Why blog when you have a screenplay to finish? An average screenplay takes anywhere between a few months to a year or more to write. Unlike literature, with the challenge of the economy of words, a screenwriter has to end up spending a lot of time deciding what to remove. When you're writing a feature film for the theatres, the screenplay can't be rambling about a hundred things. It has to be, at least to an extent, focused around a central thematic idea or stick to a genre. By nature, my screenplays come from a very personal space. To redirect material which come from a personal space, into a particular genre and a theme is the fun and challenge of writing screenplays. I love doing it, because it makes me rethink and reimagine a lot of things from my life. Although, the con to writing a focused screenplay is that a lot of 'you' gets edited out. Hence, a screenplay could express a part of you in a hyper-focused way. A part of you that can be imagined visually, that could fit into a certain genre and tone. The other ultra-nuanced, inner monologues and battles mostly get edited out. When you end up spending a year or more trying to express a part of you, the other part of you goes unheard and unseen and feels like you're being a partial parent. This blog is to try addressing some of the other parts.
Ah, romantic relationships - I see them as a way of experiencing the rollercoaster of highs and lows of life in a very short time. If one of the joys of relationships is to feel loved by the person who you love the most, one of the challenges is to occasionally feel hated by that one person who you'd kill for and die for. Romantic relationships are more complex and nuanced than parent-child relationships, which are straightforward and simple. Not that parenting is easier, but it's more straightforward with one person mostly giving care and the other receiving. An adult romantic relationship is a balance of giving and receiving care. Most relationships get ruined where both partners get lost in trying to figure out who's giving more and who's receiving more. To make things worse, in times where conflicts go unresolved for long, the truth is that both partners are giving more than what they're receiving. A lot of therapy pages and forums say that communication is key. Proper communication is probably the best solution for any conflict and yet it's the most hardest thing to do. Words, tone, pauses, innuendo, subtext, your mind has to process all of these and make a choice, even when you're triggered.
Being good with words is indeed a privilege, one that I'll always keep striving for. When you can express well with words, your feelings and your pain is seen. Your nuanced, metaphorical exploration of your troubled childhood is not an exercise of wallowing in self-pity. However, what about all the other people who can't express that well? All we can do is to try and express or perhaps find an artist whose pain resonates with ours and find some sense of belonging in that artist. A close friend asked me to promise that I'd always try to spread love and happiness in the world. Yet, the visible stories of pain belong to those with a voice. What about the voiceless? To fulfil that promise, I think more than my skill to write what would matter more, is my skill to read. Reading a person, even when they can't articulate much. Reading a person without jumping to judgements or attaching labels to every single trait of theirs. Reading them and just letting them be. Now, whenever I watch a film with a tragic story - I obviously feel for the characters and then I feel for how things are far worse for the voiceless and I seek solace in the fact that my life is perhaps not the hardest.
Broke, lonely, depressed - this is the universal crossroads where most of us find ourselves at, at one point or the other. It could not even be true, but that's how everything around us is wired to make us feel. Now, how we rebuild ourselves from there is the battle of modern life. It's very interesting how after generations of technological development, we are working more hours than our earlier generations and living more stressful lives. People say, it's for survival. Although I think 'survival' is the most loosely used term in modern day. Survival is being safe, sound and having a meal or two everyday. Survival is not being on the top of the social ladder. Survival is not 'being able to afford international trips'. Well, there's nothing wrong about being driven and ambitious, and I respect anyone who is. But living like you don't matter or exist till you reach a certain milestone is terribly sad. You matter. I matter. We all matter. And if there's one sentence where both the statement and the opposites are true - it's that all of us matter and that nobody matters.
