A Love Song

When there's no fire in your heart

And all the lights go dim

When you are sinking but lack the strength to swim

I will be there to hold you

And just as a lighthouse

Guides ships to shore

I will guide you home, to me

When you're living in a world where it's always Monday

And the sun refuses to shine

When you're cold and lonely

I will be there to dry your eyes

And I will walk on water

And catch you when you fall

So my love

I ask of you only this

Promise to think of me when the stars fall from your skies

And I promise to be a bridge over troubled water

Ferrying you home where you belong

The Bilge Master

The Market

Welcome reader. Welcome to the Market. The Market is a special place which can be found near a huge bus stand and it is like a collection of catacombs, except the tunnels have been replaced by shops and they are all above ground.

The Market caters to all. It is perhaps the most tolerant of place. Here you can see Hindus serving Muslims, a Jewish bakery employing Muslim chefs to make cake for a Christian festival, you can see short people, tall people, fat people and thin people and it is the same with the goods available.

From knives and forks or other cutlery, to clothes and tailors to curios and cake, the Market has it all. It would be the ideal place to make up fairy tales about but Neil Gaiman has already done that in Stardust.

The Market is an ecosystem. A living entity made of concrete and bricks. It has underground parking. It has a Clock. It has shopkeepers selling both fake and real merchandise. It has a restaurant. I don't think it is possible to explore the Market thoroughly in one day. It will take at least three.

So come one and come all. The Market awaits!

The Bilge Master

Lessons I Learnt from My Dog-A Guest Post by Kasturi Patra

I'd first heard of her from my brother. She was a POTF fan. That's all I knew when I sent her a friend request which she accepted. We talked and we became friends. We met at her marriage. She's been around, giving me advice now and then and is like a distant elder sister.

Kasturi Patra is a lot of things. Confident, sassy, smiling. I've never seen her angry. She's a wonderful human being and I am fortunate to have her among my friends. She's in the middle of writing a novel whose second draft she's finished.

She stops by the blog today to talk about her dog. This post was originally published on her blog ViaKat and you can also find it here. She's the kind of writer I hope to one day be.

Please welcome her to the blog!

The Bilge Master

It was a few days before Diwali in 2015. A friend had come over in the evening and while we were chatting with her, a soul piercing howl shattered our conversation. Two months ago, a stray dog in our locality had given birth to a litter of pups and it seemed that the cries came from one of them.

Hubby and I rushed downstairs to find this pup crying in pain. While some of our neighbours were busy fighting with the delivery truck driver and his helper for having run over the pup, I noticed that the furry bundle simply lay in a corner looking up for help. In an instinct, I took him on my lap. We hadn’t thought of adopting a dog before this. We already had two cats (who’d even travelled with us from Kolkata to Delhi when we shifted cities)  and that seemed more than enough. But the moment I held him, he stopped crying and stared at me with those huge brown melting chocolate like eyes. And we knew he needed us. A series of vet visits and treatments later, if you look closely, you’d still notice that Woof does not put his full weight on his right hind leg. Yet he is one of the most active, playful and happy dog that you’ll come across.

This really isn’t the day when I wanted to write good things about my dog. It rained heavily last night (the heaviest Delhi experienced so far, this year), the maid was late and he decided to pee for full two minutes on our bedroom’s floor. Dude is almost 3 years old, can you believe it? Well, if it’s wet outside, he refuses to step into the wet ground and instead chooses the room to be his warm and cozy toilet. Arrrggghhh!!

I was mad at him. He received a few spanks on his nose with a rolled up newspaper. And yet, after a while, he lay next to me and licked my face and all my troubles melted away. I do not know how they are so forgiving but that’s how dogs are. And while I was still upset with the morning’s routine being thrown into disarray with the dirty dishes and the wet floor and hubby’s getting late for office (hubby cleaned up all the pee in both the rooms, Yes, both because my other dog also decided to pee on the living room floor but more on her later.), I noticed Woof wagging his tail and trying to play with me. He seemed to say, “How long can you be angry with this lolling tongue, the wet nose, and these pleading eyes dipped in innocence and mischief in equal amounts?

