INSIDE A DAYDREAMER’S MIND

The Journey Into a

Daydreamer’s Mind

THE DREAM

Dreams stay with you even when friends don’t.

MY DREAM

What is my Dream?

• To get a book of short story with poetry

published

• To sell 1,000 copies of the book

Why?• I feel I need to tell what I have to tell to people

who like reading funny and flowing writing.

HOW WILL IT COME TRUE

Budget = Rs. 1,50,000

Cost Breakup • Pre-Publishing = Rs. 16,000

• Prepare manuscript to circulate to publishers - free• Proof Read – Rs. 1,000• Editing & Cover Design – Rs. 10,000• Foreword – difficult to get for a newbie author so cost

is nil.• Obtaining Copyrights - Rs. 5,000• Getting ISBN number - free in India

• Printing = Rs. 1,00,000

• Typing and Typesetting – Rs. 10,000

• Publishing Cost – Rs. 90,000

HOW WILL IT COME TRUE

Post Publishing/ Marketing = Rs. 34,000

• Distribution Costs – Rs. 25,000

• Marketing on Website and Social Networking platforms –

Rs. 9,000

Time Frame = 9 months (September 2012 to May

2013)

• Manuscripting – 3 months (September to November)

• Typing/Typesetting & Proof Reading – 1 month

(December)

• Printing and marketing – 5 months (January to May)

SNEAK PEAK INTO THE BOOK

HORRORS OF MY MIND Chapter one – The eagle has landed. Loneliness….a word you have heard for so long and so often. It cannot be defined. It is as conspicuous as air. I have seen two kinds of loneliness in this world. One that you feel when you are all by yourself and wish someone was there. Someone who would watch from behind while you ignored that person so as to give yourself a sense of false importance. The other kind is the one which you feel when you are amongst all the people you have in your life. You still feel the absence of someone whom you could talk to. That is the kind of feeling I am undergoing with every breath that I take. Am I lost? You would be wondering what am I talking about? That is obvious. So I start from the day I was born. It was the month of September 85 – honestly I am not sure of the weather then but these days September month is marked by rains which reach the pinnacle of monotony, having begun early in the month of July. My mother had been on a fast the day before I was due. It was festival of ‘Teej’ which she did not want to skip. Though she stood out as a wonderful wife for this but this did not help her get in my good books. Wonder what I could have been had she not been on the fast. One extra day of nutrition! My skinny days had started there and then in her womb itself. Don’t dare laugh! It’s not funny at all.

SNEAK PEAK INTO THE BOOK

But as was expected, I landed on this earth on the eighteenth of September – a day which would someday be rated as important as the second of October or the fifteenth of August. But this was not supposed to be as easy as it sounds. It was a sticky situation. I was quite a weakling at birth – underweight by quite a number. But that was not the problem. Doctors had found out that my spine was not as strong or as solid as people normally are blessed with. It was fluid in some sections. It would eventually solidify only if I survived the initial scary phase of being handled well. Doctors were of the view that I immediately be referred to a hospital in Vellore where they say this could be dealt with. My parents had freaked out by then. Poor fellows! Had they known this would happen nine months earlier they would have never had me at the first place. All the Gods that Hinduism can support coherently and without ambiguity were summoned at the earliest. Wonder how? My grandma – the best network to Almighty guaranteed. Was it fate or was it a miracle – it’s hard to say but things were not that grave 24 hours later. Now the warning of the doctors had mellowed down from an impending fatality to a mere inability to walk in the future. But my grandma was a very tough nut to crack then. She would not give up that easily - a hard bargainer to say the least. A second summon was sent to all the potent Gods to do their stuff. But before they could even acknowledge the receipt of the request, she took it upon herself not only to see me healthy (wealthy and wise understood) but also walk, run, jump, skip , fly etc. (sorry. not fly! just went with the flow not realizing that gravity would get upset if I ever did that).

SNEAK PEAK INTO THE BOOK

Getting discharged from the hospital was easy. My parents were given a codebook of instructions that read – ‘HOW TO KEEP AN ANGEL LIKE ME HAPPY?’ (I wonder how many of you have started thinking whether there exists such a book.) but the few instructions that I got to know about later were - not to make me sleep on my rear side but my tummy side (which I do even till today) and not to let me cry which I was quite talented at. My tears if harvested would have solved water scarcity problems in many a countries today. Water ministry is still to respond to the proposal though. As I grew up my grandma and mummy did more than their best in bearing my non-sense. I was quite unique in my ways. I never touched the milk bottle. I was spoon-fed since a very early age. It needed a team of dedicated people to feed me. One would hold my hands. My legs would be in another’s grip. Mummy would thrust the spoon in my mouth and I would help them out by gulping down the stuff that had irritated my taste buds and upset my oesophagus. Children who ate their own stuff without any dissent were mythical characters to my mother. As a result of this intense labour my bodyweight never attained satisfactory levels. My race to size zero was on. Those who were able to look beyond my much sought-after physique saw me as a smart Alec whose wit could undo the most pompous of reputations. Ideas cropped in my mind as fast as a clock’s tick. I would blurt them out in public and people would show their appreciation by having a hearty laugh at the one who was the butt of my jokes. If ever I overdid something I was given a dressing down which kept me grounded to my elements. However the reputation of a jester had started taking flight.

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