Kasauli diaries

Kasauli musings. One, written by me for the Hindustan Times is here. Second by my friend Neelesh Misra is here.

Left, write

It is too warm outside. And inside, too. The fan sighs. Newspaper sheets disintegrate and are strewn all over. Picture frames lie empty. A candle rues over disfigurement. An old woman stares down from a high-rise apartment visible from the window of the room I am in. She cannot see me. I lie in discomfort, with my back haphazardly resting against a dwarf pillow stuffed with cotton at least thirty years old.

I think of art. Of domesticty. Of lamp designs. Of human body. Of desires and other bodily urges.

Some stories need to be told. I think of them all the time, constructing sentences in my mind but never putting them on paper. At least eighteen notebooks, bought over a period of three months, and many others bought earlier, reek of disuse. The pages of some have turned limp. My eyes are tired. I lie down using a copy of Cold Mountain as pillow. My necks hurts. I take it out and lie on my belly.

I look at my fingers. There are hangnails. I tear off some of them. It is painful.

I want to take a bath. May be have a cold beer. The water flowing from the overhead tank is hot. There is no beer, either. I badly want to read Tolstoy's The death of Ivan Ilyich.

But when do I write?