The first time it came around, we did this. Then we tried this. But this time we’re keeping it simple. ‘A walk in the clouds..’ turns three today. Yay, whee and other assorted good stuff. No no. No gifts please. Well, if you absolutely insist, wonly cash donations, ancestral property and home-made mithaai, dankyouverrymuj.

Three years. Huh. Who’d have thunk?

Regular programming resumes next week.

You know how you sometimes have good friends you fall out of touch with? The longer you go without calling them, the more you think about how awkward it will be when you do call, and so you put it off some more? Eventually you wake up one morning to realize that its been months/years/copious-quantities- of-time and now you’re too lazy to change things? Yes, me and my blog have lately been like that only, although drawing parallels between my blog and a close friend probably alludes to a cuckoo-ness and lack-of-life that I shall cleverly not get into.

A regular reader gently brought it to my notice that this is the first time that a whole month has gone by and I have not written anything. Big whoop, I said. Then another reader not-so-kindly pointed out that I am supposed to be a bunny rabbit, not a bear, so could I please stop hibernating? Oh, oops, I said, slowly starting to see the point. I guess I haven’t written. And I guess a blog is a blog only if the blogger actually blogs on it. So .. um .. er .. *gulp*

But to be fair, I *have* noticed. Every day I tell myself, that I shall snap out of this, write something spectacular and the darn block will be gone. Poof! Like that! Except for one minor matter. I can’t think of anything spectacular. Or non-spectacular even. Gah. I look around to see how people do it. Some write about things on their mind but I checked and there’s not much going on there. (Ah, the price of shallowness.) A silly verse about my inability to write might work. But that’s already been done. And there’s the kind that write pseudo-intellectual stuff using the season as a metaphor .. Oh wait, that was me. Never mind.

So anyway, I’ve decided to do something different and place my faith in my dear readers. (Yes, those handful of you who still read this blog.) – Pliss to suggest something to write about? Anything, anything at all. Ooh-aah-ing about music, cheesy movie reviews, ways to cause bodily harm to Mika Singh, ten things that annoy me, photoblogs with pretty fall pictures that I promised once upon a time, the importance of ichhadhari nagins in Hindi movies .. any earth-shattering issue of global importance that you think I ought to have an opinion on. You tell and I’ll write.

Here’s wishing you all a warm and wonderful new year. Now give me ideas.

This started out as a response to Vivek’s comment on my previous post. So you should go read his comment first. It is nicely written, plus this post will make a whole lot more sense to you, if you do. Of course, this response began as a quick walk to the corner store, but seeing as it has has quickly assumed Dandi march proportions, it has become a post.

So here’s the thing. I am not much of a ranter on my blog. In the one-hundred-thirty odd posts that I have on this blog, about four of them qualify as rants. But every time I rant, I don’t think it is necessary that I be subjected to the ‘Why did you react to them? You shouldn’t let them affect you so much’ response. I know it is well-intentioned and I agree that one shouldn’t get worked up over trivial things. I also understand that hate commenters do what they do because they believe that negative attention is better than no attention. What is also known as the Mika Singh school of public relations.

But the truth is, I am really not worked up. I rant, because ranting is fun. I am not deeply affected by the nasty comments people leave me. I’m far too shallow for that. I spent about five minutes of my life writing the previous post. Now perhaps, the vitriol in that post made you believe I was very angry? That my blood pressure shot up a couple of points cos someone asked me the color of my lingerie? If that is the impression you got, then it is a wrong one. I mock the people that annoy me, not out of anger, but for amusement. It is a cathartic experience, to say the least, so pliss to let me have my fun?

Also, my rant was not against comment SPAM, as has been mistakenly assumed. These are not comments with helpful suggestions on where I can buy sleeping pills and Viagra. (I do wonder though, why anyone would need both of those at the same time. But I digress.) These are not penis enlargement offers, nor are these comments selling me videos of zebra sex. (Don’t even ask.) These are actual people, with blogs of their own, who leave hate comments. So why don’t I link to them when I rant against them? That would be a very good question to ask, if you were to ask it. But I have an answer. (Of course I do. Nobody calls a question a good question, unless they have a ready answer to it. Duh!) The reasons are two — a) I am reacting to what these people say to me and not who they are b) I am not going to link to them and give them more traffic. So phooey.

You talk about technology on your blog, because YOU believe it is what you do best. Not because your reader Joe Mama believes so. (Joe Mama, son of Vasco Da Gama, who went to the drama, without a pajama .. No? None of you ever learnt that rhyme as a kid? Deprived childhood, tsk tsk.) You write what you write, because YOU would like your blog to be technology-centric. But I call my blog a personal blog. Not a humor blog or a movie blog or a PJ blog. Just a personal blog. I crack a silly joke. I get sentimental about a song. I get excited about a cheesy movie. And I get annoyed by a hate commenter. It is all me. And my annoyance, much like my silliness or my humor, rightfully belongs on my blog. My priority for my blog, if I were to ever come up with one — is to be myself and try to write decently. As long as that’s achieved, there’s no other priorities that I need to change.

You’ve read my ‘light-hearted’ posts for a while now, but have never commented. But this time, I wrote something you did not like, and you made an exception to your no-comment habit. You delurked and reacted. You also realized that your comment isn’t going to change what I write on my blog, but you still felt it necessary to say how you felt about it. You spoke up because you didn’t like what you read. Then why is it so hard to accept when I do the same thing? And on my own blog, at that?

