.

The writer is one and the readers are many. A writer can’t write to satisfy individual readers but him. 

I am feeling much fatter now. I guess I feel fat enough to work out. There comes a time when you can’t do anything without doing that which you have been postponing.

I have come back from a walk and I really feel like I have grown from writing this. I guess I have even gotten used to journaling. I wonder how some journaling on a sleepless night can put your life back in order again. I don’t even know if I am going to sleep now or not, but I know I want to be better because I don’t want to waste a sleepless night again.