What Brought the Drought

Its a rainy day. It has been raining since the morning, in pockets and patches. Political wins have showered their respective colours. Emotional waves sent sultry messages to the clouds. And thus the drought is finally drenched. The day turns to a breezy dusky silence. Hints of more showers come in faint grumbles. Hints, like hope, are pathetically misleading. 

Farmers commit suicide in such situations of drought. Writers do too. But then, "wait", said Pollyanna to yours truly. "You are a writer, not a farmer. The farmer has a plough which digs out his soul, you have a fountain-pen! A fountain. Water, culture, sow, give birth, nurture, live!"

This did not happen in a dream, nor came through the closed windows. Pollyanna pierced through my pen and made shapes in my eternal wait. We ought to give it to her, even though she failed since the last week, she persisted, and here I am, watering the words. To think of it, a writer is a farmer who cultivates ideas and observations. The soil sometimes does not complement the imagination and the plough finds friction against a rock, a block, a writer's-block. But hey, there ain't no such thing as a writer's block.

I have been occupied. Nothingness is a great reservoir of all things dark -- endless hopes, ambitious dreams, useless anxiety -- it is vicious. The darkness is deep, like poetry, only less elegant. It is closer to suffocation. In a lifetime of impulses governing the rationale, the senses have hardly been so active. But I am tired is no excuse. This is all I do, I reminded myself. Not just what I do. I write, of course. And look, Pollyanna smiles. Have you ever wondered how a smile differs in victory in loss? It is the same smile that questions the self-esteem. But I promised you, there is no such thing as a writer's block, didn't I?

Look. Take a bulldozer, and plough through. It was a matter of time that I would return to the same keys which made me tired, to rejuvenate me. Like the smile. 

Drought, you thought? Hang on, there's going to be a flood. And the ship will set sail on it. Away.