Moments I may have died and gone to heaven

One fine moment, in the middle of the forest at night, with no moon to bestir the soul, assaulted by a medley of sounds, safe in the unfamiliar.

Another day, wading out into the glaze of midday's sunburned sea, salt stung skin cooled by gentle waves splashing, and no distance to perceive.

Once upon a time, poised at the very edge of a cliff that rolls down to a snaking, roiling river far below, snow peaks ahead as far as the eye can see, when an eagle swoops in front riding on air currents, which carry the scent of deodar and rhododendrons.

In the colourless haze of a winter's dawn, a blood-red sun pops suddenly over the inky canopy of forest, bringing alive the shades of green, as the boat rocks on the pulsing tides of the mangrove delta waters.

Monsoon showers clean the streets, wash the leaves, and the dark gray clouds part reluctantly allowing the brilliant colours of a setting sun to paint the sky into darkness.

On a coir-rope cot, in a power-cut, humid night, to hear lizards scamper excitedly in the thatch roof, mosquitos frenetically dance to the sound of a nearby drum that steadies into an insistent rhythm, as a flute joins in, plucking out spaces in the beat.

Blagging

No I haven't misspelled it. I just had fun melding two words together. Wow! 'Melding' and all men! What big words you use, yah! Even meld sounds as if its two words interwoven. There! Another biggie! Melt + Mold (mould?) = Meld. Convincing? If you want to think so...

Blogging + Bragging = Blagging; Blah-blahing + Blogging = Blagging? Possibilities, possibilities...

Starting this blog was to get a first-hand find-out of what this blogging thing was all about. "Blogosphere" was already making its rounds in the print media pages. Undertones of envy, jealousy, competition, overtly dismissive criticism, passionate evangelism and doubts raised were getting far too much word count for me to ignore it. And having been in the print media business long enough for my curiosity to be indulged without killing any felines, I got myself a blog.

This is it. My headspace, as I'm fond of calling it. When the urge sets upon me, I usually give in to it. Like much of how I've led my life. So the urge to put pen on paper has now transformed itself to fingers on keyboard/mouse and the accompanying bullshit one must deal with. Like: an internet service provider that claims broadband capabilities, charges me as such, and then when they slip up on their promised service blame thieves who steal their cables.

Like: battered eyes from staring at the screen; like an aching back from hunching over for too long watching an image-upload not happening on the new beta blogger; like chain smoking and tea/coffee drinking; like wondering whatever was wrong with pen and paper anyway? Wow! Five alliterative Ws! Unintentional, I assure you.

So that's what my blog is. You can read it or not, comment or not, like or hate or be indifferent to it, not know of its existence, but its my blog and that's all I want it to be.

Then I read tortured essays on why they write blogs. Perhaps even mine falls in that category. Then I read how you should tweak it, how you can improve it, make it pay for you, AdSense it, ping it, tag it, win an award called the SOB (and be proud of it!), hack the matrix, and I quote: "Thus, when a misplaced angle bracket suddenly causes a rift in the space-time continuum, the damage can be reversed instantly, with no lasting harm to either the blog in question or the continued survival of the human race.", (and believe me this guy is dead serious), I know then this blog will no longer be mine.

And so then I will be blagging.

I will blog about the most useless and uninteresting things that are affecting my life. I will blog about amazing tech innovations that will pretend to revolutionise my very existence. I will brag about all this in moderated terms, in bated breath (as best conveyed in text), and I will feel the need for you to acknowledge me by emailing me, commenting, subscribing to my RSS/Atom feeds, and rating me, and, and, and, and, blah, blah, blah...

I will not be who I started out as. I will become another ghost in the machine. Who was it who said, "It takes a dream to build upon but an arsehole to wreck it"?