March 2012

The wheel is rotating at a breakneck pace and on it my pile of clay is dancing a merry, uncontrollable dance.  I clamp my wet palms on it firmly and angrily in a futile bid to get some shape out of it. I already know that it’s a wasted effort. Yet something in me just cannot let go, I am becoming as stubborn as the errant clay on the wheel. The instructor is watching me calmly and intently, seeing the visible disconnect between me and what I am attempting.

She urges me to find the balance and centre between the clay and the moving wheel. I change pressure according to what my hands tell me. They understand more about `centring` than my eyes do so I close them and let my hands talk. Slowly but surely, I feel the clay become more balanced and apparently, weightless. I am astonished at this change. It’s almost miraculous. When I was fighting it, then the clay had a rebellious life of its own, but the moment I understood it, it became pliable and happy…ready to yield its secrets…

There are so many times that words like balance, centre and equilibrium are used and forgotten.

Yet, everyone has felt that beautiful feeling of lightness when there is harmony within and a feeling of being connected to who we really are. Every day one fights to reclaim the calm that it brings with it and often it just seems like a hopelessly lost battle.

The time I spend kneading the dough and understanding it, are life lessons for me…I learn that starting well most often results in ending well. I learn about balance and coordination, both physical and mental because the moment either one wavers the results are altered dramatically. The lesson of patience is not forgotten either, there is a path that one needs to follow, every time. No worthy creation happens in haste. Finally, `maati` reminds me that looks are very deceptive. Just like an unassuming piece of clay hides the most beautiful pots within its centre, there is some magic that everyone hides within themselves. Only love and understanding  can bring that to the fore…  

I want to write something today.

I want to write something using words that are fresh as the summer rain and evoke happiness and joy. Yet, try as I might, the right words elude me, whatever I write seems trite and clichéd. Is this really what I want to convey, I wonder? Yet I keep on persisting, hacking into the dictionary and the thesaurus for new words and more agile sentences. Sentences that dance to their own tunes and make people sit up and take note of their existence. I know there’s a story within me that needs to be told. What is it? I need to find that out, so I persist…

After writing mounds of pages I realise the futility of the effort. The stress I am putting on myself ensures that all creativity and spontaneity gets killed. I crumple them in disgust, not so sure of myself any longer. Thoughts are already flitting around in my head… swarming around to let me know just how useless I am and how nothing of any worth will ever come out of me. As I flick them away with an impatient hand, I recall beautifully strung words… words which make sentences of such purity that they tug at the heartstrings.

I take out my diary and read those sentences…collected painstakingly over years of reading. I forget myself and revel in someone else’s gift.

I thank the insight that spurred me to note down all that I admired in another’s writing…in those comforting pages of the written words I lose myself. As I skim through impossibly perfect sentences, I come across words that could have been noted down for this very day-

The woods will be very silent, if only those birds sang, that sang the best…

Magically, I find my place, a place that no one was taking from me, but one that I was willing to give up, voluntarily.  Now I tell myself, not without a fight…

I get down to the joy of writing. I smile.