On anonymity and being a blogger. Again.

This blog has always been slightly obsessed with meta discussions on blogging, being a blogger, and being unknown to the people in your blogging community.  It's not done yet.

All those musings were partly out of curiousity at the process and world I was involved in, and partly due to my growing belief that words should be judged on their own merit, not because of who wrote them (read the written, not the writer).

Keeping my identity private was an effective screening process - it provided me with the luxury of getting to know people (in as much as a blog can let you) and then deciding whether they were the ones I wanted to know better. Plus, it meant I didn't have to be rude by not agreeing to know somebody just because they had read my blog and thought they knew me. Yes, ironical, I know.

I also wanted to avoid cliques. Avoid carrying blog conversations offline, or bringing the latter ones to pages here. I didn't like it when people would have private conversations on public forum, so I decided not to inflict it on others. Whatever was there, was on the blog.

Plus, it's hard enough to keep track of the friends I have - and I mean the chaddi-buddy, yeh-fine-lets-go-take-on-a-mafia-gang type of friends, not Facebook contacts.  And it's harder to deal with the sense of loss of not being able to spend more time with them, scattered as we are across the world.  So why would I want to get to know more interesting people only to drift away from them as well?

More than anything, though, I kept private because there was the ever-present possibility that I would not keep this up longer, and would one day cut loose and vamoose.  I wanted to avoid all the questions, the prodding to maybe come back - all of which I could ignore if I simply didn't know anybody.

And that's how it turned out.  It was so easy to just snap ties. Sure, I may have been able to put a few names to some avatars, and I may have exchanged a few emails, but that was it.  Time to move, no explanations necessary. It was liberating, and made me feel just a little like young Kimball O'Hara.

Except that it was callous.  Small as my readership may be, and transient as a blog-life may be, it was disrespectful to just stop like that without any explanations.  I'd log in once in a few months, and check my feeds, and wonder what was happening with the people who had gone silent too. Were they busy writing books? Did they get married? Did they have new jobs? Were they even alive?  Even if one person had wondered that about me, then I had been terribly rude.

Which doesn't mean that I'm going public.  What I am doing is telling you that if I need to stop writing again, I will tell you and tell you why. And if I cannot do so myself, there's a backup which will do so for me.  This much I owe you.

And I do apologise.

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Of course, I'm not planning to go away anytime soon again. Especially since I have a better idea of what this blog should be about.

This long absence has given me lots of time to go over these pages, and to clean up the output.  Lots of entries are gone, several more have been edited.  And a clearer sense of my ... voice ... is now known to me.  One which I plan to exercise a lot more, honing and refining till I don't have to go back and edit it anymore.

Some of the categories are unlikely to be revisited. There's going to be less outrage (because it doesn't really help), less commentary, and hopefully, more random weirdness.

I may not necessarily be as prolific as a result, but I hope to be better.

A world grown strange

Long ago (or what feels like it), I had written about how blogs are like neighbourhoods.  Well, Dorothy, this old hangout sure feels different.

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It feels strange to be back.

A looksee around this pad of mine, tracing the outlines of what was once a second home. The accumulations of a wandering mind, all so immediately familiar, yet subtly alien, as if a twin had evolved it. Sudden hesitations mark what I seem to remember performing unthinkingly, demanding a closer look, demanding me to wonder what made me choose them.  There's a slight frigidity about the place, a pseudo-life that was created and abandoned, vaguely aware of wanting to be angry at its maker yet failing to truly be able to do anything because it never really was.

I contemplate apologising, but I wonder who it is that wants to apologise, and to whom.  Some vortexes keep on sucking.

A rush outside, away away from this uncertainty.  To solidity, to the areas based on strong foundations and with long-term tenants.  To the places of known shelter and amusement and serenity and wonder. To my block.

But it isn't anymore.  Not all of it.

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I notice the forlorn silences of some parts, and laugh at my naivety that nobody else would go wandering. I delve a little into these empty expanses, learning histories through recent markers, trying to fill in the gaps when there are none. So many unknowns, so many aching questions.

I wonder, did all of us expect the others to be our constants? Did the rest too expect the party to keep going, hoping to slide back into their favourite seat to the tune of a friendly wave, hoping that nobody else would want to explore? Did the others also sometimes return quietly like this, watching the slow desolation, shuffling off in quiet regret, asking the same questions?