My dog doesn’t keep grudges.

My dog lives in the moment.

 My dog makes mistakes but he’s ready to make up for those in his own ways.

Every time either of us are back home from outside, he behaves as if our mere presence is responsible for all his life’s joys.

My dog licks my tears and puts his head on my knees to show that happiness is just around the corner.

Irrespective of my physical or mental state, whether it’s my morning breath or I’m sick and miserable, my dog simply loves me. No judgement whatsoever. 

Before he came to my life, I never imagined it was possible to love an animal to this extent.

Half an hour back I was on the verge of a breakdown and I was searching for guided meditations on the Insight Timer app to calm me down. Then something came upon me, and instead, I chose to write about my dog. I’m already feeling better. I don’t know if on that night before Diwali, it was him crying for help or my soul inviting him over to save me again and again and again.

Chris Daughtry- In Appreciation

I love music. It speaks to me on so many levels and there are so many songs- some make me sad, some make me happy, others make me think and some are the equivalent of a hug. I am going to talk about one artist today who came second on American Idol and started his career. His name is Daughtry.

I discovered Daughtry when I heard his album Leave This Town. No Surprise was the first song I heard. I remember playing it on loop and later getting the whole album from a friend and playing the album on loop. No Surprise is currently playing on Spotify as I write this article.

Leave This Town was an introduction to a different type of alternative rock for me. It paved the way for me to appreciate bands like The Fray and Three Doors Down. One line in that song stood out back then and is relevant even today

"The loving look that's left your eyes

Is why this comes as no..as no surprise"

Suddenly the song changed from being a song about changes happening in life to one about dealing with change in life. At the time I was in high school and me and my brother Sagnik (Satan) Mukherjee and I used to hang out and we would discuss lessons and music and specifically Leave This Town.

Daughtry went on to write other songs and produced an album in 2013 called Baptized which I got hold of in 2015. Somehow it seemed to be different from the Daughtry I was used to. It had good songs such as Cinderella but it seemed to be an experiment. An experiment that worked in some tracks and didn't in some tracks. But it was Daughtry so it was special.

This was the guy who wrote

"All that I'm after is a life full of laughter

As long as I am laughing with you"

Insatiable hunger was born in me. A hunger for Daughtry. Imagine my joy when I found out that he had brought out an album in July 2018 called Cage to Rattle. This album features a grown up Daughtry. He has matured in the five years since Baptized. This album is like wine if Leave This Town was beer. We aren't in high school anymore. We have grown with Daughtry. Tracks like Just Found Heaven, Death of Me and As You Are are a testament to this. (If you haven't heard the album yet, check it out. It's not going to disappoint).

Daughtry is special. Leave This Town is special. It's the soundtrack to my school life when I was a mood swinging teenager barely surviving the hormones in my body. The songs are a comfort. The lyrics are branded in my brain.

The dude is back, with a new set of songs which now appeal to the me who went through college and is a man. Daughtry has appealed to the adult in me just like he appealed to teenage me.

Here's to growing older with more Chris Daughtry.

The Bilge Master

An Attempt to Raise Awareness About Suicide

In a fictional TV series, a fictional psychiatrist tells a fictional surgeon that he had a patient who used to hear voices in his head asking him to commit suicide. "In the end, the psychiatrist says, he went into a room and listened to the voices".

Life can often become overwhelming. The stress of a job, the stress of studies, the weight of expectations laid on your shoulders can serve to bog you down and in some cases lead you on the path to a very dark place.

I remember sitting in my room one day with a bottle of aftershave in my hands, debating with myself whether or not to gulp it down.  In the end, I did gulp t down and I remember my stomach burning and my breath smelling like lemons.

