I don’t think there’s any point in working if money were out of the equation. If we all had abundant food and full-time entertainment, we wouldn’t need anything else. We wouldn’t have to work at all, we could fool around and have a ball, even.
Some say, if money were no object, we’d have a fuller life. That we’d do more of what we loved, of what made us happy. That we’d follow our passions.
But is it so?
There’d be no point in waking up to a blaring alarm, fighting an urge to snooze, or ignoring the top palate while brushing.
There’d be no point in rushing out of the house, or remembering you hadn’t locked the door after you’d walked down two flights of stairs.
There’d be no point in clocking in 2 minutes before the penalty time, or skipping lunch to write a poem, or staying late to discuss the ANUS that had fallen to an all-time low.
If money were not an object, there’d be no point at all in getting out of bed every day. There’d be no traffic, no blaring horns, and no headlights blinding you when you walk home after a long day at the office.
If not for want of money, we’d have no reason to listen to the boss lecturing, or tolerate water cooler gossip. There’d be no dinner dates with attractive sales reps or compulsive flirting with the blond receptionist.
If we didn’t get up, suck up and go to work, we’d be at home on our couch, nibbling on potato chips, thinking about making art, talking about zen, and adding weight to the planet.
No, we wouldn’t follow our dreams, we wouldn’t even dream.
With a passion for shades
and water colours for tools
he went looking for a school
to learn and become an artist
he knew no new technique
yet his views were unique
teachers told him bug off
you’re no good, get off
he strove still to no avail
all nightlong he scribbled
and daylong he dabbled
tried doing acrylic on canvas
and tested sketches on paper
shady outlines, weak curves
many hiccups and near give ups
years of toiling and redrawing
rework, redesign, recolour, repeat.
And people called Artists naturals.
I was fourteen then. Everything that caught my eye caught my mind. Life was school. And school was a routine bore, with a few interesting classes thrown in at times. My text books and note books were all just calculations, corrections made in red ink, and the occasional green signature.
It was yet another day, yet another class, with yet another teacher asking us to turn to page three hundred and ninety-four. The faint Harry Potter reference was all the entertainment we had. That was until I saw the picture in that page. It was an English class and for reasons still bewildering, the lesson was about gondolas.
Venitian majesticity
For some odd reason, I thought of orangutans. Perhaps it was the sound of the two words, or the colour of the picture facing me. Nevertheless, when I took in the word, gondola, I could only imagine an extra-large orangutan crouching itself inside a deep brown boat staring at the camera, and at me.
It took me a while to erase that image from my mind and look at the topic of discussion: Venice.
That’s how I fell in love with gondolas.
Now that I think of it, I don’t even remember the contents of that lesson. Except that it spoke of the no street Venice and the gondolas people used for transport. The idea fascinated me. I was never a fan of the Indian roadway system. Somehow it always makes me regret my food choices.
But this, this was genius. Travelling through the city in boats. I could picture the beauty of it, the environmental awareness in such a system. This was a time when global warming and pollution were so huge that they were essay topics for school students. Here was a city that boycotted them all. And I wanted to experience it, despite my aversion to all water bodies — I had taken swimming lessons for three years before my mother realised I wouldn’t do anything more than holding on to the edge of the pool with my head high above the water.
Staring at that pixellated picture of the gondola and the people in it, I realised I wanted to go to Venice. Just to ride around the city in a gondola.
For about three to five years after that, I didn’t think about Venice at all. It had become one of those school-days’ fantasy that people only cherish when they grow too old to pull themselves off their armchairs.
But one day, I thought back to the tingling sensation I had felt when I saw that picture in my text-book.
Craving for more, and clearer photos, I went looking for Venice and gondolas in Pinterest. The next thing I knew, I had created a board to collect all the beautiful Venice photos I could find. I still don’t know what good that would do, but that’s how love works: you never know why.
So Venice is my ideal destination. I’ve spent a lot of waking hours and much more sleeping hours wondering how I’d go to Venice. Or if I’d go at all. It didn’t take long for me to realise, going to Venice was no big deal. At least the dreaming part of it wasn’t.
I’d go alone. Because I haven’t found that one person who’s worth going with, and I don’t want to wait if I could go instead.
When? Tomorrow if possible, but this is just a plan so I’d leave the “when” to availability of flights and possibility of cash.
Where? Venice, of course. Perhaps once I’ve seen enough of Venice, I’d go somewhere else, but I’m not the kind to draw out detailed itineraries. I’d go where my gut takes me.
However, I’d like to make a stop in Bulgaria and Croatia on the way. I have no idea what’s best in either countries, but people don’t talk much about them, and I’d take that as a sign these countries need more travellers.
Oh, and since I’m already landing on Italian soil, I might as well pay a visit to the Colosseum, make a tribute to Madame Nightingale’s birthplace, and say hello to a few models in Milan. And once I’m done mingling with the tourists, I’d traverse away to some of the less known parts of Italy. Grab a pizza at Crotone, maybe, and spend a day watching Friends.
And then, when I’m ready to come back, I’d go back to Venice again, thank the gondoliers for a few more rides, and return with memories worth bragging about.
PS — This post is for a promotion campaign by yatra.com.
Writing for a living is tough. Not everything you write will see the real world, and you have to be ok with it.
Becuase when it comes to writing for someone other than yourself, you have to say what they want to read or need to know.
There’s no darlings in professional writing. You don’t have to like what you write. If it works, it works.
And it’s hard. For someone who wants to write drunk and publish as is. For someone who wants to write just because she wants to write. It’s hard when a personal blogger starts writing for her company’s “business-class audience.” You’ll have to make sacrifices you don’t want to. Talk to people you’d rather avoid. You have to smile as you accept their pin pointing as sense — though, most of the time, it is.
Rework becomes your watch word. Deliberate word choices, phrases, and jargon become your world while a clever pun takes the backseat. Because, remember, remember, your audience isn’t pun(n)y.
An official “content writer,” has no balance. You don’t know where the “need for content” ends and where the love for words begins. It’s constant juggling between contrasting worlds, and it puts you off, it blocks the writer within, and scoffs at the crouching figure at work staring deep into her laptop screen.
But somewhere along the way, you realise it’s ok. Sometimes, someone who knows better will cut off most your content. It takes time to see the big picture, or think for the greater good, but you’ll see it. You’ll see that nothing matters more than seeing your audience satisfied. And, somehow, those sleepless nights of tapping away at the keyboard fades into thin air.
The Chaos Within 