Academic writing sounds socialistic. Being told what to write so that everyone is just like you. You are told that you are free to choose, but only from items in the basket they provide. Ugly words like ‘models’, ‘quantitative’, ‘results’, ‘literature’ and ‘conclude’ build up a rigid house in my head. A restaurant that doesn’t innovate. An artist that doesn’t create. A repeating rhythm. A reappearing demon. But such is conformity to standards. To expectations. Are we all stock pieces? Factory built to be later customized. Customized, yet restrictively.

I soaked in words. I waddled in it and let it marinate within. Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, Reza Aslan, Dan Brown and Rowling. They put a ladder in front of me and told me, ‘Climb! Dream! My youngling!’ And I did. Budding, imbibing inspirations from them.

I went on, like a rolling stone. Gathering moss. Like a snow ball, gathering mass. I went on, like a bird with wings long and boundaries none. I love to flitter in the wind, with words, with text, with rhyme, with sounds.

I am a machine, I would like to imagine, if not too humble. Churning words. Churning thoughts, dreams, emotions and fire. Slowly growing, fed by the fodder of novels, fiction and non.

Then they came. Marching. With signs on their arms. Rigid. They had STRUCTURE! Oh Lord! Conformity they called themselves. Conform! Confound!

They had rules; they had grammar. They had opinions, pre formulated.

I stood by, watching them take over my house. My beautiful home. Etched in alliterations. Draped in metaphors. Sprinkled with a little form.

But they put things at ‘it’s’ place. That’s what they said. They told me, you are not doing this now. You should learn to love another. Another?

‘Yes. Another!’

‘Why should I?’

‘Because they won’t understand what you write! They don’t want to know what you feel! They want you to be plain! Respect the Data!’

‘Data! Oh Lord. What’s this now? I want my words, not data.’

‘But this is what you chose now. Imbibe. Soak. Transpire. You be creative. If that’s what you want. But choose from the words in this basket!’

‘Why??’

‘Because people should know what you are telling them!’

‘Why can’t they just feel? Why can’t they think for themselves? Where is the soul here? Why is it so mechanical? Why can’t my friends jump into the text as they please?’

‘This is how it is!’

I shuddered but chose to accept. Because this was my doing.

My words crawled up to me. Dragging their robe, robe that left sparkles on the conformed floor. They pulled with them a bag of words that I was deemed too high to use. They held my hem. Trying one last time to see if they could sway me.

I looked at them in their big deep dark eyes. My wet eyes struggle to hold a flood. The words sniff, know the onset of impending doom and remove its greasy yet sweet fingers off my hem and leave.

I sit and watch. My world was being turned upside down as I speak. Conformity was re arranging my home, my insides. My words were trudging with despair and walking out the door and onto the street.

I couldn’t hold it any longer. I ran up to them and stopped them. They turned back and looked with hopeful eyes. Eager to expect that I would let them back in. I hesitated. I turned back and saw a completely different house. Conformed. I saw that it was completely strange. It was polished. It was gleaming. But inside it, it was structured! STRUCTURED! So that others would understand me.

I looked back at my words. And whispered to them, ‘Go now my children. Wait for me. For every night I will sneak out to search for you. My affair with you is everlasting. Conformance is only momentary. I live and breathe for you. You survive me and I will come back for you. Our parting may be short, but not without secret rendezvous.’

And then I head back into my new house. My new abode, changing my self and my heading. This too shall pass. Wont it?

When the code for daily weather was being written down, an incrementing variable was introduced for Chennai, India. 

varWeather = hot;

varWeather = varWeather +1;

This for loop dips only when the season refreshes itself and sets the initial variable to 0. In other words I know its hot today, it would tend to mean that it is hotter tomorrow. Ah there is a heavy downpour today. Schools close. Yay! What do we see the other day? Yes, I hear you.

It is the same for Bengaluru, India, except that the increment is not by 1. But by a smaller variable. And it begins with

varWeather = chilly;

But no, not with Enschede, the Netherlands.