I did not die, but at that time my only wish was to die. A few years later, I had the same thought. This time, I knew drinking aftershave wouldn't do the trick so I decided to take a prescription to a few of the local drug stores and buy sleeping pills. I remember buying about fifty of them and a bottle of Coke and then calling my father and telling him I was about to take the pills. My father talked me out of it.

I did not die.

I am not here to tell you that suicide is bad. I do not know what goes on in the mind of a person who has lost faith to that extent where he or she wants to take their lives. However, I have been in dark places and suffered and am still suffering from depression. Over the course of this suffering thoughts about taking my life have gone into my head and wreaked havoc. I have had to be sedated and kept under observation.

I have felt angry with myself, longed for release and when these thoughts come into my head I desperately seek shelter in music or in my parents. I am writing this as an effort to raise awareness about suicide. It isn't about whether it is the right answer or solution to everyone's problem. Suicide is more complex than that. It's a series of thoughts that enter and possess you. But it can be fought and the thoughts can be driven away.

I will now return to the fictional TV series and the doctor. In another episode we meet a young man whose face is scarred badly owing to an explosion occurring near him. He wants to die. He tries to kill himself twice in the same episode but fails. Finally the doctor takes an oxygen mask and clamps it to the patient's face and turns up the dial. Immediately, the man starts fighting back and rips the mask off his face and calls the doctor crazy. This is the part where I learnt a very important thing.

The part of you that wants to hold on to life is stronger than the part of you that wants to end it. Remember this.

If at any point of time, you feel worthless remember that ice cream exists and go and buy one and have it. If at any time you are angry or frustrated with yourself, take a walk and listen to the radio. If these thoughts persist, seek help. It is okay to feel like this.

Life is special. It's precious. Breathe. Live. Don't stop believing. Love. It's going to be okay.

The Bilge Master

Broken Faith

What makes a god false?

When is it that a god falls?

Is it their actions?

Their broken promises and demands for blind faith?

Is it when that faith we have in them breaks

Into a thousand pieces

And lays at our feet?

Has nobody stopped to wonder

Why the chants have never changed

Despite centuries having passed by?

Gods are not like shooting stars

At least shooting stars can be seen

So I wonder

When is it that I lost faith?

Or did I just stop looking?

The Bilge Master

Nostalgia- A Guest Post by My Mother

My mother is back on the blog people!

The Bilge Master

The alarm goes off, I reach out and dash the clock onto the floor. Cushioned by the carpet the wretched thing still goes on ringing incessantly. I take my pillow to cover my ears but I can still hear it. Mind and body, so tired, the warmth of the blankets so dear that one just cannot leave it . I wonder why I bought an alarm clock at all with such a piercing, ear splitting ring. Then comes the knock on the door- your parents open it and both come in. For heaven's sake, I am 16 plus but there is no privacy, no respect at all!  I wonder why I didn't lock my door at night. By night I mean three am. They are both smiling. One wonders at them, forgetting that I had voluntarily given them the key to hide and be sure to wake me up despite the alarm (which by the way is still wailing away with gusto).

Mama has a hot cup of tea in her hand. Too inviting! I sit up and suck in the brew gratefully while Papa picks up the clock and very kindly switches it off and places it gently back on the bedside table. Mama next comes in with a basin of warm water and a small hand towel. I finish the tea and hold out my hand to sponge my face, while Papa starts packing my schoolbag. I think caring parents are basically something that should never be allowed at times of crisis, by which time my dressing gown is handed to me and I go towards the bathroom , when I go I mean stumble. Mama calls after me to be sure to put on my hair cap for not risking getting it wet in this London winter. I hate my hair. It's thick, it's long, quietly forgetting of my insistence of letting it grow and how proud I'd always been of it. Shower indeed! She'd be lucky if I even brushed my teeth.

Have you ever noticed how terrible toothpaste tastes like? I rinse my mouth out and come out to find my school uniform washed and ironed waiting for me in my room. Mechanically I dress, pick up my hairbrush and my purse and completely ignoring a well cooked, sustaining breakfast, go downstairs and let myself out without a word spoken.

I'm late.