I almost feel that I can feel their after-presence, and I try to reach past these sealed doors to discover the imprints they left behind, hoping to understand more.  There is no way in, or back. I wonder where they are, who they are. I wonder why I almost never wondered about this before. I wonder if they don't either.

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I stare at some addresses, certain I used to visit them often, but no longer able to recognise them properly.  The nameplates mock me and the ego of my memory-boasts, but even their scorn can barely highlight a path through this fog.

The funny teenager merges into the roving foodie who overshadows the larking musician who ask me how I could so truly forget this all and whether I was really fully there when I was here and what does that say about who I was and am and why I should expect renewed invitations.  Do you really not remember that time, that joke, that conversation... I stand silent, confounded, searching frantically within for the person who could so easily unremember, running so fast you would think I hoped never to find that one.  I contemplate super-imposed brain scans under a green light, but I know the answer is easier to find.  As is the path back.

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I pause sometimes before houses I never really knew, dwellings of friends of friends and complete strangers who were always described as interesting, whose overheard conversations and inner jokes sometimes touched me by, who I said I would one day find out about, but never truly did.

I try to imagine the stories I never heard, the connections I missed, the inner worlds I never discovered. I try to convince myself of the old excuses of time and identity, and realise I have no one to fool but myself. And I know that's something I won't let myself do again. I move on for now, promising to at least think of cadging an introduction and exploring these avenues. All the while knowing there will always be too much, and too little time.

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And all the while, I remain aware of the rooms still tenanted and pass quietly under the cautious gazes.

I notice some of the changes in the furnishings in them, notice how some show signs of new interests and lost interests.  I wondering if I'm only imagining the hurt aloofness and in the lively laughter, a promise that these conversations have decided to pass me by.  I try to reach out, to answer, to speak.  I try to think of reasons that would evoke acceptance and forgiveness and welcome, that would cut off discussions on friendships and trust and prodigality. I try, but know I won't be able to, knowing that I haven't been able to in all my absence. What can you say to those who were your own? There is nothing to say. There is so much to say.

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I finish my tour and here I finally stand, in the middle of this neighbourhood.  I mark the empty meeting spots. The quietly-carrying-on bookshop. The diner that no longer worries about creations, but offers filling nutrition. The children's play area that's come up.  The houses that are now just yearly retreats for those who have gone on to more successful things.  The new couples walking along. The broken hearts mending, some new, some a-new. The lenses capturing these images. The pens putting all of this to poetry.

I hover, uncertain of the next move.  I think of making my rounds, knocking on the doors, seeing who'll have me back. But I know that would be too false, too eager, too not-me. I think of calling up the few ever-dependables and asking them to spread the word, but I was never the life of the party that everyone flocked to come, just the one to the off-centre, shouting out the occasional funny line.

I decide instead to stay out here for a while, on my old seat.  There's so much reading to catch up on.  There's so many names and introductions and chats and bad puns to remember.  I'll put out some tea and baked goodies, hoping it won't seem like too much of a bribe, knowing that they will know it is.

I wonder who will notice, who will come.  I wonder if it will be enough for them to simply hear that that this time I don't plan to go away.  I wonder where this will go.  There's so much to learn again, so much to see, so many procedures and names and links to learn.  So many discussions to be had, so many stories to tell. So much of so much of so many worlds.  All in time.

For now, it's time to reclaim my spot.

Friday Fact/Fiction

(Some of this is true. Or not.)

For the last three years, I haven't posted on this blog because:

a) I decided to travel this world I find myself in, and decided to spend most of my earnings traipsing across the Andes, sub-Saharan Africa, the Central Asian 'Stans, and the Asean countries. I was usually so exhilarated and bewildered by the various trips, that I needed time to assimilate them at leisure on my return. Blogging about those experiences in the brief interludes of rest felt so ... bleh.

b) I began staring at words and could not recognise them anymore. The whole concept of language broke down. I had to seek therapy. This is my guilty fix.

c) I discovered a little ashram in the countryside and decided to spend some time there to fully understand who I really was. I farmed a bit, meditated a bit, stared at the scenery a lot. I once spent 47 days without talking.  I think they used to slip me drugs in the food. I managed to get away after I found myself cuddling a fern.

d) Too many people began to come close to finding out who I was, which got uncomfortable, and I also found myself following and commenting on blogs written by people I knew and then having to pretend when I met them in person, which just got weird.

e) I got into protest movements. One of them got ugly. The lackeys of the capitalist overlords decided to target me, forcing me to go on the run. I was eventually caught. The next few months were ... not nice.

f) Too many changes in life happened. Blogging was the last thing on my mind.

g) I no longer knew what I wanted to blog about. When I made up my mind about that, writer's block happened. I had to seek therapy.  This is my rejuvenation.

