Write Right

I was pondering for quite a long time what to write next. And I decided to write on my love for writing :). Simple, yeah?

I have been writing since I was three. Ok ok that was a joke. (I know some of the readers who know me will comment there she goes displaying her gift of gaff and spurts another of her atrocious jokes. But this is my space so I will spew as many poor jokes as I want.)

Factually, I have been writing since I was in standard 5 I think. That time I used to hang around with a girl called Lipsa. Now we both used to compose poems and write stories and tell each other. I remember having written poems like “My Dear Carmel School”, “My Mom”, “My Dad” and many other interesting and captivating topics. Now some of you might be wondering why did I spare my sister and not write an ode to her. Well I did write a poem for her too. It was called “Meri Behna”. Yes I used to write poems in Hindi also. Lipsa and I used to write on myriad topics and then correct the grammar and punctuations of each others works. We were pretty careful about the alliterations, the rhyming, and proper use of all the concepts that we learnt in the poetry classes.

In standard 8 I think Lipsa left the school because her father got transferred to some other town. But my tryst with writing continued. Now I had matured into topics such as “Kashmir-Valley of Silence” (that’s one of my personal favorites),”Why so much greed” (this was inspired from the “Hawala” and other scams which had rocked the nation during late 90s), etc.

My proficiency at churning literary master pieces continued till I reached Class10. This is the time where each and ever student is forced to concentrate on studies and sideline all other interesting engagements. So after 10^th I was completely out of touch with writing.

Then suddenly I got a chance to wake up the creator within when I saw a call for essays in Times of India. This was an all India contest organized by Indian Institute of Agricultural Research. The topic was “Industrialization of Agriculture”. I pored over the Economic and Political Weekly journals (which my mother supplied at a blinding rate, she being an economist) and wrote the essay. My dad was also “inspired” and put on his thinking cap and sent an entry to the contest.

And 4 months down the line on an august day in September, we got a letter from Delhi. I had won the 3^rd prize in the contest. And surprise, dad had come first. It was an epoch making moment in my life.

After that I used to literally re-read Times of India to get hold of any essay contest that was organized by any one. So I ended up writing for contests organized by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ministry of Cottage Industry, Government of Maharashtra, Ministry of Tourism, Government of Meghalaya and any god forsaken institute you can think of. I never struck gold again, but, I learnt a lot, because I had to do a lot of research to compose my works (Seriously).

After my graduation, I contributed to contests organized by Competition Success Review and some of my essays were found worthy enough to be published. :)

Once I started working, I hardly got time to write any thing. So I used to channel my creative energies into writing mails. They came to be termed as “long mails”. The recipients were friends and the contents included everything concerning me from what I did the last day, my ethical, moral and professional dilemmas, the cold wars at home with my room mates, the deluge of problems I faced at office and all and sundry topics.

Some days down the line I learnt of the concept of blogging. And when a friend of mine whom I least expected to write, joined the bandwagon of bloggers I was seriously incited. But then one well wisher suggested, that blogging was too public. It would be better if I restricted myself to “long mails” to put forth my thoughts.

But then, who can put a stop on the resurgent tides of writing. So finally on 24^th of April, 2007, I claimed my space on the web. So here I am, this is me, and no one can stop me from blogging.

(Ahem the last line is so nice)