I have to catch the 7:30 bus and I somehow manage to do so. As usual,  my hair gets caught in the sliding doors of the bus and as usual the bus jerks to a stop while the conductor gently helps me in with hair intact. I return his kindness with a look of loathing and grudgingly hand over my three pence and make for the stairs to go up. The conductor cheerfully calls out - "Saved your favorite seat love." I slide into it and sit there like a zombie and mechanically brushing out the tangles and find a rubber band to tie my hair up.

I've always needed two hair bands, but as usual I have come out with one. So I leave it alone. 

Too soon, I find myself at the crossing of Wood Lane and climb down and somehow walk to the school. 

All my friends are late and all crowded around the notice board where the time table of the exams is displayed. Just three more days till the first one. We look at each other and see shadow blackened, puffy eyes, with despair on all their faces. I know the timetable by heart. We all do. But what we don't know is anything about the subjects printed out. Three months of revision and blank minds! We all troop up to the library reference section and take out the necessary books and nothing in them registers.

I passed my exams with flying colours and now, forty years later I face my students and tell them about alarm clocks and the rest of it. 

The turbulence of life, of raising a kid, managing the house and teaching 8 hours every day makes me smile. I wish I was sixteen again and the only care I had was of 8-10 hours of studying every day. My hair isn't long anymore, it's cut short and my son is facing his first board exams and the weight of the world is crushing him. 

Will he feel like this when he is fifty eight or will he long as I do for these days to come back?

The House on the Hill

The house on  the hill

Has been there for ages

An entire generation has lived there

But now it stands empty

And some say it is haunted

Though no ghost has been seen

But the oak trees make sounds

When the wind blows

And the house takes on a menacing appearance at night

Just as in a typical horror movie

Maybe it is I who haunt the house

In my wish to see a ghost

Maybe I have become a ghost

Either way one day

The house will crumble

And with it the legends surrounding it

So let me put it in verse while I still can

So that one winter night

When the wind makes the windows rattle

Maybe I have become a ghost

Either way one day

The house will crumble

And with it the legends surrounding it

So let me put it in verse while I still can

So that one winter night

When the wind makes the windows rattle

You can tell your children of the author

Who haunted the house on the hill

The Bilge Master

Parts of You

Sometimes life becomes hard

And every pill is hard to swallow

Making you choke and gag on them

It's like seeing your reflection in a broken mirror

With the shards of glass lying at your feet

At such times you start to think that

You are worthless

But the night is darkest before the dawn

And a day is only 24 hours long

At the end of which time the slate gets wiped clean

Allowing you to begin again

Because the part of you that wants to begin

Is stronger than the part of you that wants to end

The Bilge Master

Two Poems

The Pianist

The pianist sits composing

A piece about his love

His tune is cheerful but sad too

Outside the window is a full moon night

And a lone nightingale trills out her song

The pianist writes as if in a fever

Note after note stains the page

And outside the nightingale keeps him company

Singing her sad tune

Candle wax drips onto the floor

And mosquitoes bite him

But lost in the rapture of composition

Our pianist is in a different world

For this is his Bodhisattva

The piece he was born to write

And God in the form of a songbird

Sits in a tree and watches him write

And the moonlight sonata plays on

Home

It is fall and leaves litter the street

Of the town where you grew up

You are walking down the street that leads to your childhood house

Your neighbour has a swimming pool now

He finally dug it

You walk up the driveway, past the oak that was struck by lightning

 And with your keys you open the rusty locks

As you enter the memories come flooding back

The wicker basket in which your mother kept her knitting

The rocking chair in which your father used to sit

Your old bedroom is just as you left it

Maybe needing a coat of paint

As you wander around you realize

That this house is full of stories

And it is time someone told them

The Bilge Master

Strangers

We were strangers when we met

But we felt a connection

In between the raindrops we were holding hands

Waiting for the hint of a spark

That never came

And so we set sail in a teardrop

Crossing the sea

In search of an island where they said

We would find peace

A chemical change has taken place

One the best scientists cannot reverse

And so we drift further and further apart

Until we are strangers once again

The Bilge Master

Always Love

I must write today I thought

But of what?

