IDEA!

It has been eight weeks since I made my appearance here in Blogosphere. Yes, the stats are accurate. Not that this deserves a round of applause or raising the laptop as an acknowledgement of the same. What started on an impulse is now showing signs of turning into an exercise heading towards doom. If the sermon seems rather perplexing, I don’t blame you especially when I am in the same boat as you. Let me try and weave my way out of this mutual perplexity.

It all started a few weeks ago while browsing through the writings of a ‘confused’ person during one of my infrequent chats on the micro blogging site Twitter. During the course of the chat I was informed by the same ‘confused’ person that blogging is quite an easy way to share ones thoughts and explain the same in depth unlike the ration of 140 characters imposed by Twitter. And thus was born the blogspot under discussion. Thus having opened an account on an impulse, I readied up what I thought was a useful note which did not impose the restriction of 140 characters on me. And proceeded to invite every handle on my Twitter timeline to have a look at it. Either out of curiosity or out of courtesy, a few of my ‘followers’ and ‘follows’ did submit themselves graciously to the punishment and either because they liked what they read or out of sheer politeness responded to my scribbles. Responses ranging from “Nyc one, Hahaha, Good one Mate” etc buoyed me up and the next few weeks saw me churn out ‘stuff’ with a clock work regularity.

I have of course read about something called a writer’s block. Without claiming to be one I experienced the phenomenon for the first time in eight to ten weeks. The first few weeks passed off like a breeze because everybody and anybody can write on subjects related to their work, their hobbies or their pet peeves. It took me all of eight weeks to cover the entire ground mentioned above from Rapists to Cinema. And then I hit the dead end. What do I write next? Nothing seemed to strike me good enough to write about. In short as we salesman types often say, Stock out! Sarakku kaali! Maal khallas! The mood at first  was to just stop writing any further and leave it at that. But two things prompted me to continue my struggle. Firstly the blog promotion site said that you must blog regularly and only then you will continue to get eyeballs. However much one may write for one’s own satisfaction, what is the point if you don’t have anyone else reading it. Secondly polite or otherwise, the response that one periodically got through tweets was indeed quite satisfying. So to stop writing was out of question. And back I was to where I started…what to write next?

One thought was to possibly churn out another few hundred words on things related to one’s work, hobbies or pet peeves all over again. It then struck me I had already done that to Salesmen, Rapists and Movies. How much more can I arachufy the already aracha maavu? (Essentially keep serving the same stale stuff in new avtaars) . I am sure none of you want to see a ‘I,Rapist -3’,’ Boss can’t achieve targets’ or ‘MasalaBoy’ next, not for one more decade  at least. The other thing left to write about, Cricket was laced with risk. With the game being the universal religion in the country, I sincerely doubt my ability to write a couple of lines without being deluged with a “You are wrong!” kind of feedback. The via media was to take up a generic discussion on Cricket and dish out the same. The only problem with this is that there is no thought or opinion on Cricket which is not already burning the wires in the world, virtual and real. Neither have I the ability, gyaan or the exclusive byline to break the clutter. Another me too? I am sure you would agree I am being smart and prudent!

The other thought was to visit some obscure, unknown website and do a quick ctrl C, ctrl V and be done away with especially given the effectiveness of copyright laws in the country. The fear of course was what if some smart aleck on this platform did search out the source and………… Well there is no dearth of passionate trolls in the virtual world. The other fear was; good, bad or ugly whatever I dished out was at least original. Even this had elicited a few “where did you download this from?” kind of questions. I had with great difficulty managed a “Sumaara ezhudinalum pulvannu othukitirukanga” a La Poet Dharmi in Thiruvilayadal and I don’t dare risk this. (Suggestion to non Tamils here: Boss! Learn the language. It is beautiful and I find it impossible to translate the above sentence!)

After a long exercise of browsing through newspapers, television, internet for some inspiration and a few agonizing hours spent resulting in complete blankness, I decided  the best course of action left for me to pursue was to explain my difficulty to you and solicit your help………………….Give  me an Idea Mate!  Please!

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Dedicated to the not at all ‘confused’ @jay_ambadi!