Deciding a Gift or How I Got Anxiety for No Reason

The dates of a calendar mean nothing much for work means weekdays and some sacrificed weekends. But then it’s a particular day of some month and you realize that an event is about to occur soon for which you have to be prepared. The preparation involves very less about the physical make up of your attire or body and in the rarest of times remotely constitutes which you are an expert of. It is in concern of a composition, well thought out, expertly crafted, uniquely suited and fashioned in pursuance of conveying a birthday gift. At that point, with a pen or spoon or phone in hand, or standing, lying, sitting, jostling as the case may be, you encounter what the astronauts often talk about - ‘zero gravity’, except in your case, you have those feet firmly planted where you left them to be, attached to a body that has not left the known neighbourhood of solid ground, and yet you are now losing yourself rudderless in a maze, starting with the question –“What to gift?”

There can be no right answer. Trick question.

In the recent months to come, there are several occasions of such quality which will present a similar dilemma. Batman has taught me to have a contingency plan ready, but being a generally bad student, I have no plan prepared yet, although the thought buzzes annoyingly around me. I have begun to take longer walks in order to have time to think and figure out the perfect gift. I have become a brooding monk, and as the days fly away in the dust, the mad scientist at the verge of discovery will gradually take over. I hope it won’t come to the stage of a desperate and cornered politician. Nevertheless, I have learned a valuable lesson, something I learn every year but every year with flowers and the paddy, once the harvest is cleared, the lesson too fades away. I realise I know nothing about the people close to me.

I know something about what they like or they don’t because I have my choices to catalogue them by. However where I have no point of reference, the librarian simply jots them down in pieces of paper, stuffing them anywhere that is handy at the moment, and promptly forgets afterwards. I have listened to these people talk, enthusiastically, ardently, compassionately, honestly, but I have absorbed nothing. A sponge has more retaining capacity than me I am sure. I tell myself that it doesn’t make me a bad person. Unfortunately, I am not that confident that those persons will tell that to themselves about me too when I end up giving something that, when ripped out of the wrapping paper, doesn’t scream out “THOUGHTFUL.”

I honestly love people. I love their stories and minds. But I find no energy to judge them on the encounters I have with them nor the information I obtain. I simply immerse myself in the conversation, like a holiday maker in some beach, sitting on the sand, cradling a bottle of beer, looking at nothing but seeing everything, and leaving the beach unburdened. Conversations, when they don’t involve work, shouldn’t be like work, having to sift through for broken knowledge. Because that’s what assumptions precisely are. We find the pieces spread across many interactions under incomparable circumstances, and expect the jagged, scarred picture to be what the person is. It’s easy to just ask what they want and gift them with something they would truly enjoy. Instead I am expected to find something they may just like enough to smile saint-like, and hopefully not put it away in some Narnia closet, never to be found again. The worst case will simply inspire the three R’s of gifting – Re-packing, Re-gifting, Re-cycling. And by saving that person from suffering through this same anxiety of having to decide what to get as a gift for another, I shall consider my stupidly overthought gift to be the best one actually.

As I said, there cannot be a right answer.

Dust on the Keyboard

Every time someone has asked me to start my blog again, I have had to sit back and wonder but write about what? The words were there, the ideas as well, but something always made me close the word document after the first line.

There’s definitely no scarcity of topics to pick from. One glittering boon of tech advancement is the bubbling and babbling pond-world of the internet, where you dip a finger, and there you have - all the mundane and not so mundane, the crazy, the brilliant, the loud, and the quiet, the ignored, the forgotten, waiting to be picked up, talked about. Type a few words, let the insta-search produce humorous, reader friendly socio-political articles, lengthy in depth, lived in, in situ analysis, and thesis about almost everything under the still warm Sun. Every thought, every fragmentary, partially formed shred of muse is documented, published, displayed. And witnessing this rumbling mill of activity, I feel stunned, and quite envious. For these armies of writers-analysts, who come from different vocations and practices, have so easily mastered the concepts of literary theories, producing engaging strings of words seemingly effortlessly, whereas even after four years of continuous training, I fumble about the idea of literature, poetry, frankly, intimidates me, and I struggle to find the confidence to pen down, to give form to my muse. I am a disheartening case.

Thus I have had to sit back and wonder if it is still alright to talk about the simple; autumn sky and the lazy afternoon, the tired salesman who asks for a glass of water, the rooftops and the memories, the failures and the fears. May be everything has be said and told and discussed, but there is a chance we will find something new if we start again.