Ripples of my Reflections

I think, therefore I write

Tag: Writing (Page 1 of 3)

Name it what you will

April 14, 2016 /

I started this blog quite a few years back and blogging back then was about writing what you feel. That’s it. There were no expectations of you-scratch-my-back-and-I-will-scratch-yours. There was reciprocity, of course. But it never got in the way of us writing realistic posts and reading other posts and responding honestly. This world has evolved so much with the years and I am all for a positive change. But the culture that I see in this space now doesn’t look like my cup of cold coffee. Yeah, maybe it is not just the world of blogging changed, maybe I changed too. Maybe my perceptions changed too.

However, what bothers me more is the very same people who wrote brilliant posts are churning out the commercial rubbish, campaigning for brands that they had to google out to find what they stood for. I confess that I tried a couple of such posts and that is the worst thing I have ever done with respect to writing and I will never do it again. Not for a million dollars. If I want to make money out of writing, I’d publish a book or open a fully dedicated and commercial blog. I wouldn’t do this laying in commercial posts amidst personal stuff, thereby luring in your trusting readers to read the campaigns. And the height of all this is we don’t see that this is all just marketing strategy and the typical greed of making that extra few bucks is working out very well for the brand companies.

Also, have you noticed the topics that they choose for you to write? It is all hot topics which would make people go gaga over them. Like feminism. How many unrelated brands have beaten this same snake to death and we keep biting the bait. Or maybe we don’t care about it as long as we get traffic to our blog. Also, there are people who keep writing about how happy they are with their life, home, marraige, kids etc. every single month. I mean, why would you need to give a status update about your life on the internet. And to my dismay I found out that they are doing this charade to get back at their “enemies” and show themselves up in front of everyone. Sharing something about yourself is okay, but this? Get a life, please. That is one of the reasons why I stopped following and participating in the Action Replay theme where you talk about how your month was.

Anyway, where am I going with all this? Due to many factors, including me changing, I don’t recognize the friendship that I once formed anymore. I am still game for reading blogs that are worth it. I may or may not read, I may or may not comment, but you wouldn’t bother about it if you are writing for the right reason. Words, when put right, never fade away.

I have thought a lot about this even before but never got around to doing it because of the love I have for writing. But now I realize, I have been doing a great injustice in chugging on just to fit in, just to keep going as I used to. So I took a break for a few months from blogging, cleared my head, drew inspiration from like-minded bloggers and took a snap decision. I unpublished my blog page of Facebook and disabled comments on the site. That way, the only thing that will motivate me to write here as and when I want to, is the urge to write about something.

Until later 🙂

P.S: Thanks to Adit for getting me back on my feet and my inspiration. I know I am not quite there yet, but I will get there eventually.

My first ever blogger meet

February 2, 2015 / / 11 Comments

When I got a special invite for the ASUS Indiblogger meet in Bangalore, I was psyched. I didn’t participate in the Happy hours contest for ASUS because I was held up tight at work, but then the Indiblogger team cleared all my woes by sending me an invite anyway. This was my first ever blogger meet and it was in Bangalore. Generally I prefer such meets within the city since I have some constraints in travelling often. The timing had me in another dilemma as I had to travel from far to the venue and returning after 10 PM alone was not something I very much looked forward to. But then this was the first blogger meet in town and so I decided that I shouldn’t be missing this one, come what may.

So braving all the odds at work and the Bangalore traffic, I reached ITC Gardenia and was awed at the grandeur of the venue. I was constantly in touch with Soumya on whatsapp and met Shailaja right away at the venue. I was so thrilled to see all the people communicating without any barriers although that was the first time we were meeting. It was indeed a different experience to be a part of it. We all were strangers in a way yet we all had so much in common. We could just connect with anyone there instantly and I sensed the power of writing there. The registrations started in alphabetical order and photo IDs were verified. Once we were inside the Mysore hall where the event was to take place, we saw organized table arrangements (which we never stuck to 😛 ). I was first seated at a table where everyone was new to me and got a lot of fresh acquaintances. Then I couldn’t bear not sitting with the lioness Soumya and switched over to her table. 😀

With the LionessMe with Leo!

