Of course the rest of nature doesn’t like to be left behind, so it comes together to provide a backdrop to the leaves — impeccable blue skies, vibrant green pine trees, orchard grounds dotted with bushels of shiny red apples, chrysanthemums of a dozen colors blooming at every corner, and farms with hundreds of roly-poly cheerful pumpkins piled high, all waiting to happily tumble-tumble down.

But fall isn’t about color alone. It announces its arrival with a myriad of sounds, as well. Babbling brooks that tinkle at the first signs of frost. Rustling branches trying to shed the last of their leaves. Fallen leaves whooshing around in mini-tornadoes. The creak of the metal of an abandoned railroad track, one of the first to recognize the arrival of the cold. The rhythmic thuds of apples in a quiet orchard. The crunch of dried leaves under your feet as you walk on a cobblestone path. The squelch of old leaves in a puddle, as you step into it off the curb. Every single sound an instrument in the symphony of the season.

Fall is about touch too. The soft feel of a carpet of freshly fallen leaves. The kind that cover the ground so completely that you cannot tell what’s below. Bare ground, green grass, grey stone and charcoal pavement all painted over with reds and oranges, making everything seem equally friendly, equally warm and welcoming. Or a rough bale of hay beneath you during a hayride. Or the hard bumps of orphaned pine cones against your fingers as you collect them from beneath trees that have unthinkingly rejected them. Or the squishy feel of the insides of a pumpkin as you sit with your hands buried to your elbows in one, while a giggling three-year old makes you carve it.

And what is fall without the cornucopia of familiar smells and tastes? Of hot cider with a hint of cinnamon, nutmeg, orange and cloves. Of the smell of butter and sugar from freshly baked tarts, tempting you into the local bakery. Of the crunch of piping-hot cooked apples basted in brown sugar, waiting to go into a pie. Of memories of golden maple syrup as you drive by a sugar bush. Of the smell of fresh carved pumpkins greeting you at people’s doorsteps. Of the lingering smell of pine trees in the air, even when you cannot see any nearby. Of Halloween candy that leaves you on a permanent sugar high. Of moist earth as layers of leaves are raked away. Of leaves slowly growing old.

It’s the season of change, when the skirts get longer, jackets are pulled around tighter, and walking becomes more purposeful as people hurry indoors. When cheeks turn pink as familiar faces burst into smiles. A season of lingering tight hugs, of quick kisses shared on park benches, of hands held a little longer. Of sipping on big mugs of coffee clasped tightly with both hands. Of watching your breath fog up and making pretend smoke puffs. Of sneaking up on a squirrel while it ruminates on what berry to eat, and having it look up and pose for you as you gleefully click.

Fiery yet melancholic, bold yet tender, quiet like an aging monarch, romantic like a new lover, sprightly like a child .. fall has many a persona, playing many a role. And as it concludes its performance, takes a bow and exits gracefully, it seems the perfect time to applaud the season. A season that makes your senses come alive. A season that makes your senses dance.

There’s something very warm and friendly about old typewriters. Like a friend you sit down with and unburden your heart to, safe with the knowledge that he’ll take it to his grave. The steady clackety-clack reassuring you that he is listening. Each tching of the carriage-return, comforting you, making you lighter.

Then again, they’re like old men you meet near park benches. Weatherbeaten yet full of spunk. Packed with stories waiting to be told and retold. Of love, of valor, of sadness and of hope. And just when you thought you’d heard them all, a new one’s pulled out of the bag.

And sometimes they’re artists. Taking your disjointed thoughts and putting words around them. Making sense of your nonsense. Finding images within your incoherence and painting them for you. Giving you a chance to take a step back and look at your thoughts from the outside. Reintroducing yourself to you.

Some letters clean and precise. Others blackened and worn. Warm rusted metal and cool flashy chrome. The familiar smell of ink, like an old pal’s cigar. And the odd sharp edge that lurks around, nicking you when you least expect it. Little wonder that they make such good friends.

