MY INTERVIEW WITH MY BLOG - BLOGOVERSARY 5

If it was not for a reminder on my old phone I would have completely forgotten about THIS baby's 5th birthday today and regretted it for the rest of the year until next time at least.
Unlike my biological one this one cannot be gifted a toy, a book or even XOXO and the only way to make it feel celebrated and loved is to feed its tummy with my home-cooked posts.

So today I answer some of the questions this baby asks me often and like #Priyamvadaisms I name them #blogisms.

Q : Why did you decide to have me?
ME: Well I have always had a journal ( the hard bound diaries that was our generation's secret keeper) but when I had P there was no time or inclination to even comb my hair so keeping a journal was out of question and that's when I happened to read some wonderful blogs online.
Although admiring other people's babies biological or creative is one thing and having your own the other I took the plunge. I guess it was a parenting over drive.

Q: How was I as a child?
ME: Almost as devilish and as pleasing like P. Sometimes a whole 500 words would be made to do the Houdini act by you and I would pull at my hair even strongly than I did when P would soil a fresh diaper within 5 minutes of changing. At other times I would find friends and much needed shoulder to cry upon in you and rejoice.

Q:What do you want me to become when I grow up?
ME: I wish you grow in years but never really grow up in the grown up way which means stay grounded, honest, straightforward and happy go lucky. As a parent I will try to be there showing you the path but the walking, falling, getting up and the learning has to be your own.

Q: Parting thoughts
ME: Glad to be the single parent of a wonderful blog like you. Keep growing. HAPPY BIRTHDAY  !!

4

कभी शब्दों से 
और अक्सर शब्दों 
के अंतर में जन्मे 
कोलाहल को 
न कोई और जब स्थान मिला 

तो कभी साँसों में 
कभी आँसूं में 
घुल-घुल कर 
एक नया संवाद बने 

कुछ भूल गए 
कुछ याद बने 
ऐसे ही तिनका-तिनका 
जुड़ने से 
सब मिलकर ये ब्लॉग बने !

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLOG !

Blogoversary week Special - FIVE

The snapped limbs

of a rag doll,

or a lost toy

the missing piece

of a picture puzzle

or the mislaid

hair clip

from a shiny pair

Her sanguine eyes

look at me

as if I am the

goddess of her small things

However behind

my reassuring smile

I measure my 

fearful fragility

and wait for the inevitable

as she will grow up

to see my

shivering

human inability !

BLOGOVERSARY WEEK SPECIAL- THREE

The reluctant rain

like the jilted lover

scared of revealing

too much too soon

The furious lightening

like an old spark

there and yet not there,

sometimes only sound

occasionally only light

Dear December

with companions so weird

it must be a tough

to always be the last

full of closures

and pending pain

mere memories

of spring

to warm the heart !

Blogoversary week special- TWO

Today I know for sure that Robert Frost,one of my favourite poets was wrong when he said,"Time and Tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of thirty."
Yes I am sure about this because today I am no longer 30 ,I am 31.
The 30th birthday was sure a milestone of sorts.There was a new awareness of the meaning of time,as it was my first as a mom.
I started looking at the world differently but it was not as different as it seems today.I had just stepped into the thirties and so it took a while to sink in.Now that I am 31,it has set in with an indelible impression.
Some important things I have learnt in last one year:
LET IT GO !
LIFE IS LIKE A RIVER : A RIVER NEVER PASSES THE SAME PLACE TWICE.
SOME PAGES TURNED,SOME BRIDGES BURNED,BUT ALL ARE LESSONS LEARNED.
LIFE IS DIVINE CHAOS.

this was originally posted as @31

Blogoversary week special- ONE

You taught me that

even when our eyes are closed

our minds should be open.

You taught me that

ever day is an opportunity

to live afresh and learn with zeal.

You taught me to find

joy in the little things,

to smile at the shining wrapper

even when the chocolate is finished.

