I owned a blog. It was my personal online diary. I spilled all my emotions into the blog. The only space on the world wide web that was, which I believed, reserved for me was my blog. It bore my name, my characteristics, and my personality. My blog belonged to me!
I always maintained a low profile regarding my blog. I would regularly check my stats to confirm that no one was prying into my life through my blog. The road was all clear!
My diary became more and more popular with me. I would post my every single life detail in it. I would occasionally go back and read my posts and contemplate about who I was!
It was so comforting to know I had a pal who would reflect my thoughts and express them in my own words.
But very soon my blog travelled across borders and people read more about me. They liked my posts and the reasoning which went into writing those. They understood my emotions, my psyche. They heard the cries of a tender heart safely wrapped within a strong body and a tough character.
The more the followers accumulated the less personal my diary became. For few months I even gave up writing. But something within me said, “Aren’t you an inspiration to the many bloggers out there, who will learn the art of writing only if they imitate you?”
Not unlike others, I too started looking at my blog as a piece of art, one that can be appreciated only by those who have fine aesthetic sense and one which will be a classic people will yearn to read.
My pride soon hardened the soft core within me. My writing became much more stylized and my vocabulary more profound. My blog looked less like a blog and more like an online novel.
I hoped to get more audience, more followers and more feedback. Paradoxically, I lost out on my existing audience and followers. I could not comprehend how such a phenomenon could occur. I tried harder each day to make my text more flowery than before, but every time my efforts to restore my lost glory went in vain!
Ultimately, the blog that I earlier nurtured with so much care was left alone to wither away. I stopped writing for it any longer. My enthusiasm for writing had gone. After meeting such a failure who would care to write anyway; and for whom?
Today I’m looking at my redundant blog once again and I’m contemplating about who I was and what became of me!
Friday, September 2, 2011
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Ambiguity
“Have I killed him? Have I not?
Have I? Have I not?”
Delnaz was seated on a garden bench murmuring these words to herself, as she plucked the petals of a withered yellow rose.
Delnaz had no idea what to think of herself. Was she schizophrenic? The doctors could not tell; not yet!
Her life story was pretty complicated. She believed she’d killed someone named Karan Agarwal. She was affirmative! She herself reported her crime to the police, in the wee hours of the day. She was frantically running around the police station pleading to the inspectors to arrest her.
She said she’d been having a rendez-vous with Karan since the past 4 months. She even started developing affection for him. Karan usually dropped by her house to say hello! Theirs was a perfect love story to one’s eye. But there lay many dark secrets underneath.
Karan was a fraud. He developed relations with Delnaz to coax her into assisting him in his crimes. He was a smuggler and he needed Delnaz to hoard all the smuggled goods in her house till they were delivered to their destination.
Delnaz, though reluctant, was pulled into this gamble. The everyday hellos were actually a means to drop bags full of smuggled items in her house.
She’d become weary of being used. She wanted Karan’s love, not these illegal things he would stack up in her room.
One day when Karan visited her with a new load of smuggled goods, Delnaz pulled out an elephant tusk and stabbed Karan in the stomach.
This is what she confessed to the police.
Upon investigation, the police was left clueless. No body, no ivory tusk and not one bag of smuggled goods. The police interrogated the neigbours if they had seen a particular man frequent Delnaz’s apartment. But each one denied!
The police looked up the criminal records but they didn’t find any record of Karan Agarwal.
So the questions that arose were such:
Did a smuggler names Karan Agarwal exist?
If he did, was this his real identity?
If it was, was it given that he was a smuggler?
If the answers to all these questions were negative, was it wise to believe that Delnaz was Schizophrenic? Or was she just taking the police for a ride?
What was the truth behind this story and the woman?
No one could tell, not yet!
Have I? Have I not?”
Delnaz was seated on a garden bench murmuring these words to herself, as she plucked the petals of a withered yellow rose.
Delnaz had no idea what to think of herself. Was she schizophrenic? The doctors could not tell; not yet!
Her life story was pretty complicated. She believed she’d killed someone named Karan Agarwal. She was affirmative! She herself reported her crime to the police, in the wee hours of the day. She was frantically running around the police station pleading to the inspectors to arrest her.
