Day 30: You’ve not lived today until…

You’ve not lived today until you have done something
for someone who can never repay you!
– John Bunyan

I found the words tremendously meaningful…
…because, we can never say for sure someone can never repay us (not even after either of our times is up, because the impact of some good things are felt long after it is done) and that means we continue trying to do something to that effect for as long as we live. How better can then your life be, if you persist to do something amazing everyday? 🙂

…and the image immensely touching
because, it speaks not just a thousand words, but a million emotions as well!
❤

I am glad I came across this today,
to be able to make this my closing post for NaBloPoMo 2016!
.

THANK YOU
Swaram.
And all the lovely ladies, for a month of amazing reads.
This was fabulous!

Day 16: Go Set A Watchman

This is not a book review. I’m terrible at writing book reviews, so I shall not.

This is about the feeling I was left with when I’d finished the book. And for once, I can’t find the right words to express them.

To Kill A Mocking Bird shall always remain in my Top 5 favourites. The reason I loved TKAMB was because I identified a lot with Scout and loved her. I was also a huge fan of Atticus. But mainly, Scout. The tomboy that she was. The way her brother was her best friend. The way her father was no nonsense, yet loving. The way she was always with boys.

So, when I picked this one up, I was prepared to not like it enough. I had believed the reviews fellow readers gave. I’d played down my expectations and was ready to turn the last page over and think “Just did not do justice to the first one”.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I loved Go Set A Watchman for a lot of different reasons, Scout and Atticus being the prime ones. I shall not list them all here because I honestly don’t know how to word those, and I won’t do any justice.

All I know is, I loved the experience of reading this book. I read and re-read some portions because the sheer awesomeness brought tears to my eyes. I sat with a pencil and marked out some really touching parts. I read a certain bit and hugged Pumbaa tight. I typed out a particular bit and texted that to my brother. I thought back to my childhood and smiled fondly. I missed Achan a lot – a LOT. I felt immense gratitude to my parents for bringing me up the way I was brought up. I wanted to curl up inside the book and be at peace ❤

I will always love it for the many pearls of wisdom I picked out and stowed away in a far corner of my mind. I’ll leave you with these…

The Lord never sends you more than you can bear.

This helps me have that bit of extra faith to stop me from giving up…

Sometimes we have to kill a little so we can live.

…and this convinces me that while to err is human, to forgive can also be human; it doesn’t always take divinity.

Because finally,

…every man’s watchman, is his conscience.

Day 8: Back Where I BeLOnG!

When I set out to take on the NaBloPoMo Challenge, I had not blogged in 2.5 years. Not weeks or months, but years! And I was taking on a commitment to blogging every single day for the next 30 days!

Knowing myself fully well, I was near sure I’d give up right before I was due to begin, especially given the highly unfavourable conditions I was under 😛

A week into the challenge, I’ve not failed.

• Have I been blogging the way I used to long ago? No.
• Have I been taking my time to write a good draft, then review it and make sure it reads well to my liking? No.
• Have I been linking to other blogs and following some of those basic blogging etiquette? No.
• Have I been posting any pictures at all, which I once used to religiously do along with (almost) every post? No.
• Have I been reading other bloggers’ posts and commenting? No. (Except, today I did, quite a lot — and made me realise what a lot of amazing content I’m missing out on by not doing it more consistently!)
• Have I been writing from the sheer joy of writing, rather than to fulfil a commitment? No.

But.

• Have I been enjoying the past one week I spent in this much-loved space? YES!
• Have I been grateful to Swaram for pulling me in? YES!
• Have I been glad to get out my hibernation? YES!
• Have I been happy to get Back Where I BeLOnG? YES, YES, YES!

It’s not easy, getting back to something you’ve been so out of touch with. Takes grit, will and an enormous amount of convincing self to go ahead with it. The first time I attempted it, it brought back a loving heart into my life. The next time I did something like this, I LOVED it. And now, this.

I think I ought to revisit my life and see if there is anything I decided not to walk headlong into just because I’d thought it would be tough 😛 I’m sure as hell to love it and be glad for taking the plunge. I guess when the negativity flows out of your life and leaves all that space free, good things automatically begin journeying towards you to fill up that void. Truly, “Acche Din” are here 😉

And that’s especially true today, for other obvious (but rarely) patriotic reasons! I’m still dazed (it happened) and amazed (yay, it happened) at the end of the 500-1000 saga! It’s against my personal blog policies to dwell on serious political/economic issues in this space, so I shall not. But I really cant help being overjoyed, and yet still amazed it actually is happening! Such a radical move. Bravo!

