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?
