Dog Chase Car

On the futility of journeys and then some

I recently read this short story Zaabalawi by Naguib Mahfouz with a reading group. The story is about a sickly man who wants to find the titular saint Zaabalawi to perform miracles on his failing body, but (spoiler alert, I guess) he never does.

I generally do not like stories that overtly try to teach me something. Even more so with something that has a fable-like tone to it, where the only thing missing at the end is a cartoon fox summarizing the “moral of the story”. Like Shaktimaan, with his velvet arms akimbo, telling you what not to do at the end of every episode.

Dude is lost af

This story itself is okay, nothing great imo. Follows the Macguffin trope; an object of desire that enables the plot but is not the point even though the characters don’t recognize that. The journey is the story. But during our discussion, it did get me thinking of my own futile chases. Specifically, one very pithy example.

There was this movie Omerta (Rajkumar Rao starrer, directed by Hansal Mehta) that released in 2018, but was bodied in the box office by Avengers: Infinity War. It went out of theatres almost immediately. I had heard some good reviews about it, specifically about Rajkumar and how he inhabited the mind of a monster. I waited for the OTT release, but there was silence. Then, as you usually do in these scenarios, I sailed the high seas.

Excuse me sir, is this where I can find the low-res prints of that anti-national movie?

For the next two years, almost every day, I would obsessively search every dark site I knew in hopes that even a theatre print would show up. What began as mild interest about a movie turned into this daily thing that became a part of my routine. Like the sickly man, I was habituated to the chase. I still have those bookmarks somewhere.

Then, mid 2020, peak lockdown, I came across a news story that Omerta was now available on Zee5. And sure enough, the pirate sites had it too. But now that it was available to everyone, I immediately lost interest in it. For two years, the chase was mine, so shouldn’t the reward be just mine too?

I do recognize that this was highly irrational, even when I was in the midst of it. I had no connection to the movie, nor was my so-called “chase” taxing of any sort. The only thing it did was to get me to set a marker to begin the day. Like the short story moralled, maybe the journey was the point.

Sidenote: applied literally, this “wisdom” grinds my gears. I despise long road trips. This is me in a moving vehicle: blindfolds, headphones, neck pillow — wake me up at the destination and I’ll be the perfect travel buddy. But keep me sedated during trips, especially in this country of ours where sudden onset antakshari afflicts everyone

It’s been 6 years now that Omerta has been on OTTs. It is now available on at least 4 platforms. Recently, someone put it up on YouTube too, for free.

And I still haven’t watched it. I don’t know what lesson to take from this.

Dog chase car. Car stop. Dog contemplate existence.
Dog write about sense of impending doom.
Dog chase car again.

And so it goes. poo-tee-weet.

Sidequests

This past month has been “productive”, to use the term loosely, in terms of writing. Wrote one short story, and finished writing 30 poems for NaPoWriMo. And I am writing this Substack post, which shouldn’t count as it is not done yet but I am counting it regardless.

On the book front, I have thought about major changes but right now they exist in that beautiful space in my head, which means that they cannot disappoint anyone. They can happily prance around in the brain jungle, keeping some sort of a hope alive that I will actually finish this damned thing. The problem right now doesn’t seem to be finishing. It is actually starting again. I know, I know, I have made claims on this very soapbox in the past that I am restarting it again and I did. Swear! *Licks finger, rubs on throat* Maa kasam!

But, having said all that, I did write one chapter, so that is something. The rest of the book updates will show up here soon-ish.

Meanwhile, you can read all of the NaPo poems here: https://www.instagram.com/sumittriestowrite/

In the last week, I realized that I could make them more visually appealing so I magicked some Canva into it and they came out pretty good.

And of course, I made web apps for poems that adhere to strict forms. These were vibe-coded, but they will not write for you. These are just guard rails.

• PiLingual - https://sumitshetty.com/projects/pilingual/

  This has the first 100 digits of pi and suggests you words with lengths that correspond to each digit. Not contextual suggestions, these are completely random

• Ghazal - https://sumitshetty.com/projects/ghazal/

  The English ghazal is a tricky beast to tackle. Of course, Urdu poems sound much, much better but this format is fun nonetheless. Here is what I wrote:

  

• Sestina - https://sumitshetty.com/projects/sestina/

  I came across what a sestina is when Zainab took a session on the form for Pune Writers’ Group. It seemed intimidating then. It still did now when I tried to do it for NaPo. To help me in this endeavour, I built this tool. There are a lot of sestina helpers out there but they are either AI poem generators which I don’t see the point of or look like shit. So I built one myself. Read Zainab’s sestina here.

I will collate these writing tools better under the thetafiction.com umbrella (site undergoing a redesign now) but until then, idk, eat a sandwich, I guess.

See how cool the logo is though!

Before I check out, I have to give a shout out to Uma for finally starting her Substack, after years of us pleading her to do so. I have a sneaking suspicion that Uma has the world’s largest collection of art pieces and poetry in her phone. If she has decided to share those with you, you are in a good curator’s hands. Check out the first post:

Chaos, Collected.

That’s about it. How was the sandwich?