I feel its presence around me always. Sometimes as it sweeps me up into a storm, leaving me breathless and gasping for more .. and at other times, as it slows down to softly set me back on the ground, before resuming its unstoppable happy little dance. And yet when I try to hold it and describe it, it plays hide-and-seek with me. Thumbs its nose at me playfully, as it hops and skips away, leaving me smiling to myself, wondering why I even tried. I gaze at it dreamily, as it gives words and form to emotions I always felt, but was never aware of. An unknown force writing new pages of my journal.

I hum the song, languidly caressing each note and reluctantly moving on to the next one .. but the notes tug at me, wanting me to touch them one more time .. and I find myself singing them over and over again. Till they becomes a part of me, permeating my smile, my hopes, my desires .. till I am one with them. Till I am complete.

Some melodies are like some people .. they come into your life, washing over your senses like the waves, while you carefully try to preserve the ocean you’ve just discovered, in the palm of your hand. You could spend a lifetime trying to put into words how they make you feel, but you know you never can.

And even while you try, you fall deeper and deeper in love. Such are the melodies of your heart.

Last week, nominations were announced in multiple categories including Best Designed IndiBlog. This blog also made it to the list. Much happiness. A couple of blogs in the first stage of nominations used non-original designs. After receiving negative feedback on their inclusion, the organizers eventually withdrew them from the list and the contest went to the polls. And then they had a change of mind. Thus the repoll.

The organizers, by way of an explanation, claim that it does not matter where a blogger got their design from. Created, inspired, lifted, mutilated – it doesn’t really matter. If it looks good, it qualifies. They go on to add that in honoring a ‘borrowed’ design, they actually mean to honor the ORIGINAL designer, not the person lifting it. And lastly, they add, since templates are part of the ‘blogging phenomenon’ and ‘most blog-wares provide starter templates’, a blog using someone else’s design should still be eligible.

Here’s what we say — Sure. Using someone’s design that has been made public domain (in the form of a theme/template) is most certainly not unethical. I wouldn’t call it plagiarism. But entering a DESIGN contest using someone ELSE’S design IS. If, by honoring a blog that has re-used someone else’s design they are really honoring the original designer, then THAT designer’s name should be on the list, not the person borrowing it, yes? If a piece of writing is a writer’s intellectual property then the same is true of a designer and their design. A designer, by making their design available for public consumption may have waived their intellectual property rights to USE the design, but it doesn’t mean they have allowed you to ENTER A CONTEST with that design.

The organizers also claim that 99% of the blogosphere uses borrowed templates, and only 1% showcases original design and thus it was unfair to narrow the playing field to that 1%. While firstly, I doubt the credibility of that statistic, even if that were true, then why SHOULDN’T that 1% be honored? It is the DESIGN category, for crying out loud! Let’s take a different example. Say 2% of the blogs in the blogosphere are Telugu Indic Blogs. Still only those 2% qualify for the Telugu Indic Blog award, yes? So why should things be any different in Best Design? It is NOT an award for content. It is an award for aesthetics, colors, navigation and user interface. Not how cleverly you can borrow and customize someone else’s creativity.

Anyhoo, this is my take on the situation — it is evident that this award does not respect originality and thus fails the very concepts it sets out to honor. For those of you who voted and are willing to vote again, please do so. For those of you who are sick of the whole affair and don’t wish to vote again, I feel your pain.

Either way, the outcome doesn’t matter anymore.

Whee! It is that time once again. An old one bites the dust and a new one rises from it. Yes, I’ve already written a post about the holiday season and all the associated whoop-de-doo, but nobody mentioned a rule that I cannot write two. So there. Or here. Or wherever. Bleh.

