an imaginary 60 yr old would hv been writers letter to another 60 year old would have been sitarist

To be a great writer you need to write.. But then the moment you sit
to write you are not sure what to say. You are afraid that what you
write is not good enough.. you get lost in the a complicated web of
"trying to find" juicy material to write about that after hours of
surfing your eyes sting and you are too tired to write. Or the
conditions aren't right. Its too noisy. No major idea titillates your
cerebral cortex. You feel that there is something more interesting
that you can read- that would help you becomeetter writer- than
sitting down to writing your own sordid piece. In the end, you have
become a wannabe maestro sitarist who has heard all the grand masters
play, who has read all there is to read about each string and each
curve, has held that beloved sitar in your hands and stroked it
lustily, craving to make it vibrate with divine rhythms at your touch,
but has fallen short of actually sitting and trying to play. Why?
Because you were too afraid to make those ear-shattering errant
crescendo's that compete with the sounds made by gnarling rats as they
chew through polystyrene garbage chute covers. I was afraid that the
words which oozed out of my fingertips would be flippant, clumsy,
frisky ones. We were both afraid of our own imagined failure to become
masters from the first day onwards like some rare prodigies. You never
played because you didn't have the guts to balance the weight of the
rotund stomach of the sitar on you left leg while holding onto its
long serene neck with dear life with your right hand, because your
spine ached and your flax arm muscles are stinging in pain. I didn't
have the patience to sit in one place to put an entire thought into
paper, colliding with icy writer's blocks and chipping them away bit
by bit with a blunt stone-hammer. I never wrote because I never had
the courage to plunge my callous palms with a rough stone idea and
hold it in a gushing current that would have moulded it into a soft,
shiny magnificent polished rock. You never played because you didn't
have the forbearing to keep plucking at those strings, emanating harsh
tones while the blood oozed from your finger tips and the divine
instrument demanded no less of a sacrifice than dead pieces of skin to
adorn its magical strings. I never wrote because the mental exertion
and single minded focus demanded for the exercise was more than what
my mercurial mind could deal with. And finally, other jobs beckoned
us. We were weighed down by the need for approval, of our parents,
friends, lovers who didn't understand why we chose to travel a lonely,
untrodden road. But most of all our self-doubt and fears swallowed us.
Because we weren't sure our selves where we were heading. Although a
shadow of an enticing oasis oozing with the promise of self
fulfillment appeared in the horizon, we weren't sure whether we would
get their. We weren't even sure it was real or just a mirage. And the
moment a trivial escape appeared we threw away our destiny and jumped
into the boat of mundane existence, with everyone else. We lost that
lustrous fire that burned day and night in our eyes, which
differentiated us from the rest of the herd. But then with time, we
became indistinguishable. Lost in the crowd, bent double under our new
found responsibilities, tied down by bondage, we have let the marrow
dry up in our once succulent bones. We are but husks now, our spirit
shriveled up. Wild dreams of youth buried under the sands of time.
With eyes subdued with monotony and silent suffering, from the pain
that stings out from the wound that was created in the little space
where our dreams used to be kept, snuggled. The wound has festered
over the years, growing like a cancer, multiplied by the forces of
regret, self loathing and disappointment, until it has turned green,
yellow, red raw and violet all at the same time..

Ah my friend if we only had this realization then.. If we knew then
what we see now with hindsight? Would we have thrown our dreams into
the wind?