Summer of '04

It was all I had, all I’ve ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.— Abraham Verghese

There is no greater burden than carrying an untold story.
— Maya Angelou

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Ah...  the Summer of 2004.
 It was a summer like no other.

Those were the best days of my life. 

( Sorry Bryan Adams – I had to borrow your words here, but they were mine too...  )

Ah...  the Summer of 2004.
 There was always a song on my lips. There were dreams for the future.

I saw rainbows in the sky. Literally  and otherwise.  

 I had arrived fresh off the boat (Actually Air- india boeing 720 ) in Guildford, England.

Guildford to me was breathtakingly beautiful .  I had never seen anything like that before.

No 2, Freshcliffe house west was a small converted studio apartment where I lived by myself  into what would have been a Victorian house with guest rooms, servant quarters and all about a 100 years ago. 

I had my pleasant culture shocks and I wrote about them religiously every week.

Now when  I read them  ... they feel so rustic.  

Embarassingly rustic, Nostalgically Naive and Simply Sweet.

During my days in Guildford, I would walk to work.  I did not know how to drive.

The walk to work was about 25 minutes from home. Oh what a walk it was.

A  walk across that quiet and beautiful  River Wey that would flow ceaselessly come summer or winter,  across the high street into the quiet backyards of other imposing Victorian structures whose interiors were converted either into student accommodation or modern office spaces.
 Before River Wey passed underneath the elevated Motorway, I would deviate and take the pedestrian along the motorway to the Tech park where I went to work.

It was while walking along the quiet and scenic River Wey in those Summer months of 2004, that I discovered the story teller in me.   My imagination would flow in the form of words in my mind. As soon as I would reach work, I would get them down on my laptop. ( Nothing much got accomplished in the mornings at work in those days... but there was no-one to sneak in. )

These were some of my writings from those days.

Ah ... the summer of 2004.
  

7:42 local

Meenakshi ammal the best seller

The black cat syndrome.

Forbidden Fruit

Observe, Imagine and write it as it unfolds in my mind. That was what I enjoyed the most. It was  therapeutic.  It brought on a completely different form of myself  that was  beyond me. 

If that is what they call divine energy, then that is what this was.

Like most good times, the summer of 2004 did not last long.  After that breathtakingly beautiful summer, came the winter.  

Dark, Depressing and most dreadfully Devastating.

I had never experienced both cold weather and cold vibes  like that before. It sent shivers of chill down my spine, my body but more importantly my soul.  

That, I was to realize later would only be the beginning. As years rolled by, the emotional scars that started from that winter of 2004 would not heal for many years to come.  That winter would last for many years to come.   

Somewhere in the winter of 2004 the storyteller in me got paralysed. 

The soul of that storyteller would take years to recover.

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In June 2014, I Celebrated 10 years of blogging.

 Yes ... I was one of those early birds.

Somewhere in mid-2004, I took to blogging from office because there was not much work to do. 

Over the course of the last ten years, many things changed. My blogging Domain got taken over by blogspot which then got taken over by Google.  I am glad I preserved the date stamps on my old blog posts. Somewhere in 2012 I had to move them to my current google blogspot URL.   I am glad I did. Otherwise I would have lost them forever.

My blogging in 2004 started as a very personal affair. ( Click here for some of my old posts) 

It remains extremely personal even now, but in my own way, I think, I  have managed to mature as a blogger. To me the best of my blogs were published in the summer (the English August ) of 2004.

Visit my old blog post and read some of my short stories over here.

Matters of humility aside, I know I am no great a writer.  But there is a storyteller  in me waiting to tell.
Here is how I reflect upon my life. I have'nt written to publish a bestseller. I write for my sake. For the sake of nourishing the soul that exists within me.  Whether it needs a wider audience or not, time will decide as it all unfolds.  The best of my writing is yet to come. I know now that it is going to take a lot of effort, concentration and focus. The journey  is not going to be an easy one. 

In the summer of 2004, it just flowed naturally.  That came from nowhere.  Seamlessly and Joyfully.

I wish I can re-experience that soul filling joy yet again.   

 Here is a toast to myself for completing ten years of blogging.

   

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Your life is going to be made into a novel! Write an introduction for this novel. How will you creatively reflect on your life spent?

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.