You shovel yourself out of a foot of snow, drag yourself to work and discover that the office is half-empty, ‘cos your colleagues are busy tanning themselves silly on some undiscovered exotic sunny beach and insist on sending you postcards that some idiotic receptionist tapes up right next to the coffee machine. What’s worse, your annoying cubemate-from-hell will wear his green and red polka dot sweater and sidey up to you, demanding that you say cheese although you feel mostly sour cream-ish. Some forgettable person from the third floor will click the picture which will soon find its way into an office collage that the pesky chick from sales will put together. If she is in a good mood, she might just choose to tell you how the aqua-colored shirt you are wearing in the picture makes you look slimmer, leaving you sniffing around suspiciously for the intended slight.

But at the end of the day, you step out and look around to see the trees decked up with millions of starry lights. The snow on the branches glows softly. The changing colors of the clock tower light go from blue to purple to pink to red to green. Little children in bright-colored earmuffs skate around the frog pond, while tired but happy parents look on, holding hands. You smell the hot apple cider and hear the tinkle of the sleigh bells. As you pass by the park, an inflated Santa waves at you jocularly, his rotund belly bobbing against the sidewalk benches. And no matter what your day has been like, you cannot resist a grin. And you jump up on an impulse and chomp at a snowflake floating in the air.

So many reasons to smile. Friends near and loves afar. Some reasons in front of you and some simply in your heart. All making you look forward to the new year. So here’s wishing all my readers and commenters happier, better times and a new year that bring you the best of everything you wish for.

Update : Pliss to not miss the priceless comments section of this thread that was rejuvenated thanks to aNTi’s breezy rendition of a hit song from Bluffmaster. The author of this blog is not responsible for the madness that followed.

Isn’t it amazing how some songs remain with you for years together? You never think of them during all that time. Yet one day many eons later, you hear a bit of the interlude playing somewhere, or catch someone singing it, and find yourself humming along like it was a tune from yesterday. You remember every variation, every word, every obscure little thing about it that you never heard consciously, even the first time around. And the goosebumps wash over you much like the visiting memories you never knew you had.

Like someone you thought you forgot, but instantly recognize. From the twinkle in their eyes to the crinkle in their smile. From the tum-dee-dum notes in the prelude, to the variations in the rhythm. From the distinct way they laugh to the way a certain word is sung .. all the li’l nuances that turn a forgettable song into an unforgettable memory.

And in that music you search for yourself — the you from yesterday that laid the foundations for the you of today. Breaking up the song into little pieces, you look amongst them for the life you lived — a simpler, worry-free you from the past, frozen in a few moments of a melody.

Some songs are like old friends. They bring back memories. They make you reminisce. Fondly, wistfully. And like silent friends, they stay with you for life, reminding you from time to time, of who you once were.

One of the results was a blog. He eagerly clicked on the link only to be rudely shocked. ‘What do they mean I cannot act?! And that if I was the last man left on earth with the last woman, she’ll mutate and split into two beings rather than be with me?! They can’t do this to me! I shall teach them a lesson!’, he thought, picking up his phone and pressing the speed-dial button 1. ‘Daddy! Somebody doesn’t like me! I wanna sue him!‘.

Tomorrow, that blogger could be me. And Tusshar Kapoor could be .. well .. Tusshar Kapoor.

I may be indulging in my usual silliness, but this is no laughing matter. This is more of an issue to be hopping raving mad about. I am sure, most of you have already heard of the recent appalling developments in the blog world about the IIPM matter. I could write an irate rant about it, but there are others who have said it much better. For those of you just catching up, Amit has a complete roundup of happenings, Neha takes it international at Global Voices, and our folks at DesiPundit are tracking all updates.

It’s a lot of links but please read them all, if you can. And if you are concerned about this topic’s ramifications, please link to it on your blogs and help publicize it. This distasteful issue needs more MSM attention and as bloggers and blog readers we can do our part in spreading the word. Kudos to Gaurav and Rashmi, and a big pat on the back for the blogosphere’s solidarity.