You taught me new colour schemes

the need to see things the other way.

You taught me to react 

just to the moment

and have no prejudice or baggage.

You ,my daughter,my teacher

who loves to play my mamma

you have taught me life all over.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRIYAMVADA

Thanks for being such an inspiration.

You are my hero.

A PEBBLE DOWN THE STREAM

I have always believed in stories, the famous ones told over and over,the fairy tales of childhood,the romantic legends of youth and the tales of wisdom as you age.But these are only the stories that are told, I also believe in the untold incredible stories hiding in every nook and corner of mundane lives in small towns,rigid routines of remote villages and common people just like me.
Our stories might not consist of what legends are made up of,but they do have their heroic moments and deeds,their personal giant leaps of faith generously interspersed with their every day failures that tear the heart apart.
More than three years ago, in the sleepy lanes of Daryaganj in Delhi, among the bee-hive publishing houses and printing presses , I was doing my job of content editing mundane academic books and enjoying every day in the heavy intoxicating smell of fresh books being loaded and unloaded in the basement storehouse and the cheap but amazingly tasty culinary delights at lunch-break.I had traveled quite far from my small town roots in Shimla,from the highly guarded childhood and youth of a hilly town to the bad predator roads of Delhi,from the back benches of literature classes to the noises of strict deadlines in big offices,from the carefree single days to the responsible pedestal of a wife and soon-to-be mother.
I was happy most of the time,and by my own standards had done quite well for myself - personally and financially.I had a life of my choice and by divine grace all was going well.Yet on some occasions there was a strange nagging echo somewhere,as if I was carrying a vacuum inside waiting to be filled by some sudden stroke of destiny or coincidence.Most of times I managed to curb this uncomfortable itch in my soul and blame it on the surging hormones of pregnancy,failing to recognize that while my body was expecting my first biological offspring my mind had been pregnant too long with so many ideas and experiences that it needed a voice.
A couple of months after my baby girl was born,and as I was settling into the tough terrains of new parenthood,I gave birth to my second child -my blog- this blog.
And that is not where the story ends ,that is where it all begins.The story of how a blog became a friend and mentor as if I was not writing it but it was writing back to me as well.It is here that I delved into the hereby ignored crevices of my mind and soul,it is here that I traveled to my ancestral town of Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan) and to the many destinations of my dreams.It is here that I would stumble upon hence unacknowledged emotions for my parents and the surge of dreams for my young daughter.
It is here that my poetry found its words,its skeletal frame began to be filled in by the flesh and bone of shared experiences and thoughts,eventually leading to some of them being published and more importantly winning the time,attention and mental space of many friends and several esteemed fellow-poets.
My incredible story is still on,so I am sorry there is no end to this one at present,but this is MY INCREDIBLE STORY of metamorphosis ,of finding myself and connecting with the wonderful world, of a small pebble that accidentally falls into a rushing stream and years later downstream ,after all the polishing and rubbing has become a piece of art.
I hope that as this story progresses its plot thickens and gets interesting,the present characters grow and welcome new ones with open arms and this open-ended story keeps charting its unrestricted course.

Click here to know more about the contest this entry is a part of.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLOG !!

Three years ago a few weeks after experiencing biological motherhood I happened to give birth to my blog – my other baby. My online experience till then was limited to mails and surfing to read relevant material for my research and job. I was fairly amateur and novice online had joined facebook a few months earlier and knew a few friends there who were already writing good blogs.

All I knew about blogging then was that it was like an online journal where I may write about my experiences, thoughts or just reflect on anything that strikes a chord. It had brought back memories of a beige coloured old fashioned diary which was my first journal ever and which I had destroyed in a fit of teenage rage. Now I wish I hadn’t, It would have let me know what was going on in my head back then, it must have had glimpses of my interactions with people who moved on to never come back into my life, many firsts I suppose were recorded there. 
This one was comparatively savvier, grand and of course far more public then that one so yes the apprehensions were also bigger. Should I do this?, I asked myself often. I had read somewhere that ,“your blog is your unedited version of yourself,” that sounded quite intimidating. Nevertheless the need to say, just say something to even nobody overpowered all old fashioned common sense and I started.

