Yet
another "new" year is upon us. It is that time
when people are supposed to make resolutions.
I am past that age of making resolutions. I have tried that many a time – only to
fail.
In a way
that whole idea is lame. Those who are
capable of sticking to their resolutions do not wait till the clock ushers in a
new year. To those who are incapable of
staying the course – like me – it does not matter when you resolve.
That said,
I do hope to stay with one decision, God willing: Not to announce these posts
to anyone anymore. These posts started as private soliloquies. Along the way they somehow degenerated into
exhibitionism and I started broadcasting the links.
There was
a time when I used to broadcast these to as many as fourteen people or so. I feel terribly foolish when I think of those
days.
Even more
fundamentally I wonder if I should write them at all or not anymore. I had at one point stopped writing them. And then there was a flurry of writing in
2015. Of the 65 posts that I have
published so far 36 were written in 2015.
Many, if not most, of them were inspired by one sentiment, one
development the impact of which I will continue to experience for a long
time.
Writing
these posts has helped me hone my writing skills, which continue to remain
quite poor, notwithstanding all that improvement. Three of them got published in journals, one of which - the campus journal at the school where I teach - I am not sure is read by anyone at all.
Some
people who read these posts said nice things about what I wrote. One of my readers seemed to think that his
own feelings resonated with the sentiment I had expressed in some of my
posts. So that felt good. After all, a good writer is one whose readers
are able to identify with the former’s thoughts or those of the characters he
created. Even if it be on a small scale I seemed to have written something that
touched someone’s heart.
But then
that is also the exhibitionist side. It
felt that some of my most personal thoughts were no longer private. I seemed to have thrown them open for public
consumption, perhaps just one step short of putting them up for sale.
Well,
that is that now. I hope not to
broadcast these posts anymore.
Will I
write anything for a broader audience outside of these posts? I am not sure I will. I
really do not possess talent of that order.
Talent in terms of artistic creativity or the ability to write good
English that will not irritate those readers who are capable of discerning good
English writing from the hopeless. I have read far too little to write anything profound.
But I do hope to
continue to write more by way of a soliloquy.
Why then write at all? Simply
because writing helps me think more precisely.
To turn the words over in my mind again and again. To imagine what they will do to the imaginary
reader. It is a bit like the foolish and vain college
Romeos of yore who stood admiring their own looks in front of a mirror,
presumably wondering how the imaginary love of their hearts would respond to
their equally imaginary good looks.
With that resolve here is
wishing you, my dear imaginary reader, a
great year in 2016, a year of all joy and no pain, a year that will want to
make you feel grateful to the Lord.
Nanni…Namaskaaram…
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