It is almost like someone wrote the script and sent it to the Testing team. The testing team threw in a random number generator to test the code. And sent it off to production without removing that. Developers - You can imagine!!

The result was Enschede can’t simply make up its mind. It doesn’t know whether it should rain or it should shine. A cloud of doubt always hangs over. (Desperate Puns!!)

The same could be extended to the Netherlands. Trust me when I say I have seen hail, rain, breeze, sunshine and snow in the SAME day. The random number loop runs at random intervals.

Isn’t weather such an unpredictable and beautiful thing? It is so crazy that it makes up for the lack of hills here. 

Ah! Spring in Netherlands must be wonderful, you might say. Darned rains, the foreigners say.

To Coffee and the free flowing … thoughts, I mean thoughts. 

   Bengaluru – The Silicon Valley of India was my holiday for a year. A holiday from home and responsibilities. It all began with the envelope from Cognizant. When it arrived, it came along with a spicy sweet notion of me having to travel.

Travel – Bring it on I say, but the thought of staying away for God knows how long in a foreign city gave me the creeps. Yes it is a foreign city. A city where it’s bloody cold all the time. A city where prettiness was abundant. A city that goes to bed by ten o clock no matter what the day of the year was. Yes, weirdness all of them.  

The high of this city is its mundane richness that it provides so comfortably amidst greenery and a cooler climate. But I am a guy who prefers sweats to chills, mind you! Bengaluru greets you with fog infused sun rays that tickle you up from sleep like a mother waking up her new born. But dare wake up before the sun and you go all buzzer deaf in your ears with that ear invading chill.

And I checked the check box almost all professionals seem to tick these days. Being the IT guy. My encounter with the IT kind was grandiose. Towering buildings, Reach-n-Grab fast food counters and never ending pathways. It seemed like the entire Bengaluru came here for their day and night jobs. Like planktons in an ocean.

And not to forget the sinfully pretty roads. Yes I am not talking about the traffic jams. Ignore them, and you find yourself in such a beautiful city. It makes you think you became rich wherein the city quietly sips off your funds in ways Chennai would have never dreamt off.

The Sky Bar at UB tower, Metro rail, MG road, Cubbon Park, Bannerghata Park and a sports resort were all the check boxes that have been ticked.

Traffic? Please move on.

Food. In. Bengaluru. Oh! Mahn! Its to DIE for. The themes, the cuisines, the locales and for many other crazy reasons, I give it to Bengaluru. From the Mosque Road’s roadside specialties to Posh Island themed restaurants, Bengaluru gives you a lot of options.

Did you know that the maximum any Tom, Dick or Harry can charge for a movie ticket in Chennai is 120/- tops. Note. MAXIMUM. Now switch to Bangalore. Prices start from 150. I mean. Like. Whateva. Hail Pirate Bay. I can buy a 16 Mbps internet plan at cheaper prices and suck the living soul out of any movie.

Guess what construction companies do during their tea breaks. Build malls. Hey, there is a farm on the outskirts of Bangalore. Lets build a mall. Hey, there is free land in my back yard. Lets build a mall. Hey I forgot my phone at home. Lets build a mall. No, I wasn't getting carried away.  

Autowalas? I don’t know what people hate about them so much, but having stayed in Chennai for a fat duration, I pity them. I almost blurted out “That much only a!” during the first few days in the city, but slowly the locale’s irate seemed to rub on to me.

The people here are very hard to judge. Bangalore, is like a huge bowl of mixture. You find number plates all the way from Russia to Australia.OK FINE! From all over India. The city showcases the entire Indian demographic.

Bengaluru – I thank you for all the memories and fun that you have given me. In short it was quite a pleasant stay. Stay classy.

