Filling in

I suppose I owe a word of apology to those of my readers (I know there are a few) who wait eagerly for the next installment of what has become virtually a once-a-week ritual: I’ve kept them waiting. These last few days have been admission season, and every year around this time my family has all its work cut out, handling floods of people and answering the phone from dawn to almost midnight, doing a lot of clerical work and waiting and saying the same things over and over again. There are also some minor irritations every time. You must remember that all this happens in the midst of existing classes running round the week as per usual schedule. The result is not only exhaustion but frayed nerves and minds perforce emptied of all other kinds of thought. Hence no blogposts for a while.

One good thing this time is that the weather has been unusually balmy, thanks to several early nor’westers since mid-March. It still doesn’t feel as though summer is here, and the trees all around are lush green, and the cuckoos are going full blast right since the wee hours of the morning. It is good not to have to cope with sweltering heat on top of everything else.

This is not only my silver-jubilee batch with class nine-rs, but it so happens that it’s my daughter’s batch too. I can’t believe she has grown up so much. I hope all my well-wishers wish me luck. Growing old has its compensations: over these last few years the number of pupils who are children of my own childhood friends has been increasing.

Meanwhile I also note with pleasure that the number of people who have kindly enlisted as followers is about to approach the 200 mark. That will be a small milestone, and I request the 200^th person who enlists to let me know who he or she is; it will be a pleasure to say ‘welcome’. The fact that the number of visits has been climbing slowly but relentlessly is another very nice thing indeed. It is not easy to write continuously and keep people interested in this day and age (without resorting to sleaze, sensation or some sort of commercial solicitation) for almost five years at a stretch. The overwhelming majority of bloggers I know – especially among Indians – run out of steam after the first half dozen posts, and the visit count never goes beyond four figures. I also happen to know that there have been a number of new visitors of late who have been exploring this blog eagerly: them I request to visit and comment on older blogposts, instead of restricting themselves to only what they find on the home page. That is something I find especially delightful, and I daresay my new readers will find quite a lot of stuff to interest them, too.

Finally (for now) I note wryly that very few people have found anything to say with regard to my last two blogposts. I flatter myself that I have made a lot of readers uncomfortable, and left them at a loss for words…