This is for another bitch!!!

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.
To hear the immense night, more immense without her.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me. That's all.

My soul is lost without her.
As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me. - Excerpt from a Pablo Neruda Poem

Bull shit. This is not how i feel. Well sometimes...when i am lonely. But there will be others...just like her. Get on with it.

Random thoughts in a love letter

Dear XXXX,

It is 2100 hrs on a Sunday evening. I have finished preparing my job list for tomorrow. My mom is watching some tamil channel and I am here listening to my thoughts and the Goo Goo Dolls.

I am just writing what ever comes to my head. These are the random notes of a wandering mind. This document is the canvas of an unabashed dreamer. This dreamer is looking for someone to shape his dreams – maybe a potter in Goa. Maybe.

I have for long nurtured the idea of scripting a sitcom based on my life. In fact I think that my entire life is full of raw material for a mega sitcom. I have recognized this and I should do something about it before somebody discovers this goldmine and gets a copyright on my life. It is possible with the WTO and its TRIPS. There you go, another scenario for a sitcom. A multi-national production house gets a copyright on my life and I cannot speak about my life for it will be a violation of copyright. In such a situation, I will not be permitted to write this letter. OH my god! I think some hacker working for David Kelley is bugging my computer as I type.

Anyways if it is meant to happen, it will. I cannot stop it. Meanwhile I shall continue to let my mind wander and my fingers punch relentlessly on this hapless keyboard. I had better keep this keyboard safe for it knows more about the workings of my mind than anyone alive. I feel sorry for it and I must apologize someday to it for abusing it. Anyways this keyboard is very loyal – it responds to a light touch anytime of night or day. I cannot say the same about the mouse. It does not respond as well and I keep getting the left and right mouse button mixed up. The things are designed for right-handed people (how common!) while I am left-handed. So, the right mouse is actually on the left for me and invariably the wrong menu pops up when I use the mouse. That should explain my fondness for the keyboard.

Gosh! I didn’t realize that I felt so strongly about the keyboard. I can’t imagine what I would write about you if I let my heart dictate to the keyboard without periodic incursions of rationality from the mind.

How much can I write about nothing without saying something? It is impossible. When you write about nothing you are still writing about something, even if that something is nothing.

I feel like Woody Allen for writing something like that. Have you read his play “God!”? If you haven’t, you should.

Getting back to my sitcom! (Finally! I should start training my mind. It doesn’t listen to me. My mind has a mind and life of its own.)

Getting back to my sitcom again. I have identified several chunks of my life that will fit very well into the sitcom mode. These are as follows:

• My quest for love in my life. That’s is mega sitcom in itself. I am searching for a title.But all the good ones are taken.
• My career in advertising and publishing
• My tryst with acting and fame
• Sports and the story of a 5’5”tall high jumper

I shall start with episode one soon. Now I am off to meet with some childhood friends. Childhood friends are the best. They know your every quirk, mood and intention. They are the only kinds that will tolerate me. So I had better keep them in good humour. I can hear them honking outside my door. Got to go.

Will write you soon

Love

Vidyuth

September 28, 2003

Psycho obessessed me!!!- September 22, 2003

Dear XXXXX,

I seem to have stunned you into silence with the flowers I sent you. Next thing you know, I’ll be outside your house going through your garbage. As it is I have a secret shrine filled with pictures of you in the deep dark recesses of my house. All I need now is some money for surveillance cameras. I’ve seen all the stalker movies (& The Practice) and read up on enough of them to know that I can plead temporary insanity and go scot-free. So don’t you even try calling the cops. He! He!

I have for long wondered about the mind of a serial killer. What must make him tick? What are the motivations? Love! Jealousy! Insecurity! Obsession! Mere lack of communication skills? When I watch movies like Silence of the Lambs, Jack’s back, Psycho, Seven, etc, I ask myself, how close am I to being one of them? Thankfully I come up with an answer of not very close (although you might not be inclined to agree with me just like most women I know. He! He! Some of them think that Psycho Sreenivasan is an apt description of me. Ha!)
Fortunately for me, YOU bring out the best in me.

Anyways, last week was really hectic. The Annual Merchants & Bankers Regatta (for rowing) was held last week and we put up a team from JWT. The races were held all of last week (morning and evening) and I was completely drained. We won in the women’s pairs and finished third in the mixed fours. We have a huge trophy in the office to show for our efforts. It was a quantum leap over last year when we failed to qualify for even a single event. I guess three months of training really paid off. Could have been better but then there’s always next year.

The event culminated with a party at the boat club that went on well into the morning. I must say that I will never again mix grass and alcohol. Am starting training again tomorrow.

Got to go now. Have to go and check on someone’s garbage. Will write you soon enough.
Love
Vidyuth

One more in the many letters i sent her

One more Sunday night. One more time I find myself sitting in front of the computer writing to you. I think it is an addiction. I wait for this the whole day and I feel a whole lot better after writing. I can’t figure out why I just don’t write during the day or why I don’t just call you?

This now is an unfailing part of my routine. I go at 5: 30 to the boat club, finish my work out, have a bath, have dinner and head straight for the computer to write you. Like clock work.
On one level I think it is an addiction. On another it is very biomechanical. Either ways, I am just happy to write you.

Last week was a killer. The best part of my week was my conversation with you on Tuesday. Afterwards, it just went downhill. And tomorrow is another week. Maybe I should talk to you more often. I don’t know about you, but it will make me feel a whole lot better. He! He! (I can actually hear you go “Oh No!”) He! He!

I am going for a movie now (a Tamil flick). So I will stop writing (and she heaves a sigh of relief)
Love
Vidyuth
PS: I hope you managed to string up your mobiles without too much trouble. I have a really corny one (for posterity) “I hope you get caught in one of my lines soon”

A letter and a reply - September 1, 2003

Dear XXXXX,
I just finished reading the book “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Contrary to what you told me, the book was a drag. I, quite frankly, cannot understand why you find this author ‘amazing’.

