inmyeye

Sunday, March 29, 2020

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Today is Day 1

We watched from afar as the world changed, we heard stories and read statistics, yet could not fathom the impact. Then it came closer!

The last few weeks have seen the cautions become real, the concern and confusion too. One by one things were shut down, people started to stay home, stay away from crowded places. I myself stocked up on some staples thinking it will make things a little easier. A hand sanitiser has taken permanent residence at the entrance of my house.

The past weekend saw an experiment like no other. Our nation was asked to voluntarily stay at home and it did! People were told to go out only to get essentials and most of them listened. But it wasn’t enough and it isn’t enough. Drastic times call for drastic measures. Starting today our entire country barring basic essentials and medical services goes on a complete lockdown. When this was announced I had a moment (okay a little more than a moment) of panic and disbelief.

How? How are we going to do this, how will we manage? What will happen over the next three weeks? What will happen after? When will life come back to normal? Will it ever actually be normal again? The questions in my head just don’t seem to end.

Today is Day 1!

A thought occurred to me - could today be the first day of the rest of our lives? A chance to start things anew, to create the lifestyle and habits we have wanted to for the longest time. An actual opportunity to get out of the vicious cycle most of us have found our selves in.

If we consider this a mental and physical reboot, we could use these three weeks to contemplate, strategise, research, and learn. To make an action plan that will allow us to enrich our lives.

Things are bad right now, but we as human beings are resilient and we will find a way out of it eventually. Our actions and attitudes today will go a long way to improving ourselves as people and as citizens. This experience is going to change us all, let’s make sure the changes are good ones.

I remind myself today to send up a prayer of gratitude for the comforts I am fortunate to have and more importantly to the thousands of people behind the scenes who will be working through this crisis to keep us comfortable and safe.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Fullscap to Character limits

Here’s a journey that started more years ago than I would care to admit. As students, the English language was a subject we had to learn in school. How do you turn something so vast and evolving as a language into a subject is something I have yet to understand. I have spoken, read and written this language from the time I can remember and I still find that I haven’t explored even half of it.

Besides understanding the nuances of the language and comprehending stories or poems, there was a certain amount of creativity encouraged within this subject. I remember being made to write essays about random stuff. It was a terrible bore when we were younger, but the subjects got more interesting when we grew older. It was very satisfying to be able to express oneself in an otherwise ‘memorize-and-reproduce’ system of learning. Unfortunately there wasn’t too much scope to share these musings with anyone other than the teacher.

The only part I don’t miss is the physical agony of actually writing pages and pages of stuff. The longer the text, the better you scored, but too many mistakes or cancelled words or bad handwriting and you lost marks or earned a telling off from the teacher.

Many many years later I found myself contemplating a new phenomenon of writing called blogs or web logs. With my fingers poised over a keyboard, I let my imagination fly, I looked around and picked up random stuff from everyday life and found I had a lot to say about them. No one dictated the subject or the length. It was refreshing to share what I really wanted to share and not what I was told to. Mistakes and handwriting issues became a thing of the past. Kudos to word processors and spell check!

Blogs became the expressive medium of the hour (and that’s how long it lasted; but I am going ahead of myself). I shared my views, my good days and my bad days with a few readers and it was wonderful when they empathized and lived my moments with me. Something that was missing from my childhood was now possible. It was a very freeing experience.

Before I knew it, I find myself here today, expressing myself within a limit of 420 characters. Just a few words and I can share everything about my life with the hundreds that are connected to me. I can tell them what I am feeling, what I am doing, where I am going, who I met, what I anticipate and anything else I can think of.

Paper or memory is no longer a limitation. I can update my friends list on what I am experiencing every few moments if I want to. And in a short while of sharing anything, someone somewhere has read what I have said, has commented on it and has given me the instant gratification I seek. Why else would anyone of us share anything on such a public medium?

Interestingly enough.. it works, sadly enough.. it works.

Gone are the days of multiple fullscap pages filled with descriptive writing – introduction, body, conclusion. Today it’s all about short forms and quick share to quicker reactions. Is this the end of writing as we knew it before computers and smart phones or is it the beginning of a whole new way of expression.

Ek tha raja, ek thi rani

Khatam ho gayi kahani

Don’t get me wrong. I love it; how else would I know what my friends are up to. Not everyone has the time or the inclination to write volumes about their lives, especially not when a few words can do the trick. Those who enjoy it, still write and there are takers. I am one of them… are you a taker?

Thursday, March 17, 2011

A Precious Conversation

A: I'm very stressed, I need a drink
V: Of course baby, I'll make it for you
A smiles
V: How much ice do you want?
A: As many cubes as you want to give me
V: Ok I'll give you two
A: Nooo, give me four

Sent from my BlackBerry®

http://inmyeye6.blogspot.com/

So it starts here

So many times I have wondered, what was it that made me write? I never saw myself as a writer, yet like my father, I too had this little nagging bit inside me that said I should write and that I would be good at it.

It started with poetry many years ago. When I read those poems now, I can’t help but cringe. They sound so lame and childish. But then I try and remind myself, I was 13! The poems evolved as I grew older and some of the last few still make me feel very good.

At some stage blogs stepped in and thanks to being pushed by dad and a friend, I experimented with this new medium. To my surprise people started reading my blog and actually enjoyed what I wrote. Then came the days of DSS, the best bunch of writers I ever came across. I was too scared to share my stuff with them, they were all so good. But the anonymity helped. They didn’t know who I was and I didn’t know them. No danger of failure there.

Wouldn’t you know it, they liked my stuff and the appreciation I got from them was my aphrodisiac. I kept writing; it was wonderful. But like all good things, this also came to an end. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. And once I stopped, I just couldn’t write again.

What changed? Where did the motivation go? What was the motivation to start with?

Was I writing for myself or playing to the audience? Initially I thought it must be the latter and now that the forum to share my writing was gone, there was no point. But then why did I feel so bad, why did I miss it so much?

I realised that while sharing my thoughts was great fun, I wasn’t doing it for anyone but myself. Every old post of mine brings back those days to me. I remember so much more about those times; what I was doing, the things I felt, what life was like for me. It was my way of chronicling my life.

Suddenly I feel so much easier about writing again. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not. It doesn’t matter if it’s been said before or not. It doesn’t matter if it makes a point or not. It doesn’t matter if anyone enjoys it or not.

All that matters is that I do it!

It might take me a while to get a good writing style back, but I’m ok if its not perfect. I am sure I will evolve again and I am sure I will have my readers again.

So it starts here, with this post.

Cheers all!