Evidently the job of bringing up my first baby was hanging so heavy on me that I named this blog ‘Baby Diaries’. The first few posts were of course about the baby, the baby and I but gradually I regained my flair for looking around, observing every move of life as it unfolds and then reflecting on it with my strokes of art- my words.

The blog turned out to be my cave, from the obvious moments of despair of new motherhood and life in general. I started stealing moments from whatever little me time that I had then to come back to my blog. A lot of times only to return back frustrated simply because I was still getting a hang of technicalities of it all, pasting codes, templates, privacy settings. Yet every time I managed to pour my heart out to this friend I came back happier, having experienced the magic of a listener who is completely non-judgemental and other than checking my spellings doesn’t interfere much.

The blog evolved from just being baby diaries to a diary about life and it is then I thought for the raw and the ripened eclectic mix of picks from my stream of consciousness I should name it Second Thoughts first. My friends both online and real life were very supportive throughout and they regularly kept adding fuel to this fire. Some of the posts were appreciated immensely while some others I believe went unnoticed and rightfully so, it was not meant to garner response or shake beliefs it was just a room of my own as Virginia Woolf may call it. This is where I risked looking at myself and my decisions critically this is where I could speak what I really thought and this is where I could be my own muse.

Now when I look back I realise that February 24, 2009 is just a date after all when I put this online, the blog was being written all these years in my mind, through all my good and bad experiences, a collection of my vociferous and unspoken opinions, in my discussions with friends at the student centre Panjab University, in a debate at St.Bede’s college Shimla, on the back benches of Himachal university or the swank conference room of British Council, Delhi, in the openness of discussing lust  as a teacher in a class of 120 college students and in the privacy of a cabin quietly editing a book. All its bits were everywhere in my life, some shining out there as laurels for the world to see, others scattered in corners lined with disappointment ,hurt, shame , pain or guilt.

Having worked in a publishing house I was aware of the sweat and the blood that goes into the making of a book, a good book. It is there I believe I seriously thought about penning down the constant noises of my restless mind in an attempt to get some solace, till I finally get to write my book, the one book I believe I carry like everyone else. I had travelled from the pristine Shimla of the 80s to the well-maintained Chandigarh, through the mall mile of Gurgaon and the unnerving chicken coop apartments of Delhi, but my epiphany came in the complex lanes of Daryaganj. That is where I realised my thoughts need a voice and hence I began to engage more actively with people and places and my life to conceive a blog.

Now the blog is three years old, fellow bloggers often told me that it is one hell of a ride. Today I can testify yes it is. The disappointments, the online stalkers, the writer’s blocks, the elation, the harsh critics and the like-minded people, it all happens in the course of a blog. The result is a patchwork quilt with swatches from your happiest moments and the deepest deluges of sorrow, of attempts to refresh some memories or create a few more.

As I saw my constantly bawling baby grow into an independent pre-schooler I have also witnessed my crawling blog now stand on its own young feet. It appears far more confident than its teething days, some friends tell me they love spending some time there and most importantly I don’t always go there to pour out now, I also go to listen to what friends say, to re-read so much and find new meanings and new perspectives.

The great thinker Euripedes said - “Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.” I am full of mixed emotions today- pride, nostalgia, fear, shame, gratitude an eclectic mix, and all of this seems to have added layers to my understanding of myself and life. I am no expert, never aspire to be one but all I can say today to my blog is “thanks!”

The joy of having a blog is special and hence I celebrate my blogoversary today, hoping there are many more to come and this fruitful relationship stands the rough terrains of time and life and finally when my human life span falls short of its cyber one, my friends can go back to it and feel a part of me alive forever. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLOG!!