To start with, I was unable to relate, in even the minutest possible way, to the setting. The author’s description of the town in which the story is set evoked images of the adyar river, the slums of Chennai and the madras port trust – each of these highly unlikely places to think about love leave alone finding it.

Even if the author’s objective was to unravel this tale of undying love in the harshest possible conditions to prove that love knows no place, class, or time, he could have done a much better job. The writing style although descriptive tended to get repetitive, tedious in parts and worse, even predictable. He simply failed to hold my attention.

I guess, the descriptions were tedious to accentuate the strife, the sheer monotony of the protagonist’s life and the unfailing patterns that one’s life seems to settle into. I believe that the author could have conveyed the same in about a hundred pages less.

I am absolutely disappointed in the characters in the novel. They are not strong. Not charismatic. Just weak and fundamentally flawed like most human beings. This is probably why the author is so highly regarded. If the author were to be rated on his ability to make the less than ordinary seem heroic and even noble, then he would probably score very high. Nevertheless his characters, in my opinion, lack depth and resolve.

Personally, I prefer characters like Howard Roark and Gail Wynand in Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead. They were also flawed but they were strong. There were other dimensions to their personality. They were driven by other passions besides love.

There is this one particular scene where the author describes a 72 and 76-year old couple making love – it was revolting and pathetic. Can you imagine your grandparent’s going at it like hormonally charged teenagers? Yuck!!! I just failed to see any beauty in it. I really do not have a problem with septuagenarians finding love, but I expect it to be dignified and mature. I also think that it is physically impossible for a 76-year old man to get it up. (Michael Douglas and Dev Anand will probably be exceptions)

The part I liked best is his description of death. People die in the most unremarkable and even hilarious ways. And the way a person dies maybe completely contradictory to the way one lives. A person can be a hero in real life but he could die having slipped in the bathroom - very tragic and hilarious but very real.

In any case, I didn’t really enjoy the book (as you’ve no doubt inferred). I had to finish it because I can’t leave one unfinished. Maybe, the English translation doesn’t do justice to the Spanish original. Maybe, to say “Gabriel Garcia Marquez is amazing” is the politically correct thing to say (at least to impress girls). Maybe promoting Latin American authors is another of America’s ploys to gain control of the South American economies. At the risk of not scoring brownie points with you, I must confess that I do not like this author. I would be really hard pressed to read another of his novels.

I also didn’t really figure that you liked mushy stuff like this. How wrong was I? If you haven’t already read, “Till we meet again” by Judith Krantz, please do and tell me that it makes far more pleasurable reading than this one.

I feel I should justify my reasons for launching into this book review. Under normal circumstances, I cannot imagine doing such a thing, but as of today, due to the Conditional Access System, all my favourite TV channels are off air.
Love
Vidyuth

P.S.: If you think that this letter is long and boring, you haven’t read anything yet. You should read the book. I sincerely hope that you enjoy this book more than I did.

Reply to my letter
hi
hey you didn't like the bit when the parrot fell into the soup shouting each man for himself it cracked me up. am rereading it and have enjoyed it terribly.
well am going to brave another long letter ripping a novel apart from you by suggesting that you read ‘alchemist’ and ‘By the river piedra i sat down and wept’ both by paulo coellho. you will probably hate both but i loved them and hey your letter carcked me up thanks again for the book
i then maybe should not ask you to read a hundred years of solitude ...ok ok i am grinning frankly strong strong characters piss me off there is just too much hype about personality and shit
heres to trashing more books in my very own readers critic club which includes two members you and me
love
XXXX

One more from my past - 08/03/04

Dear XXXXX,

I am writing because I am thinking about you. It’s funny that I find it easier to write than to speak to you. I feel like I need an excuse to call but not to write. I feel like I intrude on your life when I call but don’t when I write. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

Besides, I still feel like a fumbling, stuttering 16-year old when I speak to you. And my words just tumble out all wrong when they are not tied up in knots along with my tongue. Not so when I write (God bless the man who invented backspace).

I went to see some agricultural land yesterday hoping to buy it. As it turned out, the land was in the middle of nowhere in the back of beyond. It was land in its barest, unappealing form. This plot of land, less than an acre in size, did not have an access road. It did not have electricity, water or even a fence. For God’s sake, it did not even have a tree on it…just dry, caked earth with weeds.

I have decided not to buy it. This is just the beginning of my search and will have to make several such trips before I find that perfect piece of land. My quest shall go on.

I am sorry to trouble you with such boring, irrelevant information. “Kya karoon? Kuch control hi nahi hota!!”.

You will continue to receive such e-mails from me because YOU inspire me. YOU ignite my soul. Is it you or is it the idea of you? I don’t know.

Hoping that you’ll always be “My Unattainable XXXXXX”

Love

Vidyuth

P.S: Should you reply to this mail, just tell me about the mugs and when they will be ready. I hope you received the Demand draft.

Would you react differently if I just asked about the DD? I guess I’ll never know. Maybe I am writing all this just to spice up a dull factual letter seeking the status of the mugs. Maybe I am trying to show off my written communication skills (Don’t comment on this one). Maybe Paulo Coelho’s ‘Eleven Minutes’ is having this effect on me. Maybe I am writing this with the secret hope that when I am rich, famous and dead, my letters to you will be discovered, published, prescribed as a text book, debated and awarded the Pulitzer prize.

I have no illusions about my writing skills. Maybe I will be awarded an… award (He! He!) for the strength, depth, conviction and originality in my writing rather than for my writing itself.

Enough Vidyuth!!!. Shut up!!