A to Z reflections
Four generations:
Three continents: Two world wars: One village
These were tales spanning four generations spread across three continents
in between and after the two world wars of people who set forth under different
circumstances from one small village called Agaramangudi.
The story line
traversed through different time lines, locations or incidents with no
particular order. The only order being the alphabetical one – A to Z meant
purposefully for the A to Z challenge.
This was my attempt at writing slices of what
I one day hope to be a full fledged novel. Much as I love the magical art of the written
word, I am a lazy, sloppy, pessimistic procrastinator. The reason I signed up to the A to Z
challenge was that it would keep the lazy sloppy pessimistic procrastinator in me on
my toes.
This year my preparations had begun since the
new year. It was a part of the new year
resolution to write. And like every new year resolution that gets a little sluggish with passing weeks, mine too got sluggish by the time it was
February. But something kept me on my edge and I voraciously wrote whenever my
creative juices obliged.
I had prescheduled most of my posts by the 1st
of April, but I knew the crucial part of the story was yet to be told. On the
18th of April I found myself feeling restless and anxious.
The A To Z challenge that had gone on so well
so far was suddenly stuck at alphabet P,Q,R,S and T. I had actually thought through and prepared and
pre-scheduled my posts even for the most dreaded alphabets, X Y and Z much earlier.
Damn that bloggers block.
I think I almost decided I would give
up.
That is when an old friend got in touch and
said she was so touched by my writing. And that the characters, the location
and the culture, it all seemed so real.
Ah... show
me a writer who does not like a little ego massage.
That was probably the spark that I was
waiting for. My creative juices started
flowing and poured out in the form of my writing. I wrote for the next few posts,
the alphabets P,Q,R,S and T from my
heart over that weekend and walked around with a contended smile plastered
around my face for the next one week .
Many fellow bloggers constantly visited and
read my blogs. I made some new virtual friends and followers. There were’nt too
many who left comments and that left me slightly disappointed, I must
confess. When I would watch other bloggers
being bombarded with 30 to 40 comments everyday I would feel neglected.
I would
wonder where I was going wrong.
I guess the world figured out I was a social media loner, an introvert, or may be others think I am a snob and
keep away from my blog.
Damn me for not being tech savvy,
for not being active on facebook, where I should have pressed a million likes
for not having a
twitter handle account where I should have tweeted along
for not having figured out that instagram was not exactly
telegram.
Like the fox in the sour grapes story, I convinced myself to believe
that ‘no comments’ was better than all those very synthetic,
artificial comments and likes, that the social media is so rife with these days.
Neverthless there were some comments. Many heartfelt ones too. Thank you all who commented. You really kept me going.
A special thanks to Stephen Tremp from the A to Z challenge host to have kept me
going when I was really on the verge of slipping up somewhere in the middle. I must mention Birgit whose well researched
posts on Hollywood actors of yesteryears opened up to me a vast arena of world
cinema that is now put into my ‘must watch’ list.
Despite the wide cultural gap between us and our writings, she was one
blogger that diligently visited and I faithfully reciprocated. Thank you Birgit.
Birgit – I think you have inspired yet another set of bloggers from
pipinghotviews to participate in the next year’s challenge who will present a
slice of Bollywood and Kollywood to the blogging world very close to your style.
I look forward to the challenge next year.
The theme for next year is beginning to take shape in my head, but then 2016 is
a long way ahead.
my first teeth that was dancing all these days fell out. 
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