There. The customary post for the week is done. Now I shall go back to my rabbit-hole where, staying in the spirit of the post, I shall watch the K C Bokadia classic Kab Tak Chup Rahoongi (1988), starring stud-boy-of-the-80s Aditya Pancholi and Amala. Sigh. Silence sometimes has such a terrible price to pay.

To the dear readers of this blog who wish that I did not exist —

• I know how much you like to use the commentspace of my blog as your personal stage to demonstrate how very full of crap you are. But let me break your heart and tell you about that clever little thing called comment moderation. It exists in the general blogosphere, and it certainly exists on this blog. So you can leave me comments about what you think about my various body-parts and what you believe is a better function for them, but those comments won’t see the light of day. So boo hoo for you.
• If you have to ask a girl in the commentspace of her blog, about the color of her lingerie and whether she will have sex with you, there is a 137% chance that you will be be spending the rest of your life alone. Then again, you manage to question Darwinism with your existence, so it is only understandable that you try to shake the foundations of probability while you’re at it.
• When you want to tell me how pathetic you think I am, please get your basic grammar and spelling right. The purpose of insulting someone, is to insult them, not amuse them. If I am pointing at the screen, holding my tummy, and cackling, it would be reasonably fair to say that the purpose of your insult is lost. A recent example — Have anyonee ever told you that you sucks? Rod Stewart should perhaps compose a song about that.

Seeing as it is so easy to click away from a website that you don’t like, there are only two theories as to why people take the time to visit someone’s blog over and over, just to tell them how much they hate them — a) They were not spanked enough as a child b) They were spanked plenty as a child and have grown to crave it in their adulthood as well. Ooh, such a tough choice that.

Picture this. A scene from an Adoor Gopalakrishan movie. (Doordarshan Sunday afternoon fare, circa 1990.) An elderly man, sitting on the verandah of his house, looks stoically at an empty field. Not a soul is in sight. The emptiness of the field symbolic of his own lifeless existence. A cow wanders onto the field. The man blinks, acknowledging the presence of life. He stares at the cow. The cow looks up and stares back. After a while the man suddenly calls out — Raajamme? Silence. Raajammme! he calls louder this time. A nondescript looking woman (surprisingly named Raajamme) in a cotton saree and coconut oil in her hair emerges from inside the house, wondering what the noise is. She looks questioningly at him. The man points out the cow in question and says — pasu! The cow blinks in response.

The elderly Mallu man is me. The empty field, this blog. And the sad, wandering pasu (animal) is this tag from Dhammo. Not Dhammo himself, just the tag. (On a sidenote, I think I need to work on changing this ‘Have tag, think of Megha’ tendency of his.) But anyway, here we go. As if this blog doesn’t talk about me enough already, here’s more pointless information that you’ll never need —

• I am thinking about ..
  .. why I get suckered into doing tags like this.
  
• I said ..
  .. Hum bolega to bologe ke bolta hai.
  
• I want to ..
  .. do something earth-shattering like saving the world. And also keep my annoying cousins from sticking their nose into my life. And while I’m at it, read the complete works of Shakespeare. Yep, balance. Isn’t that what we all strive for?
  
• I wish ..
  .. no no. My to-be-son, Vish. I, Megha.
  
• I miss ..
  .. simpler times.
  
• I hear ..
  .. the sound of silence. And music. And birds. And voices in my head. And people’s thoughts. And conversations. Quite a cacophony, now that I think about it.
  
• I wonder ..
  .. I bandar. Yesh, I monkey. A clueless monkey at most times.
  
• I regret ..
  .. not marrying Abhishek Bachchan when I had the chance.
  
• I am ..
  .. I yam what I yam, and that’s all I yam. Popeye the Sailorman, ting ting!
  
• I dance ..
  .. the dhinkichiki!
  
• I sing ..
  .. ALL the time! Sample here.
  
• I cry ..
  .. buckets when I chop onions. And while watching Karan Johar movies. (If you believed the latter, you really shouldn’t be reading this blog.)
• I am not always ..
  .. insane.
  
• I make with my hands ..
  .. shadow puppets on train tunnel walls. A dog, a deer, a bird. You know more? Teach me, pliss.
  
• I write ..
  .. way more words than I should. Some here, on this blog. Some only in my mind.
  
• I confuse ..
  ..the hell out of people I talk to. And I confuse the meanings of similar sounding words. And the order of the alphabet. And my left with my right. And my home and cellphone numbers. And my TV and cable remotes. Yeah, I am easy to confuse.
  
• I need ..
  .. fawning fans who will do my bidding at the mere wave of my hand. Readers who think I am the next best thing after sliced bread. Crazed masses who worship the .. well, you get the drift.
  
• I should try ..
  .. flirting with my trolls. Maybe it’ll make them go away?
  
• I finish ..
  .. most things I start. Except when I don’t.
  

And now for some respectable souls who wouldn’t want to be caught indulging in such trivialities. Oh, if you don’t find yourself on this list, don’t feel left out. Please to treat my commentspace as your own home and use it generously!

• Falstaff – I think he’ll kill me for this, but his reaction alone should be worth the risk.
• Heh Heh – If Falsie doesn’t hurt me, he will. Probably kill me with a doodle, no less.
• Anurag – He is to me, what I am to Dhammo – a tag-bakra. A goat and a dog both.
• Sagnik – My only(?) Bong reader, so including him for diversity and all.
• Neha – My hone-waali samdhan. HAHK – Part Two, waiting to happen.
• Anantha – he’s being all pseud and all lately with fancy names, but he’s still apna aNTi.

Okie, that should be enough Raajammes. Now don’t go have a cow.