I Finished it to Win these ;)

Like I wrote here, I had also participated in CB‘s story-finishing contest – Finish it to win it. I finished it to win…these following awards. Well, my story was so lame, but I had fun participating, writing, commenting and then commenting again on the first prize winner’s post 😀

Here’s the link to the first half of the story. And here’s what I wrote, the second half 😀 Bear with me (and the story).

And here are what CB gave!!! Yey!

For participating...and writing a story 😉

...and for guessing who wrote which one 😉

Contest, stories, comments and character

Chatterbox, lovingly referred to as “CB”, ran a contest at her blog. Named Finish it to Win it!! (yes, you see the badge on my right panel here?), she gave us one half of a story…and asked us to complete it the way we liked, in less than 1200 words. Check out the contest, the rules, the first half of the story CB wrote, and the entries by a bunch of enthusiasts at the Finish it to Win it!! page of her blog 😉

It was a load of fun. Or, should I say it is a load of fun, since the entries are still being posted as per the order she got them in…

What’s most amazing about this contest is the fact that ONE STORY — of a husband, wife, daughter, an ex-girlfriend and a particular situation — could end in 19 different ways! The husband, Will, now has 19 personalities; Rose (the wife) has over 10 (‘coz she came out as a loving, innocent wife in more than one entry) and Mary (the not-so-virgin ex-girlfriend) has over 15! 😀 Betty, sadly has only two: one of a sleep-a-holic and one where she’s a naughty poet! 😉 Isn’t it stunning, that the same people and the same situaton, can end in uniquely different endings when different people look at it?

Some of the entries are so transparent of its authors’ characters: you read them and you know who wrote them :D, while others have tried to portray a scenario which so does not portray them. Some of them made it humourous, some went for unexpectedly awesome twists, some tried the romantic route, some the whacky! And one, the utmost nonsensical ROFL-material: indeed shows his/her “Will Power” !!!! 😀

Now, I guess the only sad outcome would be that I went mad when it came to comments and was highly critical. I’m sure I’m gonna lose ALL my blog readers for the comments I’ve put up on their stories. Sigh! 😦

If I’m allowed to defend myself, let me tell you: I was only being nuts. The past few days saw my most jobless and crazy days in office. Though not entirely jobless, I made more friends there, and became close to quite a few crazy ones 😀 Which effected in us having internal chats on the most craziest, LOL topics ever. And in between all those chats would come up one of the new stories. Well, crazy chats can be contagious over to WordPress too!

And when Gyanban commented, I think provoked by my looong comment, in one of the stories about how people turned subjective about these things and said “we cannot not like this story because some of our personal belief system disagrees with the concept. “, I realised maybe I went overboard! :DFor an argument’s sake, I can certainly say “I can not like something because it’s against my personal beliefs”, but well, it’s not a point to be arguing about in this context.

I apologise if I’ve been rude and have hurt any of you authors (no, no one gave me a hint that they’ve been hurt; I’m saying this because I felt I may owe it to some people).

Again, let me tell you, I’m not against any of you personally…or your thoughts, for that matter. It being a contest, and it being about having fun, I was just conducting postmortems on the different characters portrayed by Rose and Will and Mary and the rest. I reread some of my comments and felt I sounded awful — well, at least to the authors, I must’ve sounded awful! 😀 Those authors — whose story I criticised too much — must think “And she’s so good to me when she comments on my blog: because she knows it’s me. Here, when she doesn’t know, she’s being honest and herself. Hypocrite”

No, am not a hypocrite 😀 If I don’t like a story, I’ve been honest about it. If I’ve liked it, I’ve been honest about it 😀 Just like I do when I comment on your posts on your blogs too 😉 If I’ve said “I don’t like this story”, that’s all I’ve meant: that I don’t like the story; it does not mean I don’t like you or your character. In one particular story, which was against my ideals and principles, I’ve been vocal about it. Again, that does not mean I dislike the author; it only means I don’t necessarily agree with his/her idea. Again, maybe that was just a twist the person came up with, irrelevant of his/her ideals. Except for one or two stories, I have no clue who wrote which 😀 So, there’s NOTHING PERSONAL about any of my comments.

If I’ve inadvertently hurt any of you, I seek your apology!

P.S.: I’m honestly not as bad as I sound in my comments 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀
And pPlease vote for me, for I wrote the best one 😛 😀 😉

Finish it to Win it!!

Technorati, list my friend!

A friend wanted to know what Technorati was…and how she could get her blog linked in there! Apparently, everytime she tried, she got an error message.

Well, how would I know? So, I went ahead, researched it, figured out how to claim a blog on Technorati, followed every step and finally got to doit.

Only, now they want me to paste this code here: 7VBURM8BWT3B, so they can come verify that I’m the real author of this blog. Sigh!

So, here you go, Technorati. Now, could you please help my friend put up her blog in your database too!? 🙂