MONDAY MEANDERINGS OF THE MANIC MIND.......

             I am petrified of Mondays. Mondays have this terrible ability to haunt you, beginning right from Saturday evening itself. The sensation is not very overt at first, being more like a vague foreboding, a shapeless indistinct shadow just beyond the edge of your visual field which though you can’t quite see, you know is there alright, malevolent and waiting to pounce. The feeling reaches the peak of torment on late Sunday evenings bringing hazy, unpleasant dreams all through the night that you can’t quite recall next morning. And when it actually dawns, Monday is cast in a foggy pall of gloom even if the sun is shining merrily outside. And even though I am quite fond of that cheery couple, the yellow sun and the blue sky, on Mondays they feel like interlopers.....; mocking you mercilessly......!

Of course, by evening the mind has acclimatized itself and you are back to your normal weekday self, ready to take on Tuesday and Wednesday and others of that ilk.....But because the daytime is particularly hard to endure, I often find myself devising ways and means to deal with this problem. One of the easiest and most effective ways that I have chanced upon is a diversionary tactic that simply forces your mind to meander, to concentrate on something, anything, that can take your mind off painful realities like Mondays....!

            
So this Monday found my mind meandering about in the Land of Blogs....! I so badly wanted to write a post to turn away my thoughts from the bleakness of Monday; but my mind was refusing to wear the ‘creativity’ cap. I was completely at loss for inspiration. And you cannot really blame me for that sorry state of things. When one spends the entire week in a dry-as-dust office such as mine, churning out tons and tons of crusty official correspondence that go “....for your kind information and further necessary action please....” it really does parch all literary emotion out of you.

            
At my wits end, I turned to OH ( Other Half abbreviated) for help.

“Suggest a topic for my next blog!” I texted him. “And fast!” After a negligible delay of only an hour or two which I spent feverishly checking my cell-phone every ten minutes to see if he had responded (....the Monday Blues were getting bluer and bluer), I received this reply,

“Birds, dogs (each breed separately), fishes......!”

           
I was stunned by the temerity of his reply.

Birds???? Dogs??????? Fishes????????????

What made him even consider less than ordinary things like birds and dogs and fishes for my lofty Blog?????? And anyways, I have already written about birds (http://indmanbhatta.blogspot.in/2015/06/birds-from-my-balcony.html) and even about dogs (http://indmanbhatta.blogspot.in/2015/09/dog-dramas-part-i.html) and had not the slightest intention of falling to those literary depths again.

But what especially got my gall was his suggestion of fishes. It set my teeth on edge with exasperation! Fishes? Why the hell would I want to write about fishes? I hated fish. They were slippery and slimy and distinctly fishy. I know, most of you would by now be wondering: “Bong hate fish?? Weird!!!” Well I don’t care what you think but I’ve always hated fishes especially those of the edible variety and after being at the receiving end of much flak for this all my life just because I was a fish-hating-Bong, I have now become totally inured to these snide insinuations.

Yes, you did not read wrong, I did use the word ‘insinuation’. They were without doubt insinuations especially the ones emanating from the Family. And these remarks usually went like this: ‘You know, a certain neighborhood Kakima’s (Bong for Auntyji) certain daughter-in-law , in spite of being a Sardarni eats fish like a cat and does not even spare the bones.....!’ all announced in a voice of wondrous admiration as if this unnamed girl had acquired a degree from Harvard or Yale. No Sir, I would not write about fish, in fact I refuse to write about fish. I hate them and I think I have made that abundantly clear.

            
I was now in a mood for rebellion. I texted him back, “I refuse to write about birds, or dogs or fishes! I’m instead, going to write of S*#, LIES and VIDEOTAPE......!!!!” 

He is a bit old fashioned, this OH of mine, a little too prim for today’s ‘anything goes’ world. That text sent him into a shell shock, a trauma from which he still hasn’t recovered enough to respond back!!!!