The event started off with a Nihal’s concert during which he made us interact and take part. Even the most shy person were tapping their feet and nodding their heads to the beats and it was a very energetic experience. After the concert, the organizer of the evening – Anoop graced us with his darshan and took over brilliantly. The ease with which he kept us hooked on to what he was saying was very admirable and he announced the next activity of the program where we had to meet other bloggers and convince them to give us one of their personal items. Well, I had gone directly from work and regretted that I didn’t have much stuff to part with. Of course, it was more of an exchange deal. I met Sreesha during one such deal 😀 When we were done, I had got a tissue autographed by Soumya, a toothpick (an unused one, of course :P), a fruit sticker, a book (this was given by the generous Vidya Sury), two mentos covers, a happy dent white gum, a hair pin, a decorative piece from Shailaja’s daughter’s shawl 😛 Yes and I parted with a few of my personal items too 🙂 This activity as weird as it may be enabled us to break the ice and mingle freely.

Launch and ConcertThe product manager David Chu launching the products and the Death Metal Concert
ThingsIGotI ate the Happy Dent White gum, others are all here 😛

Next came the ASUS product launch of ASUS EEEBook X205TA and the ASUS All in one PC ET 2040 . I was blown by the EEEbook as soon as I saw it as I am a sucker for all things that are sleek and shiny and this sure was sleeek!!! The all in one PC was also a brilliant idea for saving up space while not compromising on the configuration whether at work or at home. There was a display of both the products and we had a fun time checking them out.

We all are indulgent when it comes to food and the starters that were served continuously by the waiters only made us look forward to dinner. Unfortunately, I had to leave early as my husband had not taken the master key with him and was on his way home cluelessly hoping that I’d be back by then. Pitying him, I had to very reluctantly give up the last activity and the delicious (on hearsay) dinner and head back home. Before I left, I got to hear what the last activity was all about and it made me regret leaving early all the more. The last activity was enacting about blogging in a given style and our team’s style was The Pirates of the Caribbeans. Well, I missed it much.

Overall, I was grinning from ear to ear the entire evening, right from making it to ITC Gardenia, meeting all the bloggers, tweeting about the fantastic experience, seeing our tweets live on the huge screen, making my way back home. My first ever blogger meet, the first blogger meet of 2015 was an awesome one and I have only Indiblogger and ASUS to thank for it.

IndianByBirth&BloggerByChoiceOh Yes! We are!

Until later 🙂

The art that is communication

November 26, 2014 / / 15 Comments

Remember those days when communication between two persons in different places meant writing letters, waiting for the letters or maybe for the privilege of an occasional telephone call? Yeah, I know that I sound cliched. But today I want to talk about this exact cliche.

I have lived in times when there was no mobile, no phones that are smarter than humans, no internet. I have lived in times when mobiles, smart phones, internet, computers were not so easily available to the common man and I am glad that I was part of a common man’s family then. I have experienced the thrill of writing letters and waiting for a reply. I have had my first rush when I got the first phone call from a friend. It made me feel important in the family to be able to give our land line number to a friend and to have her call it. We didn’t have anything to talk though. But I can still remember how we both giggled into the receiver of having done something grown-up.

And writing letters, ah! The feeling is indescribable, especially if the letter is to a budding crush/romance/love. My hubby and me were childhood sweethearts and were best friends right from the KG classes. So in the early teens, we had a gang of our own and all the usual drama in the class. So we had a code for writing letters among the members of the gang. Though there were other members in our gang, we two really hit it off with the letter writing, sometimes in code and sometimes normally. Starting from the silly “Have you done your homework?” to the then important “How is our enemy gang planning to prepare for the test?”, we have seen it all. The funnier thing here is it was almost always the action of writing and exchanging the letters that piqued our interest than the content itself. After all, what could a couple of school kids write about? 😛

Example of handwriting with gold pen
Anyway, I still have that feeling in me when I sit down and write something. If not physically, the closest feeling is typing up my thoughts. I know such is the case for many bloggers around here. My point in writing about this today is how the ease of communication has actually removed/replaced several prized feelings that still send a thrill coursing through our entire body. Today, we can reach anyone, anywhere at any time. The prerequisites are a smart phone and internet. Maybe even just a mobile phone. While all this has certainly eased our pain points of reaching someone, I feel sad. I feel sad that I cannot show my kid how “that feeling” would be. How the feeling of exchanging letters with your crush would be, how the feeling of waiting beside the telephone for a call that a friend promised you would be, how it feels to exchange coded notes with co-conspiring friends right under the nose of those who are busy trying to figure out what you are talking about, especially when all you would have been talking about is that your mom has packed aloo subji for lunch and that you would be willing to trade some for the delicious omelet that your friend’s mom packed.

