Muse - 1

“Why don’t you write a book?”

I stopped eating my ice cream and looked at him in wonder. “What?! Why this brainwave?”

He happily kept gorging on his cookie and cream ice cream and said, “You are good with your words. Everyone likes your blogs. Might as well write a book”.

“My blogs are just short articles. I would need a lot of time to write a book.” I replied and got back to my ice cream.

“Oh sorry! I forgot. You run a multinational company. Obviously you don’t have time.”

I looked up and sighed. “Save the sarcasm. I am busy with many things. Besides, what exactly do I write a book on?”

“Don’t know. And stop licking the ice cream cup please.”

I kept the cup down and said, “Look, I need a topic. A muse. I can’t just write on nothing.”

“You are wasting your time, your words.  Your penchant for using words to touch someone is amazing. You have it in you to write a book. Promise me you will.”

I thought for some time. “I promise that whenever I find a muse I shall write a book. By the way, how is your shoot coming up?”

And with that we drifted to other topics. His work, our crazy but loving mutual friends, the current political scenario. Every weekend that we met after that, at the same place by the sea, he kept asking me about the book. I kept disappointing him.

A paper, a pen, words, thoughts and a topic or a muse. You need them all. Remove any one of them and you are left with a broken literary orchestra. My muse, unknown to the fact himself, kept chasing my thoughts unintentionally. Till the thoughts forced the pen to write words on the paper. And so, I wrote my first chapter of the book. It was only two pages long but it succinctly held my thoughts. I titled it ‘Muse’.

All this progress and yet I didn’t tell him anything. I wanted to surprise him. On the Saturday of the week that I started writing, I met him, as always by the seaside. I took the book with me. The sea was now a rather excited witness to my meetings with him.

“Do you take deliberate pleasure in making me wait?” I asked as soon as he came, which was half an hour late.

“Traffic! And I am no Superman my lady!”

“Amazing! Somehow the very traffic that is so easygoing with me, goes out of its way to obstruct you. Amazing really!”

“Well, there is something else too. Remember I told you about the girl I met at work 2 months back? I had gone to meet her and hence got late.” He said this with a twinkle in his eye and a faint colour rose on his cheeks.

“Oh I see. Ummm ... And?”

“And I confessed to her how I felt for her. She feels the same too.” He smiled. No. Rather, he beamed. Yes, that look of the first heady rush of love.

“Wow! This is wonderful! I am so happy for you! When do I get to meet her?”

“When you start writing the book that you promised.”

“I had promised to start writing as soon as I found a muse.”

“A wait till eternity it is then?”

I smiled. “Let’s walk.”

We strolled along the beach and he talked about the girl. A few minutes later he received a call from her. While he was talking to her I took the book out of my handbag, opened it, ripped the pages I had written and threw them away in the sad sea.

Muse no more!