Do I speak of firecrackers and chocolate

Symbolizing love?

While I am on the subject of love

Why not discuss its many forms?

Do I speak of the love shown by a dog

That comes to you wagging its tail

Moments after you've beaten it mercilessly?

Do I speak of the love in a message

Sent to you by someone special

Two words to brighten up your day?

When you think nobody loves you

Close your eyes and look back

On these small acts that surround you

And slowly believe in love once again

The Bilge Master

Samhain

Things that go bump in the night

Are guaranteed to give you a fright

Look out your window

Something spooky is happening tonight

For the witches have started circling overhead

And the werewolves howl at the full moon

Beware your lover's kiss

A vampire might have got to him first

For tonight is All Hallows Eve

And Samhain has taken to the streets

The Bilge Master

The Goddess Had Come Home

A small lamp burns in a smoky room

She stares out the window at the rain falling

Remembering how on this day the town would light up

And an idol would appear

That devotees stood in a queue to see

She remembered the sweets she made for her children

And how they would devour them

The festival lasted for four days

But to her it went on forever

She was never far from the goddess

And the goddess had come home

The Bilge Master

Maiden of the Ocean

This post is written with my friend Antonio from the USA. I hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed writing it.

The Bilge Master

The ocean and its many hues

Provide the perfect evening view

And I set sail across it

In search of a maiden with

Deep blue eyes, like the depths

I see her gazing across the water

Dare I ask if she's looking for me?

As I run to her seeking shelter

From the storm battering inside my heart

I know those azure eyes well

They belonged to my love

Taken by the sea

Never to return, nor to kiss me again

The Painter-In Collaboration with Mary Katerine

This poem is written in collaboration with my friend Mary from Romania. It forms the third piece in #Collaboration_Month

The Bilge Master

There is a painter,

In a dilapidated room 

From his hands
New worlds appear;
They hide funny things

And he paints holding a brush and palette
He tells a bitter truth
in some of his works
In others he breathes life,
I watched him talk to me

Through his art
And started to understand
His thoughts,
With all these raw emotions exposed
In the paintings

And I wondered how such genius

Could even exist amongst us mortals

The Fear of Writing-In Collaboration with Laura Cook

The post below is written in collaboration with my friend Laura Cook and is the second collaboration post to come up this month. I hope you enjoy what we've written- we did it for you!

The Bilge Master

I am scared of what I write

Sometimes it petrifies me

The raw power of the written word

Crackles in the page like electricity

They are right when they say

That the pen is mightier than the sword

For it can bring you to tears with a jab

Or choke you with a deluge of truths

You'd rather have avoided

When I am writing late at night

And all the lights in the house are gone

I feel afraid, very afraid

That the words will turn on me

And soundlessly, I shall drown

Rebirth-In Collaboration with Udayan Das

I am really excited to publish this post which was written in collaboration with my dear friend Udayan Das who is a 3D modeller as well as a talented 2D artist. Please read the story and let us see if you can identify who wrote what!

The Bilge Master

It was late and Samir was on his way to Rabindra Sadan Metro Station via Elgin Road. He had spent the last nine hours doing what he didn’t want to do-3D modelling. But he was one of the myriad masses who don’t have a choice. Either way, he shrugged and kept walking. Just as he was crossing Bhawanipore College, it started to rain.

He was almost there and he didn’t mind getting wet in the rain anyway.

He checked out the LED board and saw that the next train was in five minutes. It was a rain soaked Friday night and it was cold. The petrichor could be smelt, wafting into your nostrils like smoke from a cigarette. Thunder was heard in the distance and Samir knew the city was in for a storm; just like the one Samir had going on in his heart.

As he waited, he couldn’t help but be drawn towards the sight of the tracks: the near-perfect way in which they were laid, parallel to each other, stretching into the distance. To the human eye, it appeared that somewhere in the distance, somewhere in infinity, these two steel rails met.

