After twenty years

I started writing this blog on July 08, 2006. Which means that I have been writing continuously here for twenty years now, and this is my 825th post. Twenty whole years of writing! The contents would certainly make a fairly fat book. I am the sort of man who doesn't quickly give up what he starts doing, but even I had not imagined that I would keep at it for twenty years. That's half or more of a man's entire working life. Those who had just passed school in 2006 are family men and women in their late thirties now; those in their twenties who started reading this blog then must be pushing fifty! My little girl was ten years old then, now she is thirty, and busy living her own life. Is there anybody who has been reading this blog continuously right from the beginning and still visits it now and then? I would certainly like to say congratulations and thank you...

I have had a lot of interesting debates and conversations here, too, so thanks to all who participated. I have revealed a great deal of my mind and life here as I have passed through the prime of life into old age. Of course, do not imagine that you know everything about me even if you have been a regular long-time reader. As Tagore said, you will not find the poet in his poems. I have by preference shown the happier side of my life and the sunnier part of my mind here, if only to avoid burdening my reader with the weight and gloom of my own sorrows, fears, losses and disillusionments, of which, like every other human being, I have had aplenty. That is because it has been my lifelong desire to ease the travails of living for a few people if I can through my work, and not to make it more irksome by inflicting my own complaints on them. At worst, maybe a hint of melancholy and tiredness may have crept into some of my writing, for which I sincerely apologize: I wish I could have sounded cheerier without pretending to be what I am not. Also, despite talking and writing so much, I have always been at heart a very private sort of person - unlike most young denizens of the age of social media, I keep very personal (and usually painful) things for the most intimate circle, to which few belong, many have dropped out from, and thousands never came into.

I don't know how much longer I shall keep going. Without specific requests, I often feel at a loss for things to write these days. Also, as I frequently say myself, I am growing old, and weary, and no longer quite sure whether my writing matters to people. Why do people work at all? As I have always believed, unless it is under some sort of external compulsion, it is either for love or money. This was never a money making proposition, so obviously I did it for love: love of the written word, love of many things that I have seen, felt and enjoyed, love of the idea that perhaps I was influencing some people's lives in a good way. Now, I am not so sure that that love endures, or will endure much longer. Other than working as a teacher in my own house, I have, unsocial being that I am, have led a withdrawn life for ages, and perhaps a time is coming when I shall withdraw some more, limiting my human interactions to face to face conversations with those who keep visiting me at home. Maybe I have shared enough with the vast faceless public already? 

One good thing that I have just noticed: even when I am not attending to the blog, the number of pageviews keeps on climbing, and more and more older stuff has been coming into the most-read list (right now, the post titled Ingratitude and Karma is on the top of the list. Interesting). Unless I am much mistaken, that means a lot of people still remember the blog and are still curious to explore beyond the home page. Cheers to them, but also a lament: why can't you write in comments that will energize me to engage? Hundreds and hundreds of posts on such a huge diversity of subjects, and nobody finds anything to say?

Browsing through several dozen posts written over these last twenty years, I felt a sense of unreality. I was running a family then, working seven days a week non-stop for months at a stretch, reading so much, frequently going travelling, counselling so many people outside of my classes, dealing with all kinds of emergencies... where did I find the time in between all that to keep writing so much? And I hear so many people saying that they 'have no time' for any kind of serious (mental) work, not even reading, let alone writing! I myself have lost a lot of readers to two things: jobs and marriage. Of course, I never married and never worked for a living. Isn't it a really funny world? 

They say every grown man has a story - is a story. Well, I have told a large part of my story here. Not earthshaking, not maybe very educative or moving, but perhaps it will have significantly affected, even touched, a few people. That should be enough. In my own life, I have met many 'ordinary' people who have deeply instructive and memorable stories to tell, if only they are encouraged a bit (remember I once wrote the memoir of a roadside phuchkawallah). Mine may not be the most trivial of them. Some may remember. Otherwise, like everybody else, I shall soon pass, not only from this world but from everyone's minds. So what? And what would be unique about it? I just learnt in class two days ago that teenagers of today haven't heard of Sir Don Bradman!

Lately I have been enjoying myself enjoying old TV series now available for free on YouTube: specifically Mind your language and Blandings (yes, the Wodehouse creation). Try them sometime. Wonderful things for those who admire wit and genuine humour of the educated and civilized sort rather than what passes for comedy today. Also, regaling myself watching the 'vlogs' of young bike riders who go gallivanting across the length and breadth of India: so relaxing and interesting if you can do it from the safety and comfort of your bedroom, ten or twenty minutes at a time, spending virtually no money at all, and they give you drone's-eye view scenery, too! Science ka kya marvel!

A gentle nudge: do listen to my story collection on YouTube and the growing series of poetry podcasts on Spotify (in both cases you need to search only for 'Suvro Sir') and tell me what you think about them, here if you like. And if you do, please write more than a one-liner. 

So much for now.