The first revival

It has been a year since I signed in, and it is with a certain amount of trepidation that I set out on this 'first revival' of 'a cent and a half'. There are going to be more 'revivals', I am sure, but I fervently hope they are going to be fewer and further in between. It doesn't take a lot to jolt someone into action. Individuals can stand on the precipice of a decision for days, months, years. All it takes is the least significant of events, sometimes, to change a seemingly endless cycle of excuses, tiresome and repeated. Inspiration can be found everywhere, but I've had blinders on for a while, the twin blinders of sloth, and what's worse, they're self-imposed.

My wife has been trying to persuade me to put pen to paper or finger to key, rather, for a while now. As I type, I feel those literary wheels (forgive my arrogance) creaking and rumbling. They have been devoid of grease for so long, the rust has locked them down so securely that they refuse to budge. Of late I've noticed a certain reluctance for words to surface to my tongue. I'll be having a conversation and mid-sentence, in character with a bad habit of wanting to use unnecessarily long words, I pause, searching for that perfect word with more than 4 syllables. The pause lengthens, I keep hunting, the search grows desperate. Alas, if the listener was a 'mallu', I knew a half-way decent one that would suffice, but more often than not I won't be so fortunate. Finally a sorry-substitute bubbles up through the morass that my mind has become.

Anyway, back to the wheels, which I believe the reader is beginning to visualize. Rusted relics of the past, they refuse to work. Maybe all it takes is patience and perseverance, I sincerely hope so. I'm going to keep plugging until they finally shatter or spin without abandon. The end of the day is not the best time to attempt this so I'm going to gracefully give in to the pressures of a student's spouse's chores. The wife and I neglected Lent brazenly for the past five weeks, so in an attempt at redeeming ourselves we've decided to stay away from the exquisite beckoning of red and white meat, for the last two. Thus the sambhar and the green dal in the fridge and rice in the cooker.

So long, fellow citizens of these economically disadvantaged times we live in, I bid you adieu.