The vanishing point. That’s what it was called in art theory. An illusion, like so many things humans were attached to. This illusion called the vanishing point was a crucial part of perspective theory, which was used to establish a virtual three dimensional space in the two dimensions of a flat sheet of paper. It was thanks to illusory techniques like these that artists were able to create representations of people and places… on a simple plane.

Art was indeed an illusion, but it was not a cruel one. Like human dreams themselves, it was a representation of reality, imperfect, yet beautiful, because they contained the imperfect, flawed, yet undeniably real emotions of the people who created it and experienced it.

As Samir stared at the tracks, entranced, he thought of images: images in black ink on A3 sheets, images in black pixels on a computer screen; simple lines, showcasing the beauty and mystery of the rails, which appeared to stretch on to infinity.

He was interrupted in his musings by the arrival of the train he was waiting for. A voice that sounded as fed up as he felt announced unnecessarily the name of the very station where he stood. Sighing, he waited for the rush of exiting passengers to end before stepping in.

Fortunately, the carriage was mostly empty. The train was nearly at the end of its line, so most passengers had already got off. Samir was able to find a seat, unplagued by the sweat and close proximity of a myriad other tired professionals returning home. Sitting down, he withdrew a pair of Philips earphones from his pocket, connected them to his phone, and prepared to put them on, when he spotted the man sitting right across from him, who was staring intently at him.

This man, for whatever reason, had features that Samir couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t due to the lighting: there was nothing wrong with the tubes installed in the carriage. It wasn’t as though the man’s face was nondescript either. Yet, for whatever reason, when he reached inside his mind to consider what he looked like, he couldn’t find any words. It was a real-life example of the four hundred and fourth error.

Shaking his head to clear it, he looked again. The man was still there staring at him out of piercing black eyes, alive with a spark. Nervously, Samir said “Hello!”

The man merely nodded and continued to stare at him. After what seemed like an eternity he replied “Hello! I am travelling to Kavi Nazrul.” Samir smiled and said ‘That is my stop. Whereabouts in Garia do you live?”

“Baruipur”, the man replied.

And in this manner a conversation began. The two of them got off the metro together, and exited the platform. Neither of them said a word. Samir wondered if he should break the silence. Unable to find anything to say, he simply walked in silence. Once out of the station, he decided to walk over to a small shop right outside, where it was his habit to buy and smoke an evening cigarette before going home. To his surprise, the stranger accompanied him, and also bought one. As they lit up and took a drag each, a shared vice managed to break the ice between them.

“So, where to from here?” he asked Samir.

“I’m heading to Narendrapur,” he replied.

“I see. Living alone, or rooming with someone?”

“I do room with two others, but they’re barely around, hahaha!”

The two of them laughed.

The stranger took a drag, and looked at him with a sharp eye.

“So? What do you do?”

It was a fairly open-ended question, but the meaning was clear to Samir.

“I’m working as a 3d modeller for a startup,” he said, also taking a drag.

The man nodded, humming.

“And what about you?”

“Me? I work as an illustrator for a small book firm.”

Samir’s interest was now piqued.

“An illustrator?”

“That’s right. It’s mostly drawing for children’s storybooks and the like, but occasionally a more interesting project turns up.”

Samir couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This man, who he had run into purely by chance on the metro, happened to be doing exactly what he wanted to, professionally. To be clear, he wasn’t interested in illustrating children’s storybooks in particular. It was drawing that he was attached to. There were living, breathing characters inside his head, inside his imagination; entire worlds, that needed to be portrayed, in all their beauty, the good of them, and the bad.

“That’s an enviable job,” he said at last.

“Hmm? Why do you say that?”

“It’s the job I’ve always wanted.”

“You draw?" the man asked curiously.

Samir nodded.

“I’ve been drawing for the past ten years or so.”

The man whistled lightly.