They say a million monkeys with a million keyboards can generate a masterpiece. A million monkeys did a lot more than that. Yes, nicely timed with the Dusshera season and all — a million monkeys also helped wipe out the big bad guy, and we can do it again. So what if this time around he has a ponytail?

Tags: IIPM

But does love also mean never having to feel sorry?

So I wrote a post about giving and forming impressions in the blog world, based on Sharanya’s interesting analysis. Yes we are back to interesting. Of course, the wise-ass in me cannot resist looking for humor in every situation, so I turned it into this elaborate whoop-de-doo about different responses and the potential impressions they give.

In hindsight (no it doesn’t mean I was checking out someone’s ass), I realize this may have given Sharanya the impression that I am offended ‘cos she has apologized. Now apologies are something I take very seriously, so I feel the need to clarify some things from my end. I have already done so in a comment response, but for the sake of all those readers who avoid my commentspace like I avoid Sumeet Saigal movies, here is a repost of what I said, with some minor edits —

You know, I was thinking. That courtroom scene I talked about in my earlier post in which I was the hapless heroine? On second thoughts, I think I’d be better off cast as the defense lawyer. Wot say?

When I started my blog, I imagined it to be a place where I could be myself without letting the role I was playing, influence it. No compulsions to be the exasperating daughter, annoying sister, curious friend or nosy neighbor. Just my thoughts, expressed my way.

I thought a blog resolved the dichotomies we face as individuals. It blurred the lines between what we revealed to people and what we hid from them. We no longer separated our public and private lives. A blog overlapped these spaces to an extent. If Rao sir from class VI were present here, he would have interjected with — ‘Waitt, aii weel yekshplain with pickchar. You seeee, the red circle is public space. Blue circle, private space. And intersection set — purple flower petal shape, that is a blog.‘ Yes, we had a lot of bahaaron phool barsaao-ing in classes VI and VII. But you get the drift.

But now, as time has passed, I am more aware of the fact that I don’t always shoot my mouth off and say things like I was sharing a private thought with myself. When someone pisses me off, I don’t tell them how I’d like to boil them in oil, hang them upside down from a tree, paint them like a voodoo doll and do an African victory dance chanting —? jumbaaye agumbaye yaa aaygo aaygo aaygo. I visualize it in Eastmancolor, with twenty-four track stereophonic sound. I imagine being dressed like Sridevi in a jungle outfit, with a hibiscus phulwa coyly tucked in my hair, fluttering my two-inch long eyelashes while I do the dance. But, but, but — I don’t express it. Instead, I find myself thinking before I write, because I know I am being read and watched. So the dichotomy, albeit a different kind, is still in place.

In that sense, a blog is not just an online journal. As bloggers, we don’t simply write. We write for an audience. It doesn’t mean we necessarily pander to them. Well, sometimes we do, but that’s just because we luuuve you, don’t we precious? But we write, hoping to be read and knowing we are being read. Every blogger, no matter what they say, started their site because they want other people to read what they have to say. So, say what you will about ‘self-expression‘ and give the highfalutin spiel about how ‘I write only to give vent to my own feelings, I don’t care if anyone reads it‘ but at the end of the day, a blog is not just about introspection, it is also about performance. It isn’t navel-gazing alone, it is as much navel-baring.

So my conclusion — All bloggers hope to be Shilpa Shetty one day. Wait, I will yekshplain. This time, sadly, not with pickchar. You see, bloggers are like the sidey extras dancing behind the heroine in a Hindi film. The heroines, of course, are the A-list bloggers, while the sideys behind them are the ones hoping to make it big someday. So that brigade of tummy-baring starlets dancing behind the heroine — that’s us. Yes, this includes you men too. You wear those clingy transparent black shirts and dance in studio rain, so you’re just as bad. We’re all in the same boat. A bunch of bloggers, diligently baring our navels and souls, each hoping to get noticed, hoping to be the next Shilpa Shetty. Aw c’mon lets face it, when it comes to navel-baring, there’s not many who do a better job than her. Wot say?