There was this moment that I remember ever so vividly. It took place after I finished the God of Small Things. As I put the novel down, I witnessed a literature that struck the right cords of my emotional scale. I have had no such feeling for any other man made novel. As I read the last words of the novel, Naalai, I felt heavy and wanted to sit down and shed tears for each of the characters in the book. Being the sensitive animal deep down, there was a lump in my throat. The book not only being heart wrenchingly pitiful, it made you connect and savor the turbulence the people in the novel go through. The drama was domestic pulsating a stronger sting. A stronger sorrow for Pappachi and Velutha’s life.
And then I read Baumgartner’s Bombay by Anita Desai. On a scale of 0 – 10, 10 being God of Small Things Level, it scores a straight seven. This story, having way less tragedy than GOST, takes you through several journeys. Journeys of Time, continent and culture.The story walks the life of a self proclaimed reject, Baumgartner born in Germany and traces the entire thread of his life till Bombay. Set in a period where the world was maturing and wars were fought with more vengeance and machinery, Baumgartner identifies himself with the common reluctant Indian. Yearning for a chance to meet his mother, Baumgartner soulfully searches company yet keeps them at bay. Solitude was his forte.  Anita Desai, carefully captures the pre-war and the post war India. The India that shined and the India that warred within. Events wash Baumgartner in its waves as he walks aimless and lost. Replete with domestic imagery of India and her forlorn street dwellers, she shows us the gap between the well off and the poor. Her imagery is so splendid and rich that you get lost in her million ways of offering scenery to you. Garnished and prettied like the offering to an Idol. She wrestles with words twisting them and makes several genuine adjective marriages seconded by Arundhati in the Indian stage. Though the ending was written to exact empathy from the reader, it could have had a stronger note. 
If you love literature, of the sort that sucks your soul like candy leaving you empty, hopeless and lost yet fully conscious of the truth that hovers like mosquitoes on the evening of a rainy day, you would love this book. The book spews with the delicacies of life and how India never turns her head away to anyone who knocks her door.   

Prologue: “Here is an attempt at explaining the rules governing a Story and a brief study if not detailed on its aspects.”

If one was to define a Story and required a layman’s one page guide here goes.

A Story is a simple, almost cost free of conveying a message or rather presenting a certain collection of events in a manner as to provide a collective approach to a certain goal otherwise called climax.

To explain it in a school based method, the main elements of a Story are

S-Structure

T-Time

O-Order

R-Relish

Y-You

A story is a multidimensional element. With the ever perpetual and flowing aspect of time, a story is described and woven intricately along the lines of the flow in such a manner than once the aspect of time and space is removed, the story ceases to exist.

A story is generally placed as a sequence of events that flow forward backward or are displayed as varied pieces of puzzles that can be fit together in a manner as pleasing by the reader's mind but majorly dictated by the written matter.

A story when read generally is sensed by the higher areas of the brain and the readers mind creating a visual space accessed only by the reader's mind portrayed in a way such that though the context and the content of the surroundings are defined by the words, the description and magnanimity are entirely left to the reader. 

Much like an inception as described by Christopher Nolan.  

Feel is another dimension. As the theme being described by the writer is placed in a reader friendly mind space, the story can have a lasting effect only when the events being described affect the higher intelligence of the brain being emotion, sentiment and bonding with the theme of the story.

Alongside the events being described, the manner in which they are revealed to the reader also has a huge impact. Plots, twists and story turns reveal a certain style of writing and decide the acceptance of story as a piece of work by the reader.

Language also adds its own beauty to the story structure and expression. Use of a proper adage in the right weight can lever the story to different heights of beauty and perception.

A story's success depends heavily on the easiness with which a person can empathize or relate to the events or the effect of the events over the antagonist.

In short, a Story is similar to the domino effect. It is necessary that along with the trigger, the path of flow is properly constructed so as to orchestrate a perfect fall. A single misplaced piece can jeopardize the whole layout depending on its angularity creating in chaos or in an inability to comprehend.

Thus the effect a story has on its reader is similar to that of a cascading fall of dominoes. After progressing to the final piece, the story’s last line, it will be clear whether the final impact of a long scripted tale has taken its toll on the minds of the reader.