The 100 days Project or The Art of Frauding

In which I explain how I am going to tackle the 100 days project.

I am a big fraud. Not in the alarming sense of " dont pay taxes" or "embezzle company funds" fraud. I dont have the intelligence or the stamina to carry out these activities. No- more in the mundane sense of  " Yes I am five  minutes away" when I haven't even started or " yes yes, its on track, dont worry we are managing it" when I have no clue of whats going on.  Then I go around scrambling to figure out whats going on in the project and scramble some more to ensure that its on track. This when there was no need for me to blabber in the first place.

But my foot in the mouth recently reached a higher level. I had a case of "Foot in the blog mouth". I dont know how else to describe it. Yesterday, as I was writing the post on embarking on the 100 days project, without my knowledge I typed "which will allow me to experiment with different styles of writing". When my brain realised what had been  typed it quickly formulated the disclaimer and stuck it alongside the original line. But I had typed something and  once the thought of "different styles of writing" crept up my mind it was impossible to repress it and say " I will churn out regular posts for 100 days".

There was  a slight problem though. I had no idea what it meant and how to go about doing it.

Few minutes after my post, I was wondering what different styles of writing I was capable of. Well, I thought to myself "  I can do movie reviews and book reviews, have never done those before". I was now left with the simple task of figuring out 98 other styles.  It then occured to me that I could write for different magazines- different genres of magazines which will ensure that I will be forced to write about topics which I normally dont. I can write columns for Femina, Architecture weekly, homes and interiors, gardening magazines, political magazines, nature& wildlife, food magazines, Psychology, lonely planet,  etc.  Not only will it force me to expand my horizons of writing , it will also keep my ranting to a minimum as I would pretend I am writing for a magazine.

Of course, none of this precludes fraud. I can clearly see myself writing whatever comes to mind and slotting it into some magazine section. And there is always the option of calling it the column submission for Outlook or Week. Have you seen the irrelevant articles they publish?

One of these days I will make a list of the magazines I definitely want to cover but until then I will post as they come, with a mention of which magazine it is intended for. I am not deluded enough to think that it is worthy of getting published in the magazine, it is merely my attempt at writing for the audience of these. Its just a way of keeping the 100 days project interesting for me with some semblance of a structure instead of random posts being thrown into the universe, all of which can loosely be assembled into one giant post.

As fascinating as this idea is, it comes directly in conflict with a thought I have been having about the blog recently. Unlike business or subject blogs which run purely on content  and the greatness of the writing, individuals' blogs need the personal touch. You cant follow some unknown person's blog unless you get some sense of how their lives are. Not every minute details of their lives, but a broad sketch of their life, against which context the readers can understand the blog contents better. Unless their content is so powerful and their writing is so beautiful that you would read them regardless.

 So, in the awareness that my writing isnt so fantastic that it will keep the reader hooked, I will make the magazine articles more personal than the ones you see in the actual magazine. I will somehow also try and keep it objective.

Thank you, my dear useless subconscious, for the last paragraph. Now I have to figure out how that needs to be done. Seriously, cant you check with me before just typing stuff?

Musicophilia

Amongst all the topics I could have chosen to resurrect the blog, music is the most unlikely, but perhaps most fitting, in some ways.  You see, I had spent all of my life trying to be cool. And cool was achieved by two ways- by genuinely being better than others at something or just being different from others, without seeming to try hard. Since the former required some semblance of talent combined with efforts, both of which I famously lacked, I gravitated to the easy path.  Amongst my many useless attempts at being different was  one I genuinely believed in- that music was not important to my life. I had once proclaimed "If all music were to disappear from my life, there wouldnt be too much change" much to the  amusement of my friends.

I couldnt have been more wrong.

 I had never shown much inclination to music and was mostly indifferent to the popular songs my peer group listened to. Of course, I had my favourite songs but most were the ear-worm type catchy tunes that would get stuck in your head for days( think Rabba rabba from whatever raveena tandon movie that was) and I had no ear for the supposedly complicated music that my friends understood and appreciated. Even the non-earworm songs I liked had a lot to do with the voice, the lyrics etc more than the music itself.   I assumed that I was cursed with a flawed ear and accepted it with a generosity I never bestow on myself and went about making the best of it by loudly trumpeting my indifference to music to whoever cared to listen.

My only use for music then, was to serve as a memory tapper- a song that I associate with something would immediately transport me to that particular event/location assaulting my other senses so powerfully- When I hear "Black hole sun"I am always taken back to S'room during that hailstorm day- I can taste the sand in my mouth and can feel the gritty wind blowing on our faces , i can almost sense the depressingly dark room and our dirty selves. It is almost as  if the song has taken control of my brain and instead of taking sensory inputs from the eyes and nose, is sending the  song-inputs to my sensory organs. Many songs take me to various events- indian ocean to the backstage audi bringing back the dull throbbing excitement ( there is just no other way to describe the feeling ) of the stage set-up or some tam songs taking me to the dark sleepy afternoons of TV watching with my sister.

But as with most things I was proved wrong, but this time I am not complaining one bit.

A year back, I listened to some flute songs on youtube to pass time and found myself enjoying them quite a bit. But not in a life-altering or a soul-searching way and so like a person you become friends with on a cruise  trip, I got back to my life and forgot all about it, only retaining vague pleasant memories.

Then I bought a fancy phone and like a lot of things that I would never have done without the fancy phone, I once  listened to something I heard in a friend's car, first thing in the morning. It was brilliant, and I realised how awesome it is to start the day with music.  I remembered my little flute experiment and started listening to Celtic flute stuff which then lead me to other instrumental cool stuff ( god bless "related videos") which further lead me to heavier stuff based on celtic instruments and before I knew it, I was listening to some weirdly named bands in genres I didnt even know existed. And evoked reactions in me, I didnt know could be evoked by hitting a piece of metal with a stick. Like all true addicts I continued searching for more stash in the giant called the internet and while I still dont know what exact genres most of my songs belong to ( hell, I dont know how many kinds of metal are there) I do have a list of favourite bands stored away on a spring pad, to be listened to, at a later point. My mornings are spent staring at the traffic from my balcony lost in some battle music and the winter fog only adds the LOTR-ness to the whole scene.

I cant believe I am doing this so late in my life. All those afternoons spent on campus staring blankly at the ceiling could have been enriched so much, all those funny mornings of dredging through FB looking for gossip could have been embellished with sound-effects, all those nice mornings of tea and breeze could have been oh-so-perfect with background music. If I could, I would give the younger-me a slap that she so richly deserves.  I suppose I am being ungrateful here- Shakespeare said "How much sharper than a serpernt's tooth it is, to have a thankless child"  The past-me would consider the present-me thankless. After all, she was just trying to be different.