Where is originality?
I am not much with words. Or for that matter with sentences. Original sentences that is.
English is not my first language. I read enough literature in the Queen’s language though. And the only thing I have achieved by doing that is now I have collected a sackful of clichés and idioms.
I feel all these great authors have ensured that there is no original thought left unexpressed. Even my phone knows and predicts what I am going to write next. Not that I get a lot of creative thoughts in my own mother tongue. But it would be nice once in a while to be first in putting those thoughts in words differently.
Get Mangesh’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
They say an average human uses just a handful of words in his or her whole life. Was it thousand? Or two thousand? If they did some research on usage of phrases, the number would be far lesser.
If only I had a magic wand (cliché warning!), I would just wipe my slate clean (!), and clean up the clutter (!) of clichés to let the originality flow through the crevices of its own formation! The euphemism for this is ‘inspiration’. By that logic, I must be one of the most inspired persons on earth!
My quest for that unique thought with unique expression continues. But how in the name of Goddess Saraswati, do all these other authors in this OpenPage* manage to be so expressive and creative? I bet they have some special tool in their phones that warns them as soon as it detects a worn thin phrase!
Anyway, you have just wasted precious two minutes of your life on this article of nothingness. Now go ahead and read other articles while I go and learn Japanese. Just in case if I run out of clichés in English.
*OpenPage in The Hindu
