I haven't blogged in over 2 years. Perhaps for reasons that poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan describes best:
जीवन की आपाधापी में कब वक़्त मिला
कुछ देर कहीं पर बैठ कभी यह सोच सकूँ
जो किया, कहा, माना उसमें क्या बुरा भला।
Or may be I am just looking for an excuse to quote the above verse. Because I am just so taken by the word "आपाधापी" that Dr. Bachchan probably coined...? I don't know if the word existed prior to the poem? But again, I am no Hindi expert so please feel free to chime in if you know more about it. Here's one of the links where you can read the full poem, by the way.
The truth is, I just didn't feel compelled to write. When I think of the word "compelled", I am reminded of the exhortations of Father Merrin and Father Karras from The Exorcist -- remember the line, "The Power of Christ compels you!", which they repeat over and over and which brings the levitating Regan back to her bed? That's the kind of power and force that I am talking about.
The truth also is, I was kinda lost on what to write. Two things occurred that brought me back to Blogger. One was that I attended a book club meeting with a group of local friends. And you know, as Saul Bellow has said, "A writer is a reader moved to emulation".
The second was that I chanced upon a blog post titled What Should I Write About. Now I am not writing this blog with any type of end objective in mind, but it makes sense to not jump all over the place right? I am happy that you, the unknown reader, is paying me a visit, and I would like to see you coming back for sure.
So I followed the advice in the above post, and jotted down a few topics that interest me the most. I am sure that this list may get revised as I give it some deeper thought, but for now, my top-3 items seem to be:
जीवन की आपाधापी में कब वक़्त मिला
कुछ देर कहीं पर बैठ कभी यह सोच सकूँ
जो किया, कहा, माना उसमें क्या बुरा भला।
Or may be I am just looking for an excuse to quote the above verse. Because I am just so taken by the word "आपाधापी" that Dr. Bachchan probably coined...? I don't know if the word existed prior to the poem? But again, I am no Hindi expert so please feel free to chime in if you know more about it. Here's one of the links where you can read the full poem, by the way.
The truth is, I just didn't feel compelled to write. When I think of the word "compelled", I am reminded of the exhortations of Father Merrin and Father Karras from The Exorcist -- remember the line, "The Power of Christ compels you!", which they repeat over and over and which brings the levitating Regan back to her bed? That's the kind of power and force that I am talking about.
The truth also is, I was kinda lost on what to write. Two things occurred that brought me back to Blogger. One was that I attended a book club meeting with a group of local friends. And you know, as Saul Bellow has said, "A writer is a reader moved to emulation".
The second was that I chanced upon a blog post titled What Should I Write About. Now I am not writing this blog with any type of end objective in mind, but it makes sense to not jump all over the place right? I am happy that you, the unknown reader, is paying me a visit, and I would like to see you coming back for sure.
So I followed the advice in the above post, and jotted down a few topics that interest me the most. I am sure that this list may get revised as I give it some deeper thought, but for now, my top-3 items seem to be:
- Singing/ Music/ Karaoke;
- Films and film-making;
- People and cultures.
Thankfully, I don't think they are too unrelated. Or, to put it differently, they are all about "Life" and "Entertainment" as some newspaper sections may categorize them. So hopefully there will be some unity in the posts on this blog after all. I have blogged mostly in English, with blog titles in Hindi, and with occasional Marathi thrown in when I couldn't express it any other way. That's the sum total of the languages I know anyway.
Finally, here's a link to the song that forms the title of this blog post, Kya Likhoon. Thanks for reading, and see you again soon?
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