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Latest Posts by Neha

Guitar in Chiffon Sari - The Story of Tringy - Neha's Notebook

Ever since I abandoned it in the store room of my house, Tringy has been sitting there, in the shadowy attic, gathering dust.  Years have passed, but it has been sitting there, unclothed, because I gave its heavy polyester black zipper bag to a college friend who forgot to return it. And then the college ended and Tringy was left here all alone, with no support whatsoever to cling to, no loved one to latch onto in life’s challenging times. Except me, of course. Its curvilinear model-like body, though as toned as it has always been, has now turned into a playground where dust motes gather every now and then in “gossamer” gatherings, especially when I leave the house for a long family vacation. Yet, even after all these years, Tringy hasn’t lost its irresistible charm that turns me into a besotted poet each time I look at it. As I put my slippered feet into the store room, I cannot help but feel too enchanted to not blush. As I behold Tringy’s lissome, string-slinging neck leaning on...
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7 lessons I learned from Days At The Morisaki Bookshop #booktok

1. Always seek happiness and never remain sad. 2. Confess and speak your heart honestly – don’t worry about what people will think. 3. Don’t judge people, because they might be carrying their own hurts and they might be trying to help you. 4. When you stop chasing love, you get love. 5. (The act of seeing something) To see something is to get possessed by it. 6. Human beings are full of contradictions. 7. Books are magic!

Feeding the Muse - Excerpt from Zen In The Art of Writing #books

It is my contention that is order to Keep a Muse, you must first offer food. How can you feed something that isn’t yet there is a little hard to explain… The fact is simple enough. Throughout a lifetime by ingesting food and water, we build cells, we grow, we become larger, and more substantial. That which was not, is. The process is undetectable. It can be viewed only as intervals along the way. We know it is happening, but we don’t quite know, how or why. Similarly, in a lifetime, we stuff ourselves with sounds, sights, smells, tastes, and textures of people, animals, landscapes, events, large and small. We stuff ourselves with these impressions and experiences and our reaction to them. Into our subconscious go not only factual data but reactive data, our movement toward or away from the sensed events. These are the stuffs, the foods, on which The Muse grows. This is the storehouse, the file, to which we must return every waking hour to check reality against memory, and in sleep ...

Run fast, stand still - Excerpt from Zen in the Art of Writing

  Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jump, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next – life teems on earth. In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping. Run fast, leap up, turn on the light, but whatever you do, don’t look up. If you look up before you get the light on, it will be there. The Thing. The terrible Thing waiting at the top of the stairs. So run, blind; don’t look.

Zest and Gusto - Excerpt from Zen In The Art of Writing #books

Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating by them. Yet if I were asked about the most important items in a writer’s make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road to where he wants to go, I could only warn him to look at his zest, see to his gusto. If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. For the first thing a writer should be is - excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. • Life is short, misery sure, mortality certain. But on the way in your work, why not carry those two inflated pig bladders labeled zest and gusto.

Metaphor of the Well Water - Excerpt from The Courage To Be Disliked

when you drink the well water in the summer it seems cool and when you drink the same water in the winter it seems warm. Even though it’s the same water, at the same 18 degrees according to the thermometer, the way it seems depends on whether it’s summer or winter. At present, the world seems complicated and mysterious to you, but if you change, the world will appear more simple. The issue is not about how the world is, but about how you are.  

3 Insights I learned from 'Before The Coffee Gets Cold'

  No matter how much you try to change the past, it won’t change anything in the present moment. Since future hasn’t happened yet, it’s upto you to create it as you desire. Death is like a box of darkness. Until there’s breath in your body, you can always come out of this box. Always look for the light.