Either way, my poppets ... I'm back.

A "really-should-stick-to-promises" post

So, backstory.

Firstly, Joyce. And that book.

This is an update of no update. And just to make it clear how much of a non-update it is, this post is a redraft of a draft that was first made six weeks ago.

I did not read an additional page since the last post on it. I blame the man, and I blame Suketu.

See, after two years of owning this book, and forgetting to pack it every time I went home (or choosing to, rather - because really, why would I be carrying more books back here?), I finally got round to getting hold of a copy from the local library. And I couldn't help but drop everything else to finish it off first. Not that it's perfect (nowhere close), but the book reinforced a lot of things I've grown to accept and be scared of. More on that later.

And when I returned to Joyce, after revisiting so much...reality, his book felt so....silly. Pretentious. All look-at-me-I'm-so-much-smarter-and-have-you-got-all-the-references smugly superior. And yes, I'm impressed by the dedication and imagination it took. And I'm sure I'd appreciate it more if it was taken apart bit by bit in a critical review class.

But that's the point. Books are meant to educate, enlighten, entertain, comfort, and challenge. By themselves. Not by having to be taught.

I'm quite willing to tackle difficult books, drive-you-crazy books (oh, Something Happened!, how you still haunt my dreams), books that take ages to get through because you have to re-read every page to absorb its meaning.

And while this was a challenge, with every page it felt more as if he did not really want you to win.

It was as if he was thinking - Well, first now that I've got this awesome underlying concept (which nobody would realise unless it was pointed out to them), let me throw in all these random religious and linguistic references just to make sure they sit with four other books to understand it. And then - oh boy - then let me write it so crazily that they'll call me a genius for fear of appearing stupid.

Which is all fine. But you know what? I don't have to put up with it. I'm not going to be implicitly sneered at just because they didn't teach Latin when I was at school and my arse wasn't walloped by fervent Catholic priests who hated the weather of the place they lived in.

So, if you were still interested, Chapter 3 was where it ended. I just got bored.

That said - 'likelily'. Such a lovely word. He's absolved for that.


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I use too many .... (just had a 30-second blankout trying to remember the word)...brackets. Apropos of nothing.

Mad bloggers and Irishmen

And, just in case you haven't been avidly perusing the commentspace, the Great Group Blogger Ulysses Reading Attempt* begins today. Current team members - The Bride and moi.

Feel free to join in if you're foolhardy enough, or just plain irritated at having had a copy of it on your bookshelf for what seems forever without you having gone through it. All you need is a copy of your own.

We plan to post regular updates on how we're progressing, what we've made of it so far, and whether we hate it or not. The aim is to finish it this month. Hopefully.


* Anybody who uses the terms 'Blogyssey' or 'Blogysses' is immediately banned from this blog. We shall hunt you down and heap much mockery and scorn on you. You have been warned.

There is still Hope

I've come to the conclusion that bloggers are pack animals.

It is a truth (which should be) universally acknowledged that bloggers need other bloggers. Not just so that there is somebody to read their own witterings and tell them how utterly and stupendously brilliant they are (which is always appreciated, of course), because you don't have to bloggers to do that, just readers.

No, bloggers need other bloggers to blog. As sounding boards. As empathy boards. As triggers for subconscious posts. As guides for things they didn't know existed. As benchmarks for the levels of literary/comic/sarcastic brilliance possible. As markers for what already exists out there, and what else they could write about.

I've realised I used to blog more (and better) when there the other bloggers I read also blogged frequently. Heck, that's why I began blogging - because I liked what others were posting, and wanted to add to the fun and craziness. I see my posts from 18 months back, and they're prolific and diverse and (compared to recent posts) experimental. And that's because there was such a strong peer group then. Anki, BM/OTP, Baby and Puppy, CS, Falsie, Flaffy, KM, Ph, Pri, Punkster, Reno, Roswitha, Scout, Space, Szer, The Bride, TR, Wiseling....everyone was blogging a lot, and blogging about diverse things*. Now - well, now KM and The Bride are still going strong, but Space has episodes, Falsie's still in Etudes mode, Szer's going pictorial-only, Pri's going on and on about some cheesy soap-opera where people pretend to be able to sing, and everybody else...well (TR's excused because of the sprog). And yes, there are other blogs one reads and interacts with it now, but these were the first ones I did, and they left their mark.

