The day I chased my idea....

Pink Floyd rocks! seriously. Its 2.13 am in the morning and I am listening to 'shine on you crazy diamond', and I don't know why, but suddenly I've got this urge to write. But the funny thing is I can't figure out what to write about. Well, actually its kinda sensible, you know. Its like being hungry and not knowing what to eat. You see, sometimes you get this idea and you start writing and writing and writing till you are completely satisfied. Its like eating something just for the taste of it. I don't know if you have experienced this, but sometimes, you are just walking on the road when suddenly you have this chicken cheese roll taste in your mouth. Whats more, it lingers until you start paying attention to it, but when you do, it threatens to melt away. It feels like if you don't have a roll as soon as possible, you will completely forget what it tastes like. Now you don't want that to happen, do you? So you run off to have some chicken cheese roll. Its the same with ideas. They peep into your head at the most unexpected moments. And as you slowly begin to recognise the uniqueness, or shall we say, beauty of a certain idea, it starts seeping away(Well, that is what usually happens ot me in the exams. Ideas seep away. And slip away!). I had this great idea of a sketch today. I was sitting in a math lecture trying as hard as possible to feint attention at the prof as he rambled of in his heavily accented english about linear transformations of matrices and stuff. And like a flash, I get this idea- you see, a hand holding a bloody knife, and its shadow on the wall looks like a dove. It was so oxymoronish, and if the idea would actually materialise on paper, I knew it would look awesome. The complete picture with charcoal, black and white, except the red blood with which the knife is spattered and the green clover leaf in the beak of the shadow- dove. I could actually see it in front of my eyes! And then, ofcourse, the picture turned hazy and started dissolving into thin air. I knew what was going on- my idea was slipping away! And I couldn't let that happen! I checked the watch- 20 more minutes. This was going to be excruciating. I opened my notebook and started to sketch the picture....until, as they say, if you want something real bad, the whole universe conspires against you or something like that....(It actually is the opposite, I guess, but surely not in my world!)So this Prof makes the guy sitting beside me(the one who is drooling. Not the one who looks like he is dead and his corpse is about to snore. I think even the Prof admits that he is completely out.) and asks him a question. Now the only thing that can be as bad as a Prof asking you a question is you asking him one and expecting a straight answer( trust me, that is true.). Also, a Prof never aims a question at one guy as such. Nor does he expect the guy to answer it. The question is for the whole group around the guy to whom it is asked. It is a sort of wake up call, more of a death knell. It is a signal to the students that they have been caught not paying attention( or not feinting it) and they better do so if they don't want to face a full fledge public embarrassment. The guy next to me fumbles( as expected. Afterall, he has spent the lecture making his saliva bungee jump across his chin!). The prof shuts him up quite well, and after a sharp sweep of an eye at the other two of us musketeers, continues. The bungee jumper takes a notebook and starts scribbling down everything the Prof has ever written on the blackboard. The corpse man has come to life. He now adopts an open mouthed,disoriented posture which makes him look like one of the 'use me' dustbins with a really bright flowery shirt. And he has got a physique for it too! I straighten up, then lay low again, trying to look concentrated on the notebook I have which carries the notes of the previous class I attended about two weeks ago. Now what was I thinking? I try to remember. Some idea. What idea? this time I really concentrate, though not on the lecture( still a little bit of credit must be given to me for concentrating in the lecture theatre.). But I can't remember a thing. Nothing at all. I try to pull at the dying strands of memory I have of the idea. something about a knife. A knife? Wow! I am thinking about knives in my math lecture. And I remeber blood. Its coming back! Its coming back! The lecture gets over. And the grumpy Prof sets across the classroom towards the door where he is met by a speeding streak of light. It zooms out of the room, leaving the door to flap on the Prof's now red face. But the streak doesn't care. It glides out; swishes out of the lecture theatre, flies up the staircase, sprints through the B dome, scampers on the road, and never slows down until it reaches its destination. Its destination is my room, and as the bright folk out of the readers might have correctly inferred, 'it' is me( if you haven't inferred that, then take it from me- I'm sorry, but you are not one of the bright folk!).While my feet are running at full speed, my mind is running at fuller( wrong expression, right effect!). I skid to a stop near my table, grab a sheet of paper and some charcoal and don't look up until I've finished what I had in mind( the math prof would be in tears to watch me so focussed) And you know what, It felt just like it feels when you have a chicken cheese roll when you really want it. The same anticipation waiting with bated breath to explode! It feels great. Wait one second- this is what I was talking about! See, this is one kind of a streak- you know what you want to eat. You have an idea to work with. But, as I was saying, what if you are really just hungry. Anything will do. What do you do then? What if you have a real urge to write, but don't know what to write about. What do you do? Well, you eat anything that comes in front of you first, right. So I do the same thing here. I write the first thing that pops in my mind! And see, this works! I'm done with the post!