One of the best decisions I took this year was to start this blog. Incidentally, I have always been a diarist per se, be it on blogs or writing in diaries or scraps of paper. Documenting my thoughts has always been an essential part of my daily mental exercise. It is also a part of who I am…a writer at the core, masquerading as a professor or an academic in front of the outside world. The words that I use in society are never really my words. They are borrowed, for that particular occasion. My words are seldom spoken. I prefer writing them, documenting them for posterity. This blog was essentially a step in that direction. This is definitely not my first blog. I’ve had blogs before which have somehow got lost in the convoluted jungles of time. Maybe I have a couple of them saved somewhere, but most of them have ceased to exist. Thus, this particular blog was important when I first started writing it sometime in the month of August 2022. Gradually, with each passing day the blog became an essential part of me. Something that I cannot severe from my mental faculties with ease. Not only did it help me by acting as a notebook for my writings, but also as a clean slate for me to document my thoughts and understand the pathways that I have chalked out for myself completely. Furthermore, this blog also made me come in contact with various writers of repute and a community of thriving and pulsating minds. In more ways than one this particular blog has indeed become an inseparable part of me.

2023 is simply round the corner, and before ambling into the same, I would like to share a few of my writings from an old blog of mine over here. Perhaps it is a way in which I can preserve those old writings and ruminate over them in the distant future.

Night trips away on cobblestones of moonshine dust,
I watch the fireflies ignite my life at dusk;
There is darkness in the heavens and on earth.
Dark moorlands beckon…

I have traversed distant lands
And lived innumerable lives…
Yet, it is against your sandalwood scented skin
That I am able to sleep away the weariness of a million years,
Spent in solitude…
Father, O Father.
In tranquil slumber…

Through the verdant softness of silence
Rivers of tranquility flow,
Linger on, there is a meadow of sunshine ahead…
Walking on green grass…

I walk through lavender evenings,
I saunter through ebony nights.
In the solitude of my hermitage
A single lamp throws shafts of burnished gold.
Write on O confessor…
Your sins are yet to be washed.
Documenting untold deeds…

Perched upon life and its myriad vignettes,
I clasp the delicate nuances of love to my heart,
You are faraway in another universe,
Yet, I write love letters bathed in my vile blood…
The pen breaks…the ink scatters…words escape my frozen intellect,
I welcome my imprisonment with open arms,
Crawling across the filth of my fossilized sins…
A writer ? No, a confessor…

I still search for you…in the air, the water, the fire and the earth.
I still search for you in haunted nightmares and benign dreams. 
But all that I have are memories. 
Tiny grassblades, defiant against the merciless gales of Time.
The road ahead is long and dark. 
Light it up with your smile…in your universe.
And I will try to weave a tapestry of tears…in mine. 
Epistles across universes…

Moths flutter. Flames quiver.
The evening trembles with unkempt desires.
Amidst the unstable currents of infidel Time,
My dreams bathe in crystal lakes after decades of resigned aridity.
Irises dotted with hope…

The mist comes tumbling down riding raindrops encased in pale pearls. 

Pearls of sighs. Pearls of treasured secrets. 
Riding white crests and troughs, filtered through trees washed in blue shadows.

I cup my palms to catch the mist. It slips through my fingers and my soul.

A truant lover. An unsure paramour.

Kissing raindrops…

Rude words, rude visages, rude thoughts,
Are scimitars to a sensitive soul;
It is better to bask in the gentleness of a cloistered life,
Than be consumed by mindless cacophony.
Leaving the noise behind…

At sunset the horizon bled in gold and your face bloomed like a rose.
At sunrise I watched you promenade across mists bathed in my autumn dreams.

Sunsets and sunrises. Moments fly into eternity.

And here I stand clutching a throbbing heart to a hollow chest the shape of an ancient oak tree.

Visions of sunsets…

These tiny notes are nothing but disjointed scraps of thoughts. At times they simply languish upon papers and have no further utility in my life, at other times they become a part of my writing or a part of my thoughts conjuring up a character or an event in my book (s). Coming back to this year as well as 2023 and what it may have in store for me, I would like to state that I hope to become more regular with both my blog as well as my writing. I have plans for beginning my second novel at the fag end of 2022. Thus, when 2023 rolls in I will be happily typing away in my computer conjuring up vibrant characters and events and tales that need to be told. Come 2023 and I will be deeply entrenched in literature with minimum interaction with the outside world, be it through writing or reading. Wishing all those who love the written word a productive 2023 with quality time spent in reading, writing and living a life enmeshed immense creativity.

Good luck folks and wishing everyone a very happy 2023 filled with joy, success and love for the written word !