That it is not exactly clear how one writes catharsis, or even whose catharsis one would write, does little to stifle the desire, pen and pad grasped intently or keyboard pecked familiarly. Hopefully, even brazenly, one sets out in the name of writing oneself out of confusion, or else writing oneself into a more comfortable position with one's confusion, or else writing in such a way that another's confusion might be lessened and by consequence yours' justified, etc., etc. (other iterations of romanticized expression arising in response to so much continually overwhelming stimuli). That such efforts may be futile or otherwise implausible in scope or intent is indeed beside the point once the habit develops (and perhaps addiction is a frutiful mode for understanding this incessant urge, which like the reach for the cigarette or the bottle is but another gesture towards expressing what little control one might surely and incontrovertibly exert in that oppressively tiny circle of influence that is called "mine"). In search always of structures of interpretation to arrange the manifold difference around you, the written word casts an appealing shadow of potential aid, if not salvation. Its very organization is reassuring (for good reason did a young Wittgenstein think words might touch the world and thus describe it totally). Rules of grammar and spelling and tense and reference; entire schools of thought in which to take shelter or adopt a foil; and at the extremity of achievement, that most coveted prize of all who wander through difference in search of meaning - the possibility of translation. For, beyond the ability of making one language speak lies the gift of making two languages speak to and through each other, and this capacity can itself be likened to the possibility of letting another cultural world speak to and through oneself, thus translating difference into a synthetic, creative, entirely new form of understanding (at least, such are the dreams of the traveler). Considered and expressive and intentional even when proclaiming its own self conscious inadequacy, the word reaches out to this swarming mass of experience like a great purposeful maid: selecting, arranging, straightening. At first, such tidiness is sought only in the name of mere description (what do we have in all this mess), but almost immediately (for even description is almost never free from the strivings of judgement), the strident modes of interpretation and explanation intercede, including and especially the explanation of confusion, of inability, of fractured meanings and wierdly verdant discontinuities that, like the cigarette and the bottle, keep you coming back for more. 

The lila of the word intoxicates! A dance of difference - thus can we understand the deconstructionists obsession with the 'play' of meaning: Krishna's ever alluring replaced by elusively dancing shadows, (replaced or else exchanged, the dashing Krishna of the gopis for the imperious Krishna of the Gita); Saraswati's vena strummed mockingly in the background as the dogged pursuit of faint outlines and scattered understandings plays on, desperate at times but also wonderfully free in the opportunity for organized confusion proffered by the incipient potential of each sentence, no matter how poorly crafted it might turn out to be. Each word, each phrase an offering in the dance of (mis)understanding, like so many semiotic fruits left on altars alongside garlands and laddus and butchered goats (depending on the flavor of your prose or poem). And then, inevitably, purified devotions are returned to the supplicant as prasad, the leavings of the divine, meant to be consumed and shared wherever portability and potability and 'connectivity' allow. In this way, mundane inabilities of half-comprehension are offered up and made sacred by the substantiated grace of the divine; and, if you believe the yogic riddle workers of the Upanishads, this play between the world and something beyond it, between relative and absolute meaning, between structure and super-structure, is not the duet it seems but an incomprehensibly vast but perfectly basic solo performance. Thou art that: the seer and the sight, the word and its refutation, the description and the reality that lies somewhere within and beyond it. And thus, writing catharsis can be, among other things, a touching up against this wonderfully lasting if always inscrutable recognition of oneness, which has been phrased so lovingly and diversely in progressive 'Indian' idioms (and elsewhere in the world where stillness of mind and clarity of thought has flourished). Indeed, by a continuation of the logic in which such claims are couched, writing is always just this catharsis, equal in its sacred perfection to each moment that precedes or follows, whether one finds oneself walking dejectedly in the heat and dust and exhaust fumes of a Delhi afternoon or staring dumbfounded and reassured as the early morning sun paints the tallest mountains in the world with the colors of the new day.  
  
(Written from Calcutta/Kolkata in West Bengal, India, on short stopover before returning to Pune. Details of travels in Indian Himalayas (Darjeeling, Sikkim) including assorted encounters, reflections and problematized descriptions to follow; sometimes, its all about the preamble)