 But it set me thinking. Why not write about “S*#, LIES and VIDEOTAPE”? Like they say, nothing sells like S*# and it would definitely do a world of good for my not so popular blog. I had begun this blog just for my own self, writing simply for the sheer pleasure of writing. But then as I wrote more and more, I found people actually reading and responding , and it was then that slowly but surely, I fell into that inevitable trap of writing more for others, for garnering appreciation and less for the pleasure of putting my thoughts to paper. And so today when I find the interest of my usual audience flagging, it worries and pains me. Ideally this shouldn’t have bothered me as long as I continued to enjoy reading my own writing. But seeking approval is a human failing and I am not immune to it. So I have been wondering about how I could boost readership. Writing about S*# would definitely be a viable business proposition. But I’ll confess: I am guilty of being a secret prude, a prude who at the very beginning had laid down the single unwritten rule for this blog: No Senseless Violence, No Controversy, No ‘F’ word, no ‘S’ word, No Arnab Goswami and of course No Fish!

At this juncture I’ll meander a bit. I guess that’s allowed since this post is titled ‘Monday Meanderings’. I wanted to talk about my readers. One can classify them into categories based on their readership patterns. Of course none of the categories are sacrosanct compartments and there could be considerable overlap between two categories and persons could move from one category to next based on the particular post they were audience to...but nevertheless here’s the list.

1.       The BFFs. These are the blogger's dream audience. They read your post; actually read, it not simply skim through, assimilate and then respond intelligently and positively. And even when they critique you, their criticism is reasonable, unbiased and most importantly for fledgling writers like me, forgiving. I call them the BFFs because they are few and most of them are actually my closest friends.

2.    The KIND. These people are just that, kind. And how are they different from category 1? Well unlike the BFFs, these readers are always unfailingly kind. They read my posts out of sheer goodness and generosity of spirit and then respond very kindly. ALWAYS. They can get boring at times. I know I am being ungrateful but then that’s how it is.

3.   The WALL. The Walls are exasperating. They read your posts (I am assuming this of course) but they never, ever respond. It’s like conversing with a concrete wall. Nothing gets across the wall; nothing at all from them to me and I assume that is probably because nothing got through from me to them. Maybe they are not reading the post at all, maybe they just click in and then intimidated by so much ‘angrezi’ click out, post haste. Who knows; but then they do serve the purpose of boosting readership of my blog in terms of quantity, if not quality.

4.     The OH. You have to tackle this category a little differently. While for the other readers you simply send a link to your blog intimating them of a new post and your job is done; for this category, just sending a link will not do. You have to coax, cajole, beg and finally bribe them to read your post. The manner of reading exhibited by this reader is also unique. It’s done in phases, first one page, then after some cajoling the next; such that days may pass before the complete post has been read. Eliciting a response from them is also tricky.  You send a text requesting a response, then another and another till the world-wide-web crashes, yet silence is the only response that you get. Then suddenly one fine day when you are least expecting it, its there, twinkling on your screen: intelligent, positive, reasonable and kind. You see, the OH category reader has now upgraded into the BFF category! Well there is only one single member of this category and no prizes, no, absolutely none, for guessing who it is. 

         
Reverting back to the blog, you might recall I was talking about S*#........... ! No, of course I wasn’t. See, gotcha, didn’t I? I wasn’t talking about S*# but about that single unwritten rule of my blog. Now being bound by this rule, I have to think of something else to attract readership, something that without violating my rules would still catch the attention of my readers. How about Romance? No controversy there, no violence, no ‘F’ words, no ‘S’ words and definitely no Arnab Goswami...... and when written in good taste, an excellent counter to all that’s carnal. Yes I could definitely try my hand at that. And to tell you the truth, hailing from the age of the genteel MBs (for the uninitiated that’s Mills and Boons, publishers of Romance Novels for school girls, college girls, Home Makers and numerous lady doctors of all ages and degrees of graying hair..), I would have failed miserably in writing about S*# today, in this age of Fifty Shades of Gray.......!

There is sudden strong gust of wind outside and the electricity fails. As my inverter takes over noisily, the drumming of rain begins on my window pane. The sun has long set but a dull orange glow remains. The dreaded Monday is drawing to a close. And with it, my manic mind, much calmer now, is returning home from its meanderings....! And so having successfully tackled another dreadful Monday (drumming out nearly 2260 words on the laptop for a new post can be labelled as some measure of success, especially for a Monday), the prospect of tackling Tuesday seems like cakewalk for me. But then I’ll keep that for tomorrow. For now, there is dinner to be made and consumed, dogs to be fed, dishes done, presentations created.... I think I’ll call it quits at this point. Good night!!!

PS: For those of you wondering about that ‘Romance’ bit, just wait for the next post. Cheerio!!!!