“So you started around the same time I did then. Yet, here you are, working as a 3d modeller, and not a 2d artist. What happened?”

Samir took a long drag, finishing his cigarette before stubbing it out and disposing of it. The man’s questions reminded him of parts of his life he didn’t like thinking about. Yet, it wouldn’t do to not answer.

“Bad decisions happened, I guess,” he said, not attempting to hide his feelings. “In hindsight, I was pretty stupid to not go for the thing I wanted to do from the start. But for whatever reason, I always ended up doing something else. Graduated high school and studied Literature in college. I did apply to Fine Arts courses in a couple of good places, but once I made it into Lit, I didn’t go for the entrances to those institutes.”

“Pressure from home?”

“To an extent. But more than that, I suppose I was afraid. Afraid that if I let go of the sure thing, I might not get accepted to Art school.”

“You don’t need to go to Art school to be a professional artist, you know.”

“I know. But it’s more about the mentality than anything. I was just afraid to take a risk.”

The man nodded.

“That’s understandable. Betting your future on your passion isn’t easy.”

Samir continued.

“Once I was done with Lit, I realized it wasn’t really a line I wanted to go further along. I made my second mistake here. Instead of just trying to be an illustrator, I decided to study for a diploma in 3d modelling and animation. And now, here I am.”

“You don’t enjoy your work?”

“Not in the least. I mean, somewhere up there, there are 3d artists who have a say in creative direction. But for folk like me, it’s all mechanical work. We get a reference image, and our task is to copy exactly  what we see, and translate it into three dimensions. It’s boring as hell.”

The stranger had finished his cigarette by now as well.

“Sounds like a hard job.”

“It is. The firm I work for has high standards, so cutting corners is out of the question. The only reason I even work this job is to make ends meet.”

The man grinned.

“That’s the primary reason for working any job, wouldn’t you say? You have to pay the bills somehow.”

“It’s better if it’s at least something you enjoy doing.”

“Do you really think so?” the man asked unexpectedly. “If it’s something you’re passionate about, something you really care about, wouldn’t you think a rejection would hurt you even more?”

Samir stared at him, stunned. He could not argue with the truth of what he had said. In fact…

“That’s one of the reasons you didn’t pursue a career as an illustrator, isn’t it? You were afraid if you would be accepted or not.”

One might normally take a statement like that as confrontational, but once again, Samir was struck by the truth of it.

“I have a fair amount of technical skill,” he found himself saying. “I’m self taught, but I have studied the theory.”

“So you have. But fear is a natural human emotion, you know. Even people who are making a living as artists experience it.”

Samir looked up at him.

“So you feel it too?”

“Of course I do,” he answered without hesitation. “Having knowledge of the theory is one thing. Applying it is another. Even if you’re able to make realistic, technically correct art, it’s no guarantee your work will be accepted by others. The key is to make something that others can relate to. Something with emotion. How does a human being know that the emotion he’s feeling is something he can convey to others? That others would feel it too upon seeing what he does?”

“He doesn’t.”

“He doesn’t. That’s exactly right. Trying to work as a professional artist is taking that risk. It’s dealing with that fear. The fear of not knowing if the message you’re trying to convey will get through. That it’ll be accepted even if it does. And that’s my world. Nine hours a day, six days a week. I have to strive to find a balance between what the client wants, and what I think is genuine. Rejections? They happen all the time. Sometimes multiple times a day. I have to deal with those.”

“That’s…” Samir paused, at a loss for words. “That’s insane.”

The man smiled.

“Is it though? I live with the pain of chasing a dream, the fears and insecurities that come with it. You live with the pain of not chasing the dream. Which of the two is harder? Can anyone really say?”

To that, I had no answer. Which of the two was  harder? Honestly, there was no one answer to that. It was something each person had to answer for themselves.

“So? What will you do from here? Will you quit your job and attempt to make it as an illustrator?”

Samir considered his question. It was something he had thought of doing many times before, but ultimately chosen not to. Would this be the moment when he would finally take the plunge? As he considered this question, an image popped into his head, of an old couple, smiling as they waved him goodbye.