Keeping in touch has now become so easy that the pain of farewell is diminished. When it is good that we can keep in touch with our old school friends to this day, we are missing that high which comes when you stumble into an old friend at the supermarket whom you have tried to keep in touch so hard but over time, lost it. Can any of the WhatsApp kind messengers or Facebook kind social media beat that feeling? I don’t think so. Today, the internet has changed the world into one big open book where anyone can peek into my page and read my personal feelings with no consideration whatsoever. Social networking was supposed to re-create the long lost bonds between friends and make them connect. But it went a step ahead and told us stuff about each other that we actually wouldn’t want to know or shouldn’t be knowing anyway.

As all this is taking us ahead, all we can do and are doing is sit back and reminisce about the times when we had more prized possessions in the form of memories and how all those would not be passed on to our next generation. The precious feelings are cursed to stay frozen in time while the human race races faster than ever.

Until later 🙂

October’s the One!

October 15, 2014 / / 4 Comments

Of late, I have been writing in spurts. Either I write multiple posts in a short span or I don’t get time to write at all. I have been trying to schedule posts but that’s not working too well either. Sigh! In any case, I hope all this is falling into place come November. There’s a change in work and I am changing it for good. The new work has more scope for writing and I can’t be more excited about it. So with this new twist, I hope my work-life balance gets better and I have more time for blogging, reading, cooking and romancing with the hubby 😛 And I have a plan in place to get a compact stationery kit and a journal that am gonna cary around to write as soon as the words appear in my mind.

October being the birthday month arrived with lots of excitement and work. It has been busy from the start with sis-in-law’s wedding giving it a kick start, then lots of travel, and the much hyped Diwali – the first Diwali after marriage coming up. I have already completed my birthday shopping and have got a gift from the hubby too 🙂 A simple and stylish fastrack watch! I was so excited to wear it immediately but hubby put his foot down since I have a obssession for using new things immediately. So now I am waiting for the 20th to come to wear it. Almost immediately after the birthday, we are leaving for home for the Diwali celebration. There is much fuss and hype going at home since this is the first big celebration after our marriage but we don’t feel any different. We both hate crackers and all the pollution and hence refrain from them. Our diwali tradition is to relish the home food, watch a bit of TV, spend quality time with family and a visit to the temple for a special application to God(This I do for my loved ones who are more religious).

I also have a few books on the list, Rebecca, the epic twins- Ramayana and Mahabharata for starters. I have already read the epics long back and quite familiar with them but recently I stumbled upon the acclaimed Rajaji’s version and hence I thought of giving it a go again. I picked up Rebecca as Aathira’s review inspired me.

So this month is the one which has brought in a lot of good changes and I sure hope the pieces of my puzzle are falling into place for the long run. I am grateful for all that life has given me and pray for the strength I need for the upcoming challenges. So how have you been? How’s life treating you?

Until later 🙂

Dance with the words

September 12, 2013 / / 6 Comments

A wise man once told me “A writer should always be impartial” and that got me thinking. Are we really impartial? We have our own spaces to write what we want and we have to admit that sometimes emotions climb up to the top priority and not the check on the bias in thoughts. I would be lying if I say all the posts I write are impartial. The perspective does creep in a bit now and then. As for me, being impartial is the mark of a great writer. To reach there, one needs a lot of shaping, tinkering and chiseling to be done to the way we think.

There are two kinds of writing – the one where we possess words and dictate their flow and the one where words possess us and dictate the flow of our thoughts. Perspective creeps into both forms although it comes through the former way more than the latter.

Possession over words comes with great thinking and effort. We dictate how we want to convey what we think. We refine every word to show or hide what is portrayed before our vision. The feeling of complete command over what is written is good but it never gets as ecstatic as the next form. When the words possess us, the feeling is inexplicable. It is as if we are taken for a roller coaster ride, thoughts come screaming out, we don’t bother how the writing would be received, we just write. Nothing else. Just write. And when we do that, nothing else matters.

Such is the power of words, that they dance to your tune and make you dance to their tune. When the chords sync, your heart is filled with joy.  I would say writing is an experience everyone must try at some level. Any level at which you are comfortable with. Be it a diary or a blog or a journal or a published book. Give it a try. Let your thoughts shape up. When you see the final picture, irrespective of how others think, there will be light in your heart.

Until later 🙂

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