6 posts tagged “blog”

I got this as a mail forward, and am impressed at how true the points are w.r.t. me. All but point 21. I never watched movies, so I wouldn't know.  I also don't know who Salma Sultana was, but in my end of the country, Shobana Ravi wouldn't smile when the country was mourning.  But then, she never smiled.

 

I could have said the following words, but that would amount to shameless plagiarism.  So, I give credit where it is due, recommended by my friend Doug.  Thanks Doug.

Why I Write
I do not really know. What I know is, and what I always write about is what is real to me; another night of many nights,  filled with laughter, tears, or  nothing, no lights, and moonlight slides through the curtains on those very familiar objects on my desk, and I remember an old song from my childhood, and the only way to remember that moment again is to write about it. I guess  that is why I write now.
   

   

My daughter's vacation ends and school starts tomorrow.  She is pretty indifferent about it unlike her mother who is shaking with excitement and also nervous and is behaving much like a cat on a hot tin roof.   Excited because her little baby is going to first standard now - she can still vividly remember the juicy kicks she got when the kid was inside her.

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Back during school years, I would always look forward to the first day of school after summer vacation.  The glow on every child's face, the sights and smells of school (not near the toilets though), the new uncomfortable uniforms, biting new shoes, the new school satchel, newly covered books, the excitement of knowing who would be in my section that year (there was "shuffling" every year), who my class teacher would be...and so on.

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While at school, I was part of the school choir.  The dramatics club would stage musicals now and then and despite my secret hope of being chosen to play a part on stage, I was always delegated to the side stage, as an alto, which in itself was not necessarily bad; at least I did not have to wear makeup.  A lot of effort went into these musicals, and I wonder where the teachers got the energy from, to herd a group of children and bid them do their stuff.  I distinctly remember a musical called "Thumbalina" where the title role was played by a rather short classmate of mine.  I don't remember any of the songs in it though, it was staged when I was in primary school.

We also staged a musical called "The Prodigal Son" (from the Testament), and for some reason, one of the songs in the musical has been running in my head all day today.  It seems to fit my own ruminations of the past few weeks. The song goes thus:

There seem to be several people
Locked up inside of me
Fighting a constant battle
For my identity
Sometimes they keep me prisoner
Sometimes they set me free
Is one of them my true being?
Is one of them really me?

Who am I? 
Just a dreamer of dreams?
Who am I?
Quite a failure it seems?
No, A Hero.
The Idol of the crowd.

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I can't seem to get over the vacation mood.  Got a deadline in a week, and not even a semblance of sense yet.  One of these days I am going to go into hyper panic and I hope my Vox will be ready at that time for verbal outflow of tension.

This deadline is weird.  The requirements are so abstract that I am not even sure I can write anything.  Which is not good because right now, I am the only one in the company who can write, and if I get into a real or perceived mental block, the boss is not going to be a happy camper. 

HELP !

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Read an interesting book (for sake of internet censorship, I won't mention the name of the book), which is an ancient Indian treatise on some essential social umm...customs and practices....that mentions in the passing what makes a good wife.  Of course, it is all atrociously chauvinistic.  It says that one of the requirements of a good "house wife" (which itself is an aggravatingly cliched term) is that she maintains a thriving garden.  I suppose the author would find me an adequate "housewife" in that regard.  My garden, after many years of toil and sweat is just about beginning to respond.  But I won't talk anymore about it lest I jinx it.

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For a birthday treat, we had dinner at a restaurant called "Georgio" in Besent Nagar (Thanks for the tip Gayathri).  Good place. Decent ambience. They even had a projected show of the live World Cup cricket match that junior insisted on watching while eating.  Their Mamos were to die for, and main course was good too.  Desert however, was sadly lacking.  Try it out if you have some moolah to burn and event to celebrate.

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End of Ramble. 

 
    

  

Not sure about the "strong" bit, but at least I am "going". This is the five hundred and twenty first post on VOX.

In the era when people are celebrating blogiversaries, I don't even remember when I started blogging.  All I remember was that it was at an msn site, inspired by my friend Soumya.  I started it as a journal to record my daughter's milestones.  It was on the evening of my cousin's bridal shower, because I wrote about how much fun one-and-half year old Vasundara had at the occasion. That makes it almost four years of blogging now, having hopped from msn to Babblogue to Alchemy to Nonoscience before settling into the comfortable routine of VOX, introduced and inspired by the dude.  Pretty impressive for a hobby, I should admit.

I have not turned the world upside down by my verbal outpours here, but at least I

(a) made some really good friends (howdee neighbours)
(b) found inspiration when the spririt sagged (Karen, thank you)
(c) got comfortable with writing
(d) got comfortable with public speaking, don't ask me how blogging helped public speaking (recently gave a lecture without dying of a heart attack).  I have this weird belief that opening out to strangers online perhaps made me better prepared to face strangers in person.
(e) had at least two school-friends find me after a hiatus of a couple of decades (Mats & Viji)
(f) have a written record of some special moments with my daughter that would outlast human memory (provided VOX does not die on me)

The list is perhaps longer, but it is nearing midnight and the mind threatens to shut down without warning. 

Interestingly, the 500th post is this and coincidentally features my favourite deity in Hindu mythology. I hope I am following the "just-do-the-blog-to-the-best-of-your-abilities" advise that HE imparted (in a slightly modified form, of course).

This Vox account seems to have morphed from a creative spring to an information repository these days. As a friend rightly pointed out, "there is no activity anywhere, no FB, no "I think", you are slacking".

I wonder if it is a temporary inertia or teasers for more permanent damage.  The brain seems less wired these days to document anything and everything that strikes it as interesting.  Even the aroma of maavadu that is marinating in its juice with all the spices, which brings to mind intense nostalgia for childhood summers does not entice me to rush to the system and record the verbal overflow of random memories and associations.  Heck, I have not even visited my neighbours and friends in cyberspace in so long that I doubt if they'd even remember me any more.  And this is from a woman, who just a couple of months ago, told her dude that she is proud she stuck at a hobby as long as three years, unlike earlier hobbies that lasted no more than a few months.  I think I might have just jinxed it by saying it aloud.

Or maybe it is just a February thing - Feb is the leanest month in terms of "work" and the general brain-death that accompanies the lean period makes me slacken, you'd think? But no. Browsing my archives, I find that Feb 2008 had 25 posts. I suspect it is the normal ageing process.

Keeping my fingers crossed.  Maybe I'll cross this creative constipation soon enough and replace it with verbal diahorrea.   I cannot decide which is better.

Many many years ago (actually four), I used to write for a web-magazine called zine5, run by very good friends of ours - Navin and Vidhya. My husband who had been writing in it for a couple of years before that*, had introduced me to it. The magazine popped into my head suddenly today, for some reason known to the supernatural power above us or Keanu Reeves.  I checked it to see if my articles were still there, and they were.  And strangely, after four years, they still sound, umm..pardon the unbridled arrogance, good.

Since I own the copyright of the articles, I figured it would be a good idea to have them here and inflict them on my unsuspecting readers.  The next few blog entries will be stuff reproduced from there.

*Romance digression:Dude's articles in Zine5 played an important role in my transition from "simply spinster" to "Awfully, sorry, lawfully wedded wife" status.