Home Sounds...

I've been living in open rooms for so long, I've become used to home sounds and smells. Smell of spices frying, clanking of dishes in washing, television cackle, and intimacy of voices that go humming, talking, hollering, and wailing around. Living in my own small little self-created world of love and togetherness. Been cherished and cuddled a bit too much!

Went to see my relatives on my return from a distant land and when they asked what I wanted to do while in the national capital, I promptly affirmed siesta. Woke up with a start. To the sound of my little cousin in a fit of tears and no mind for a parley. To the sight of my aunt standing with her hands on the waist looking wontedly disinterested. Talk of training, internship, training my voice to mumble with a soft baritone, capture a lower octave, stop screaming, talk of growing media afflicting the nation, inspire oneself to be an element of change, break free from senseless frivolous ego-hassles with the
‘Ex and her’. Getting lost in a world of voices and words, ideals and realism, throwing the romanticist out and welcoming the idealist in. (still can’t find the difference between the two.) Struggling with changing the preposition from ‘I’ to ‘They’. “Don’t be the story. Instead look for the story.” Chanting the hymn of Objectivity, Objectivity, and Objectivity… Feel less, see more. Write less, report more. All while trying to craft a character, all contradicting the training. Keep the ‘I’ in. Feel with the character. Empathize, Empathize, And Empathize. Write, Create, feel…..

Journalist or Writer?? Reporter or Author?? Story writer or Story maker??

Will there be such a time when I won't have to seek in and ask who is to be called at this hour? When will I be allowed to fly south for the winter? Stand at the balcony and admire the neighbour's handsome son, and not look for a story there. Watch a rally from the drivers’ seat and not in the box of spectators? Go for a concert and head bang instead of sit with the critics and analyze the scales, the rhythms, the crowd and the stage. Scream out for a glass of water. Be able to say 'Your place or mine?'

When will be such a time?