Sunday, August 26, 2018

IN HOT AND COLD PURSUIT OF MY OWN WORDS

Ever since, I’ve started reading Karl Ove Knausgård's ‘A DEATH IN THE FAMILY’, the first book in his ‘My Struggle’ series, one line has stayed with me. On the 218th page, he reveals – Writing is more about destroying than creating. Let me add, people who aren’t passionate about reading or not remotely interested in writing, will definitely get this line wrong, absolutely wrong. It is not just a line; but it is a deep insight. An insight, Karl Ove Knausgård credits another writer with. He speaks about Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud, who seems to have realized this, at a very early age. But my second only post for the month of August is not about discussing Knausgård’s books or Rimbaud’s philosophy. This blog post is driven by the insight – Writing is more about destroying than creating. 

As someone had said in the past, it’s difficult to understand some of my writings. Initially I took it as a scathing remark and criticism of my work too. But I think, I misinterpreted. I feel so because they have never been close to the passion of writing or to the habit of reading. At the same time, everyone has the equal right to react towards anything and everything. 

I wish to simplify it further. Not many years before when social media exploded in our lives, we took to it like fish to water. After the debacle of Orkut, my writings found a new home in Facebook, a studio apartment in twitter and a penthouse in LinkedIn. The sense of freedom was so immense; I chose to develop a new identity of my own. Even though this newly designed identity demands a complete story of its own, I wish to push ahead by saying that Virtuous Vociferous is my alter ego on Facebook. On twitter, I am @puruthegreat; on LinkedIn, I’ve stuck to my presence as Purnesh Bhattacharya. Under all names, I chose to write what I think, I should; because I believed in my thoughts. I never gave it a thought that the outer world is equally interested in my thoughts. No I didn’t give it a second thought, because I was not completely interested in the thoughts of others. Thus began my journey of words.

Sometimes I went too far; at times, I stayed too close and on most occasions, I wrote seamlessly without any apprehension in my mind. As my words grew braver, my text bigger and my thoughts wider; the outer world deep dived in my writing matters. 

Recently someone read this on my LinkedIn page - The habit of asking too many questions might go against you in the real world. Especially when others don't believe that asking questions are the first necessary steps to lead change from front. The person who read this, first liked this post and then went out announcing to the world that I am writing dangerous things on LinkedIn. My writings/posts on Facebook met with the same fate. Objections, opinions and oddities swarmed together, which eventually led to me deciding to stop sharing my thoughts, up loud or clearly on Facebook. I don’t know, who decided to take things in their control and start telling me that I was revealing more than what could meet the eyes of my contenders. Prior to that, a school friend of mine had made fun of the length of my writings on Facebook; he chose to even ask a stupid question – How much does Facebook pay you to write so frequently and so much on your wall? Initially I chose to brush him aside. But he didn’t stop there; he started posting filthy comments on my writings. I didn’t block him. I only blocked him when he thought that advertising his recent hobbies was really cool on Facebook. His length of thoughts seemed to spill out of his own wall on Facebook. Some more recent digs over a year led to me abandoning writing on Facebook, LinkedIn and even twitter. Then came Instagram and life changed. But more than social media platforms, some beautiful people (beautiful by heart) made me change my mind and recharged my mind to start writing across all social media platforms; on which, I am very much active.  

Therefore, in hot and cold pursuit of my words, I can’t wait to restart. The philosophy which went into developing Virtuous Vociferous or @puruthegreat can’t ever stop midway. To conclude, if you are still reading this and still are in a mood to create your own opinion about me, go ahead; my journey has just begun.

- Virtuous Vociferous | August 26 | August Blog-2 | Making of the story | 2018

No comments: