People who look at me hardly believe it when I tell them I go walking every morning… Understandable, when I hardly leave the confines of my home. But, I do go along a familiar route every day. I stop like Robert frost, by the woods ( every morning , though ) and tell myself, I know whose woods are these…
I enter each one’s gates and savour the refreshing air in their garden… sometimes there are new blossoms… sometimes, the garden is in neglect… but the ritual has become a compulsive habit for me.
My route in blogspot takes me first to Ammani’s home… Ammani, who is the most creative writer of quick tales I have ever come across… I stumbled into her foodblog while googling for a recipe and unearthed a treasure chest of inspiration, talent and creativity. Her blog is my raison d’etre as a blogger. I started writing in her various interesting contests in her comments section … Ammani still remains my favourite…
My next trot is to Shoefiend’s. She is a close friend of Ammani’s and another great creator of tales. I was fascinated by her handle: ‘ my other shoes are manolos’… Ammani and Shoefiend are creative complementaries to each other…
From there I trot fast to ‘Ageless Bonding’ Usha. Usha is one intelligent woman and she writes beautifully on contemporary issues and of course personal rambles… I need to check in on her daily and enjoy the fragrance of her latest blog, which rejuvenates me, before dashing away to Anitha Murthy.
Anitha Murthy, another Bangalore blogger ( like Usha ) is a dedicated writer of fiction. Her short stories and novelettes are fascinating… but what I enjoyed the most in her garden were her Nonsense Rhymes and Six Degrees… Though I could do justice to Six Degrees, I could not create anything like her nonsense verses… They are sparkling gems… Her handle ‘Thought Raker’ is just apt for her!
From her place, I visit Hiphop Grandma… who is just that…. Very hip-hop. I can identify with her, as she is a teacher… a lecturer… whose blogs on her students and her own son are real life experiences…
Then I look in on shyam, a spunky young girl who speaks her mind and whose comments on current issues are so refreshingly candid that it is a pleasure to go through… I find myself nodding fiercely as I read her.
Now I peep into the garden of ponnarasi to see if anything has sprouted there… But she is also becoming an erratic blogger…
My next stopovers are quick ones… short soujorns to Chitraiyer, Boo’s Baby Talk and Madmomma… then a peep into Mahadevan’s compound, ganagjal’s , Mumbai girl’s, phoenix’s and Pisasu’s… Like Wee Willy Winkie… I go peeping in to as many gardens as possible…
I used to trespass, I guess, into some gardens like Akkare’s and Flotsam Jetsam’s enjoying all their orchids… but recently they have erected electric fences around their gardens, and access is denied to the occasional visitor like me… I need to get a Gate Pass …but I have not got around to that…
Sometimes, again like Robert Frost, I stand at the fork of Ammani’s or Usha’s blogsite and ponder…” Should I take a road not taken and explore new lovely new paths that lead from theirs…or should I stick to the familiarity of my regular blog-route? Like him I know the new path will lead me away from my normal route…each new diversion created by intriguing handles beckoning me to explore them…till I never return…
Yet, like Frost, I decide to take the road not taken and am delighted by new discoveries of talented writers…with amazing creativity and expression… and I sigh at the end of such a trek realizing what Frost meant when he wrote,
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”
I rarely let any of these people except Ammani know that I have visited them. Does that make me a tresspasser? I don’t know… I don’t trample on the beds, I don’t pluck their flowers to adorn my own home, I don’t leave foot marks behind… I enjoy their intellect… their creativity… There was a time when I was a resident in their neighbourhood… but it was as though someone had thrown an invisibility cloak on me which I just could not throw off… Not many knew that I even existed in that part of the blogosphere… May be my pseudonym put them off… I was random a4isms…
( concocted just after a brief liaison with Dan Brown… all codes… which fizzled out!) So I struggled like a larva inside the chrysalis, I struggled to break free and find my wings and flutter into freedom of expression where I will find admirers…
And I did… I shifted to a new neighbourhood called Sulekha and the rest is history… sorry… ‘Her Story’ – of recognition, instant gratification, of short term celebrityhood on getting featured, of fan mails and communication with the friendly neighbourhood boys and girls…
It is like a botanical garden with a wide variety of Flora and Fauna… Only, there’s no way I can pick a regular route. I peep, I peer…. I wander… I loiter… I stop by a small wood… stoop to smell a couple of roses.. I walk on in a haphazard manner… I can not chart a course… regular route? Not Possible. This is a democratic public garden… Anyone has access… and you can access anywhere…too many sightseers for your comfort. Till recently, even tresspassers were rampant in this garden of Eden - those poachers with their Copy Paste Electric saws. Felling and carrying away trees so painstakingly nurtured by others… compulsive kleptomaniacs with fingers itching to pluck flowers that blossom in someone’s corner…
The caretakers of the garden do let the visitors know of new blossoms, of their favourite kind… But it would be nice if residents like me can decide to stop by a cedar or a cherryblossom, a daffodil or a mighty oak, every morning and since I am allowed to, leave a couple of footprints around the beds and the soft earth that nourishes creative life!
That may involve more renovation inside the Botanical Garden… Anyway, the winds of change have been blowing inside the garden… Who knows? May be my words will be carried by these winds to the greenhouse where it will get preferential treatment and germinate as new facilities in individual dashboards… like the April Showers that bring May flowers…
B back soon 2 read the long post :)
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