evevning

Writing my Journal

I rushed home this evening to write about my day. It is a thought that has been spinning in my head. To be my own voyeur, to indulge in that complete narcissism has been a pet fantasy. But to frame and map the experience into text has been a daunting task. Never gathered my courage to do it. I thought that I cannot attempt to write something like this. I felt that it would be banal and uninspiring. But for some reason today I feel inspired to write. Maybe I feel ready to start that first foray into writing stuff like this. I am scared to name it as fiction. I don’t know. Let me first recount how this idea began.

Yesterday was one of those relaxed days. Good work at the court and a sense of fulfillment. Added to that there was nobody at home to ask for my attention. I had the day all for myself. I wanted to please myself and relax. I have only two or three ways of relaxing. Either get a good book and read or watch film. Yet another way is to chat. Years of chatting has however shown that it sucks your energy far more than it relaxes. Howver I chose to chat. Chat holds a certain thrill, a promise of the unknown. I slept through the afternoon. Woke up around 5.30pm feeling refreshed and relaxed. I made a cup of tea and settled before my computer. My computer is in my office that I have set up with great care and attention. A neem tree ponders outside my window. A focused light which falls directly on the keyboard illuminating just that portion and nothing more. The right kind of light, a mosquito repellant and the world space radio playing jazz in the background. The weather was cloudy and threatening to rain.

I switched on the computer, connected to the broadband internet connection and logged onto yahoo messenger. This almost seems like an advertisement for Yahoo. Logging in and then finding your friend gleaming yellow on the yahoo window is one of those pleasures which a chat addict will alone know. A conversation followed with this friend whom I will call G.

G and me have been friends for a long time. We are ‘net’ friends. We keep bumping into each other on and off. We share news about the good things of life like films, music and other meandering stuff. In the course of these conversations I mentioned my desire to document the routine aspects of my life, in a sense to be my own voyeur. The concept of voyeurism generally evokes only sexual parts of the mind and body. But to begin and conclude with the body reduces the force of voyeurism to the linear and the obvious. G and me began to discuss the possibilities of simply documenting the grumpiness of the morning, the small little chores that we go about without giving a second thought. The idea of watching and remembering what we did this morning without excluding any aspect either under the garb of trivial or dirty was the objective. We talked a little more about the Manisha Koirala film which had a similar theme where a young boy watches this woman going through her day. He watches her as she wakes up, brushes her teeth, spills the milk and so on. He watches her cry, when she is ecstatic, when she is defeated. The film was badly made but promised a good theme. On this note G and myself promised each other gory details of our day.


My evening on the net continued for another three to four hours chatting with other friends. One old and one new. The old friend is literally an old man, a story teller and one of those agile elusive men best suited to this medium. It’s a breeze to speak to him. On the other hand the conversation with the new friend was troubling. It traveled on a sad note and ended rather abruptly. I went on well past midnight and finally disconnected out of sheer fatigue. Unlike other times I was only physically exhausted but not depressed.

I walked around the house in a disoriented way. Pulled out the food from the fridge and set it for heating. Cant deny that I felt a little lonely. Finally finished the long day with a shower, dinner and some reading before I hit the bed. The hot water shower made me feel a little better. I slipped into a faded soft night gown. I tried the television hoping to find a film to engage me but to my ill luck it was not working. It was softly raining with a nip in the air. My back was aching sitting for so long before the computer. A dull ache. I had no good novel to read. One of those pleasant books that lull you into sleep. I was too sleepy to read the old Mills n’Boon. The events of the day, the conversations were passing noiselessly through me. I knew that tomorrow was not a very hectic day and decided to sleep late. I wondered if I should watch the film “Cinderella Man” tomorrow which G had mentioned. But a film would definitely distract me from writing the journal. I was weighing the various projects on hand. The excitement of writing this journal was already taking shape.

And then the lethargy of getting up to switch off the lights. I cursed myself for not fixing the bed lamp. It was too much of a bother to fix it now. With my sheet trailing behind me I switched off the lights. It was such a joy to snuggle into bed, grope for the sheets and then as the darkness settled to see the lights of the street crawling into your vision. The world felt so small and intimate. To the whirring of the fan I snuggled again, turned on the side, pushed my face into the pillow, pulled one leg under my chin, covered myself with the sheet and closed my eyes.