Breeding Lucidity

“The anguish arose from the helplessness at manipulating time. The space inherited the hatred. A space devoid of everything. Jealousy was at life itself for living the way it wanted to and for how long it wanted to. And indulgence was the preferred anaesthetic.”

“When the dark sky swallows the light

you are unveiled before the mirror of clarity

in those lucid moments.”

The verdict? A 23 year old with split personality? All you hear on the other side is a chuckle. Vidhula Venugopal is all of 23 years old, fresh out of university holding a Masters degree in, wait for it, Mathematics. A Mathematician with a penchant for poetry and everything literary, a doctoral candidate in the area of Corporate Strategy and Policy at the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, a major music buff and a dreamer who dreams of penning lyrics for The Verve – ‘that should explain the chuckle’, she comments referring to the inadequacy of the word ‘split’.

Vidhula started to take writing seriously from her 11^th standard. “I was naïve enough then. I practically fell for every nice comment that came my way. Now I look back at some of those poems and cringe at the thought of me having blushed at those comments. But I am grateful to a lot of people for those kind words. That kept me going. I am enjoying my poetry and the whole process now.”

“I have moved from poems which invariably had to rhyme like

'What you want

is never what you get.

What you can’t

Is the unpaid debt.’

to

‘and when the corridor comes to an end, it is this pleasure that drives him crazy,

insanity wasn’t defined when he killed, but when justice orchestrated the kill.”

So what inspires her? “Everything. There was a time when a bunch of plastic flowers inspired me to write. The above two lines are from a poem which talks about the death penalty. Sometimes words just play in your head. Words are beautiful. As opposed to our ideals and principles, they are very flexible. One simple word, for example, pretend, could have a hundred extensions. In that sense, poetry is more open ended than prose. I do not believe in trying to figure out what the poet meant. Make the poem your own. Relate to those words. Enhance their meaning.”

Have the Chetan Bhagats of the world started inspiring the twenty-somethings of the country? “Everyone is creative. We just narrow down our own possibilities by pre-supposing our talents and abilities. All we need to do is to stop looking for tangible meanings of what we do in the near future. Creativity is not a time bound activity. Let yourself go.”