THE BEGINNING

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

A lively, not-so-wild animal. That was me, a long time ago, when the earth seemed young, charming, blessed with the ability to offer so much beyond the fatiguing mundanities of a cliched existence.
But I have turned into a silkworm of late. A silkworm who retreats into the cocoon of his seventh floor office room first thing in the morning, and journeys his way back in a rickety and congested train to reach a second cocoon, a tiny flat of a Mumbai suburb whose face hasn't been subverted by the maniacal lunacy of the city's traffic. In this house, I cook, sing, pray, read, work on my novel from time to time. Still, many are inclined to believe that I have a life. Thank you guys.
Yet, solitude brings with it a package of boons that I would never ever refute. As of now, it has allowed me to create a blog and call it 'smallbigworld'. Why so? Because the two spaces that I mostly inhabit -- my office room and the flat -- are both quite small. But, courtesy the Internet, I swim in the endless ocean of hard facts, fun stories, great photographs...and so much more. The experience is matchless, more so because cyberspace is the only ocean where one can swim with one's clothes on!
So you know why I have named this place 'smallbigworld'. If not, it is because my two worlds -- one of hiding in a tiny space, the other of accessing the world of info --are seldom separate. Writers of tired prose (in India, that is) can easily say these two features of my life "are united through holy matrimony." Dismal English, that, because I haven't yet figured out how matrimony can ever be unholy! (But then, the founding fathers of the language have accepted a bizarre concoction like pre-planned which is actually inane because any thing that is planned has an element of 'pre-ness' to it really.)
By now, you surely know that apart from being a sceptic, I am also pretty lazy. Or else, why would I be indulging in pseudo-Joycean gimmickry when I should be having a good nap after lunch during office hours which is what good workers do? I am told it is called a power nap, that it energizes and revitalizes a person. Instead of shutting my eyelids, I am typing away (oh, they call it keying in post-comp revolution) to create a blog: with a lot of help from people I know once they get to know it exists.
Welcome to smallbigworld.blogspot.com. This is my third world which is not mine alone.