She said she’d been having a rendez-vous with Karan since the past 4 months. She even started developing affection for him. Karan usually dropped by her house to say hello! Theirs was a perfect love story to one’s eye. But there lay many dark secrets underneath.
Karan was a fraud. He developed relations with Delnaz to coax her into assisting him in his crimes. He was a smuggler and he needed Delnaz to hoard all the smuggled goods in her house till they were delivered to their destination.
Delnaz, though reluctant, was pulled into this gamble. The everyday hellos were actually a means to drop bags full of smuggled items in her house.
She’d become weary of being used. She wanted Karan’s love, not these illegal things he would stack up in her room.
One day when Karan visited her with a new load of smuggled goods, Delnaz pulled out an elephant tusk and stabbed Karan in the stomach.
This is what she confessed to the police.
Upon investigation, the police was left clueless. No body, no ivory tusk and not one bag of smuggled goods. The police interrogated the neigbours if they had seen a particular man frequent Delnaz’s apartment. But each one denied!
The police looked up the criminal records but they didn’t find any record of Karan Agarwal.
So the questions that arose were such:
Did a smuggler names Karan Agarwal exist?
If he did, was this his real identity?
If it was, was it given that he was a smuggler?
If the answers to all these questions were negative, was it wise to believe that Delnaz was Schizophrenic? Or was she just taking the police for a ride?
What was the truth behind this story and the woman?
No one could tell, not yet!
The Many Hues of India
There are a billion Indians and a billion Indias. Each person belongs to his own India. Overtly there’s a shining India versus a slumdog India, a progressive India versus a regressive India, people’s India versus government’s India and lastly an Indian’s India versus a foreigner’s India.
But to every Indian, their India carries a distinct and a different significance. For some, India is all about education, for the others it’s about democracy. It could be about industrialization, urbanization and infrastructure. India might be synonymous to abandoning of dowry or effort to curb female foeticide or something as basic as soil for production.
For me however, India is a land trying to battle all hardships. Yes, India has its problems like poverty and malnutrition. But how often do we give India a leeway for being one of the youngest Independent nations?
We are definitely not as progressive as the USA or any other first world country for that matter; but at least we’re trying!
I do agree that gigantic industries have taken over vast farmlands and have rendered many homeless. But underneath this atrocious act, lies the hard-to-see reality that such industries provide more employment than a farmland can. The very same homeless farmers can find suitable employment in the industries and feed their families healthy meals.
On the flipside, the many loopholes in Indian agricultural development are backfiring on itself. Pathetic technological use in the agricultural sector is leading to severe shortage of food to meet domestic needs. A country that has been known for its agriculture and green revolution since times immemorial has now come to a desperate position of importing food grains to deal with its food inflation.
Making a judgment about a country like India is never the best way to deal with its many complicated intricacies. Just like there are two sides of a coin, there are both pros and cons of India. The weightage that you allot to either determines the India that you belong to!
But to every Indian, their India carries a distinct and a different significance. For some, India is all about education, for the others it’s about democracy. It could be about industrialization, urbanization and infrastructure. India might be synonymous to abandoning of dowry or effort to curb female foeticide or something as basic as soil for production.
For me however, India is a land trying to battle all hardships. Yes, India has its problems like poverty and malnutrition. But how often do we give India a leeway for being one of the youngest Independent nations?
We are definitely not as progressive as the USA or any other first world country for that matter; but at least we’re trying!
I do agree that gigantic industries have taken over vast farmlands and have rendered many homeless. But underneath this atrocious act, lies the hard-to-see reality that such industries provide more employment than a farmland can. The very same homeless farmers can find suitable employment in the industries and feed their families healthy meals.
On the flipside, the many loopholes in Indian agricultural development are backfiring on itself. Pathetic technological use in the agricultural sector is leading to severe shortage of food to meet domestic needs. A country that has been known for its agriculture and green revolution since times immemorial has now come to a desperate position of importing food grains to deal with its food inflation.
Making a judgment about a country like India is never the best way to deal with its many complicated intricacies. Just like there are two sides of a coin, there are both pros and cons of India. The weightage that you allot to either determines the India that you belong to!
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