But.

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining and all.

And so returns a place of...well, not hope, but of - Withering sarcasm. Nautanki. And heart-achingly personal outbursts. The kinds that make you squirm at being exposed to so much, so intimately, but which you can't stop reading, because it reminds you of who you were/are/could have been, and because you cannot cease to be amazed at the fortitude it must take to be able to declare it all publicly.

But most of all, a blog that's brilliant.

And so, without further ado, the event you have all been waiting for, the spectacle to end all spectacles, the one thing that was missing from your lives even though you did not know it, featuring the return of the Queen of Melodrama, the Empress of Confessions, the girl who put the 'ingapo' in Singapore, the Blogger Most Extraordinare....

Scout!
Is.
Back!


Cue total dhinchaak band-baaja music. No, seriously, we love cheesy.

Go give her your love.


PS. AndIswearifyoutrollherI'llcomethumpyousomerealgood.

If you live in, or have visited, London and know about this already, please move on down to the previous posts and comment on them. Or not.

But for those of you do live in the city, and like me are clueless enough not to have heard of this place, or are going to be visiting the city and stand a chance of feeling home-sick for some really good, as-authentic-as-you-can-get-outside-India food, I have two words for you:

Chennai Dosa.

I can only vouch for the Wembley branch, but holy purple pearls, can I vouch for it. It was easily the best non-homemade South Indian food I've eaten in this country, and heck, one of the better ones I've even eaten anywhere upwards of the Vindhyas. And it's cheap, ridiculously so. And most importantly, it introduced me to a whole new sub-genre of food (again, if this is old news, some of us are slow, ok? Ok) : South-Indian-Chinese.

That's right. Chilly Fried Idlis, baby. Lots of ajinomoto and too much colour, but oh so brilliantly good.

Go (if you haven't). And then come thank me. One shall accept all gratitude with due graciousness.

I give in...once

It's not polite to be rude (ha! new slogan), and while I've tried to keep out of the whole blog-award thing, people insist on giving them to me. Which is nice of them, but.

Now the reason I'm so award-indifferent isn't because I have a problem with people appreciating others - it's just the nature of them that I don't appreciate. From what I can make out, these awards originate when somebody decides to create a graphic and pass them onto their friends.

That's not an award, that's a gift.

Now, if there was a blogsite where these awards were announced, and people nominated those blogs that they thought deserve the awards, and people voted for them, and then the award was given to 'x' number of the most voted-for blogs, then the whole thing makes sense. And it's a more streamlined process too. Otherwise, with the current system, everybody and their ant (sic) gets the award, and that just devalues the whole thing.

However, while principles are important, compromises are polite.

Now, since I don't put up any awards I get, people imagine I'm not getting them, and then they give me one (often the same one), and I have to thank them and explain why I'm not putting them up, and in the meanwhile, other people go and give me another one, and it's round and round the garden like a teddy bear.

So.

I'm accepting the ones I've been so kindly given thus far. Just this once though. Because I'm quite happy getting your comments, and being read, which are prizes in themselves (dialogue maara).

Firstly, I'd have you know I've been a Rockin' Girl Blogger for a while. Which honour I'm thrilled to (posthumously) bestow on BM/OTP Revati, because she was the epitome of the title (since nobody thought of giving her one while she was around. And then you wonder why she left bloggyland).

Then, this blog has been deemed Brilliante, not once or twice but thrice. And finally, Dewdrop has declared we're eternal blogpals.

There. Covered. Thank you - Space, Shyam, Bride, Mad Momma, DDD - for the appreciation. Really (this is not sarcasm).

Now, back to blogging.

Weekend whoopsies

This weekend, an experiment.

No Net, no books, no newspapers, no TV, no films, no radio, no music (with one exception - below). No words of any sort from any non-immediate-person source. I'm undecided on whether I can/should write, but I'm leaning in favour of not allowing that either.