His parents.

A diploma course in 3d had cost a lot of money. His parents had born that cost from their dwindling resources, simply to give him a chance to stand on his own feet. If he backed away now, he would be throwing away what they had worked so hard to give him.

His life was his to live, to do with as he pleased. But there always a choice. To do right by the people who had been there for him since day one, or not to. And he knew what his answer to that question would always be.

Smiling slightly, he shook his head.

“No. That’s not something I want to do. I do hate this job, but I have no intention of quitting it.”

The man raised an eyebrow.

“Oh? And what of your dream?”

Samir considered the question. Why did he make art? Was it simply to please others? Was it simply to earn money? He knew quite well that neither of those was the case.

He thought back to his childhood. To seeing the work of Jim Lee and the greats on the pages of DC comics. The legendary heroes from the world of comic books. Kal El the Kryptonian, symbol of hope. Bruce Wayne, testament to human spirit and determination. Peter Parker, a boy who chose responsibility over the easy way out.

And further ahead, to discovering the breathtaking world of Manga. Seeing Son Goku, a visitor from another world, fight to defend the Earth. Seeing Guts, marked by destiny from birth, resist that destiny with all the strength and dignity humans were capable of.

This was what had inspired him to draw. What had inspired him to imagine people and worlds of his own, and bring them to life.

He did not draw for others.

He drew for himself, for his soul.

The worlds he created, the people he imagined; they were manifestations of the things he held dear, the ideas  he held dear, the hopes and spirit he wished to sustain even in a harsh world.

It wasn’t for sale.

Never was, never would be.

“The dream lives on,” he answered with a newfound sense of purpose. “They own nine hours of my day. The other fifteen are mine to do with as I please.”

Trains of Thought-A Guest Post by Laura Cook

My friend Laura stops by the blog today with a poem about trains and journeys undertaken. Please welcome Laura back to the blog people!

The Bilge Master

TRAINS OF THOUGHT

When the city goes quiet late at night,

and the light outside my window fades

from daytime-bright to burnished red—

as dark as it ever gets, in this place so afraid of

the dark that it banishes the stars with streetlights—

I lie awake and listen.

Seems like you shouldn’t feel alone in a city,

as one of five million, ten million, more,

but somehow

I do.

I wait for the sound of the train.

If I close my eyes, I can pretend it is

the same one that runs on the hill

behind my house in the wintertime.

They have the same mournful, low whistle

that reverberates in the hollows of my chest,

in my bones all the way down to marrow.

I lie there and try to forget the red, and the heat,

and not being able to see the stars.

In my mind, it is December, and the ice

out on the lake is booming, and I can look up

and disappear into the Milky Way.

I hope the train is taking pieces of me

back home with every whistle, every rumble—

sounds of blue air and frost and the

painful beauty of the woods at twilight.

I hope someday to wake up and be reassembled there,

full and whole, no longer missing a place

I only return to in dreams.

Until then, I close my eyes and listen.

What I Learnt From Life Today

What did you learn from life today?

My teacher asked me

I learnt that friendship is a two way street

More precious than platinum

I learnt people often don't say what they mean

And can be toxic to your existence

I learnt you don't have to believe in God

To have faith

I learnt bad people may not always be bad

Nor good people always good

I learnt to keep my true self hidden from most

And visible to few

Most importantly

I learnt that life is never black or white

Just different shades of grey

The Bilge Master

The Death of Art

It's five in the morning

And the basement is flooded

All the art we ever had is gone

This is a tragedy for those who remember art

Like Van Gogh or Picasso

Or Hardy or Tolstoy

There is nothing left

The will bring up a generation

That will never know what it's like

To gaze mesmerized at a painting

Or to be lost in a book

And yet sometimes

We believe that artists aren't necessary

And ridicule them

Now close your eyes and when you open them

Art will have died

For the artists have spoken

No more

No more

No more

The Bilge Master