Recognition

19th July 2011 – a date I won’t forget! A good one hour siesta, & a cup of hot tea later, as usual at around 5p.m, I sat at my system & opened my blog.

In my latest post “A couple & an office” I noticed there was a new comment. As I read, I was ….! Still! And then, there was this big flutter in my heart! I was overjoyed!

Am I really seeing this? My name listed in the Directory of Best Indian Blogs! My blog is one of India's best blogs? It had names of established writers like Shobhaa Dee, Shekar Kapur, Rajdeep Sardesai….oh my! I found it incredible.

No, I didn’t want to pinch myself because I didn’t want to wake up to reality! If it’s just a figment of my imagination, so be it. What an imagination! But it was true. I was also thrilled to see names of bloggers who I religiously follow like Rachna Parmar (whose blog was rated Excellent, isn’t that great?) and B Log.

I immediately rang up Sathya & told him about it. He didn’t jump with joy. How do I ever get him to be excited about my writing endeavors?

Anyways, I did the dishes in the evening, with a song in my heart. Usually, it’s a very mechanical act. But today was different. I swear I could’ve endorsed Vim, Sparkle, Sabina, Mr. Muscle, any liquid detergent brand you name, with great gusto. I was a professional dishwasher.

I was touched, because all this while, my blog was only an escape route, a ‘vent it out’ medium for my crazed brain. I realized that writing wasn’t as easy (yes, even if it is to only rant & rave) as some people think or assume it is. I took to blogging a full One Year after I quit my job, at age 33! It was simply to fill my time & days. I am no writer; so never in my wildest dream did I ever think that I would come this far.

I am humbled.

I know I am saying way too much & feeling way too much but for ME, it really is way too much!

What is your Hobby?

Oxford dictionary defines hobby as ‘an activity that you do for pleasure when you are not working’. Does that mean work is not pleasure? Alternatively, can something you do for pleasure also bring in the dough? Can your hobby become your profession & when it does, will it stop being a hobby?!

In school, my classmates had amazing hobbies – collecting coins, stamps, pens, peacock feathers (!), sketching, painting, crochet & so on. Impressed by a philatelist’s album, I tried my hand at collecting rare stamps. A year or two into it & a few ‘Gandhis’, & ‘Rajivs’ later, I stopped going after stamps & switched to coins. After the first few paisa, put a happy end to that too. My coin collection had started resembling a beggar’s bowl.

I began to worry that I had no hobby to boast of before friends. All I did, after & away from school, was garden. I liked the texture of soil on my hand. I liked putting seeds & saplings into the ground, making a mound of earth around it, sprinkling water & then, every day, bending over, & waiting patiently for the first burst of life to appear. The first sprout of leaf is so delicate, tender & exquisitely beautiful. It was my reward.

But gardening wasn’t a ‘cool’ hobby. There were girls whose hobby was cooking (eeeww) & they made it look cool. I wanted to elevate gardening to the cool status too but I wasn’t good with words. I could not articulate my love for it. So, in school, I’d go for the ‘safe’ option: What’s your hobby? Reading. It never attracted any criticism or even an attention. It was a harmless hobby!

A decade later, all those reams of A4 sheets that went into printing my resume carried the following lines:
Hobbies: Movies, Theatre, Travelling, Reading

I like doing all of these – whether it is travelling to a new place, reading a book, watching a theatrical performance or even a movie. It makes me happy. It satiates my thirst for constant entertainment. It stays with me long after the activity is over.

But none of these require any effort on my part; only money :)! Blogging, I can safely say, is my first ever ‘real’ hobby. It is therapeutic in some strange ways & I am doing it with great zeal. And coming at age 33 this is quite something, I must say.

Aakhir Kyun ?!?

I started blogging because I have this habit of talking incessantly. What’s weird about that you ask? Listen further. I talk incessantly to myself. All in the head. When I am alone. All by myself. I guess I got it from my father. He used to talk a lot too. But then that was because he was drunk most times!

Then why do I talk alone? Aakhir kyun? Psychological problem? Could be. I definitely think we so- called ‘normal’ people aren’t all that normal after all. The ones in mental asylums have fewer phobias/problems than we sane people do. Agree with Yogaraj Bhatt there. Remember “Manasare”? Uppi also said this much before him in “A” released ages back.

So, well … I keep talking in my head. On almost every conceivable subject on earth. If you could record my head, the recorder would coolly playback endless conversations. Long drawn monologues. Spirited, mind you! The conversations are never dull. Always forceful. When I am moved by something, the outpourings begin. Even though what moves me could be something as mundane as the lighter of my gas stove or as remote as Star Cruises or as abstract as Utopia.

Then, one day, when our T.V remote “died”, I once again started talking in my head. This time, however, I got up & put it down on paper. Word to word. Just as I was saying it in my head. No editing. Free flow of words. Thinking aloud. Putting pen to paper. Quite out of the blue.

And then I asked myself, “Can I publish this stupid, one- page crap, say in a newspaper/magazine or even a leaflet?” NAAAAH!!

Then it struck me. Why don’t I just blog it? Blogs do welcome all & sundry. You needn’t have a course in creative writing or be tech savvy or intellectual to be a blogger. If you are all or any of these, good for you! But then you don’t HAVE to be! All you have to be able to do is put pen to paper. Quite literally. And if you are passionate about things around you, it HELPS!

So that’s how I started blogging. No agenda. No creativity. No “writer in the making” business. Just plain “recordings of my head” stuff.

The best part is, it has actually helped ‘calm’ my restless mind. Is this how psychos feel when they talk to their shrink? If so, I am with you guys. After all, I am one too!!!