Sarpvinash

 Lands visited so far this year: The Netherlands, France, Germany, Gujarat

Lands to be visited later this year (?): Russia, Sweden, Spain, Germany 

All, some or none of the above ?

Time is a horse that runs in the heart, a horse
Without a rider on a road at night.
The mind sits listening and hears it pass.

                                                                           - Ghalib

back in mera bharat mahaan after 3 weeks in Europe. the last was spent with bergemot and her family. I saw her after exactly a year, if this pattern continues, our lives will unspool like a film with a frame-rate of 1 year per second.

the greatest personal growth of course was seen with T_.  This time I could play with him, and focused on the 'crashing cars' game, popular with his demographic.
hopefully i'll be one of the 'cool uncles' in his life as he grows up.

While last year was warm & sunny, this time the land still held fealty to King Winter. consequently fewer activities incl. a failed trip to the opera for Das Rheingold. bergemot with other hopefuls bravely stood on the opera steps in immortal tradition hoping for spare tickets. for some reason was moved by the scene, don't know why...    

we all went on a day trip to Regensburg. i did the usual thing with burning a mixtape for the drive. later was quite shocked to see how closely it matched last year's Constance trip. has there been no evolution?
must try to break out of this narrow valley....

while we had a Tunisian evening to close the previous trip, this time it was an authentic Russian pancake evening, a specialty of bergemot. good stuff, reminded me of steamed dosas. then a few rounds of Association played with two russians, two germans, a mexican and a indian. 'a good time is guaranteed for all' as they say. 

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.
                                 - 'Patrick Lagrange'


History is always written by the victor, and the histories of the defeated belong to the shrinking circle of those who were there. 
                                        – Joachim Peiper

2012 (Output)


The Book - (finish by April tops)

Hyderabad Graphic Novel - Episode 4 & 5 (and finish, by August)

Necropolitans - Episode 1 to 4 (the Dead City Dreaming story arc and one more after that by September)

The Railway Quarterly (graphic novel by year-end)

Sacrifice script (film [when?])

Stormgate 1st draft (novel [when?])

also realized from what the seniors are saying that I'll have to have contracts for forthcoming years - a book a year, basically from now on. The Book deal is actually a 2-book contract so Book 2 should be out in 2013, incredible as it may sound now :)

wow. what a spectacularly good start to the year. 2 days, 2 articles, hitting them cleanly out of the ballpark.

now let's see if the positive energy spills over to the Book.

WC reset restart.

223.

The final month begins. The end of the month should see me take that step from writer to author. No more doubts. No more looking back. Only Forward !

“Forget the measure of our vision, the sweep of things, the war itself, the terrible death. Forget the overarching night, the stars as static points, as mathematical fields. Forget the cosmic solitude, the upwelling awe and dread.”

                                                                                   - "Human Moments in World War III" by Don DeLilo

My mind holds the key ...


Long gap in posts but everything is serene. In chess, counterplay is " A threat  intended to counter an opponent's advantage in another part of the board."

It is extremely important to learn how to generate counter-play. When you are under attack in most cases it is impossible to just hope to sit tight and weather the blows - no! instead you must in turn generate threats and possibilities on your own which will compel the opponent to meet them thus leading to a respite in the attack.

I guess the last few weeks have all been about generating counter-play as there was a perceptible bleeding of momentum. It seems to have worked as I'm in a much better position now. I also shouldn't be too hard on myself - apart from The Book, I'm also parallely finishing two graphic novel episodes and collaborating on a 3rd!