Partly due to to this feeling of sinking under the weight of all this information that we increasingly are being fed (a post on that soon). Partly because I'm preparing for a time when an idiotic nuclear war leaves us with no electricity, and paper is used only for hygienic purposes. And partly because it should be a sobering realisation of what little else I get up to.

It's not like it should be too difficult. At a pinch, there are a number of things that need doing (giving the cycle a thorough servicing, cleaning the house, working on the herb patch, giving the retail world a little boost), but those are just jobs. What I really want to see is whether I end up doing the things I think of doing but for some reason tend not to (hathayoga sessions, long walks, long baths, cooking elaborate meals, long stretches of just...spacing).

The Exception: John McLaughlin live in concert* (Woowoowoohoo! Jumps around the room on imaginary pogostick, scaring everybody within a quarter-mile radius with rather loud yells......whaaaat? it's John McLaughlin!). Although, no songs there, just music, so that fits in the theme. This should also take up a lot of time, especially given the general chaos that is the Underground.


* TR, how are you missing this?

The truth, the whole....well, some of it

One year-ending, in that brief period when I tried such things, I resolved to try and be completely honest. I guess the real point was to see how feasible it was, and how long it could last.

This is not something new. Camus' The Outsider revolves around the concept of somebody who is direct to the point of alienating others. As was Rand's Fountainhead (the only redeemable facet of that entire book). Heck, you could even go all the way back to Yudhistir.

The experiment lasted three days.

Not just because people cannot handle unadorned honesty, but because I realised I hadn't defined - or understood - what I was really aiming for. The whole thing came unstuck when I tried to decide if the point was to be completely honest, to be Truthful, or to just not lie. A rough summation of how I ended up seeing them is thus:

Not lying is, by far, the easiest of the three - even though it's possibly the most difficult one can ever do. Not lying is not just refusing to say untruths, but also not evading a direct question, or not qualifying any answer. With all the attendant backlash it may bring. A reactive process, if you will.

Honesty is a more active process. It's not just about not lying to others, it's also about having no secrets at all. It's about going up to them and telling them how things really are. And more importantly, extending the same to you. Acknowledging your faults and limitations, your prejudices, your passions, your patterns, your self. Almost-attaining-nirvana-difficult.

After that, you have being Truthful. Which is picking-an-angry-porcupine-with-your-buttcheeks painful. This is looking at every little aspect of every thing around you, and meeting them on the terms that they deserve. It means not being able to promise anything, because you know that you can never guarantee something, only that you will try to make it happen. It means not being able to use definite terms such as always and never and totally and absolutely*.

Defining this, and determining what all I could be honest and truthful about, proved to be a more fruitful usage of time than trying to be completely honest and truthful. It was also a defining period for me, because once you really begin to look at - and accept - who and what you are, life becomes that much easier to deal with. It's a continuous process, and you go on discovering and accepting new things. I've learn to live with and feed off anger, I've accepted and learnt to live with Existential Schizophrenia, and I've seen how easy it is to write and publicly display verse once I accepted I wasn't a Poet.

The point of this? A relevant example of the difference between not lying and being honest. The former would be letting you continue to believe something that sprung up here, and has been perpetuated through a process of assumption, new people reading classificatory* statements made by people who've made those assumptions, and - eventually - by the lack of confirmation or denial by the one person who could clear the matter (that would be me).

The latter would be me telling you not to continue to labour under that misapprehension***.

To wit, this blogger is of the male persuasion.

The comment space is yours to vent vitriol.


PS. Why now? Why not when Flaffy cast me as KSA's sister in her epic? Why not when Pri classified me under the 'Girls' section? Why not when people addressed comments to me as 'Missy'? Because, well...umm...hey look! See the pretty birdie there (scampers off)
PPS. Remember the bit about Perceptions? See what I mean?



* And no, that's not ambivalence, it's just about realising that what you think you can or aim to do is influenced by and can be derailed by various factors.
** If that's not a word in the dictionary, it bloody well should be.
*** Which doesn't mean you need to know everything else. I gave up on the complete bit, remember?

Since we've given up on Not Diarying

160 gms of weight, unbelievably and painstakingly added
80 books, reviewed and sorrowfully discarded
40 journeys, endured on public transport
20 friendly meetings, raucously enjoyed
10 blog posts and comments, created
5 magazines, sifted through
2 pairs of shoes, bought
1 trip home, over