blogathon/Stories/Verses

Strangers in the night

Posted on by Archana K B / 0 Comment

That day both were together,
And sitting next to each other,
One was chatting heavily on phone,
the other lost in her own thoughts.

As the night progressed,
Conversations got started,
And numbers were exchanged.

The relation grew like a flower
Attracting wrath from every corner
For theirs was not an ordinary,
Though it seemed perfect in their memory.

Over the days the flower drooped,
Unable to bear the stains and poops.

And then they did that too together.

From strangers in the night,
To the partners in death forever,
The travel they did together,
Had changed their lives tonight.

————————————

100 Words on Saturday - Write Tribe

The post was written based on the prompt by WriteTribe – 100 words on Saturday.
Yay I finally did write on a prompt!

blogathon/Links/Personal/Webscape

Pulling yourself up

Posted on by Archana K B / 3 Comments
This blogathon or daily blogging is getting hard on me. Initially I had planned of scheduling posts and did for few days. More than the weekends, I find it hard to come up with posts when I get totally involved with N. The frustrations then pull me down, and I try to get hold of some positive blogs or entertainment as diversion tactic to pull myself.

I am intrigued by the personal experience of positive result by the use of Reiki for anger management. I did attend a trial yoga class before, and though it made me realize how stiff my muscles are, it did not persuade me to change my perception that it is overrated. For me, its just another form of exercise and like other exercises, gym, aerobics, dance, yoga too has many advantages and thats  it. I have never been a fan of Baba Ramdev, and to think of it, I think that’s when I started disliking yoga. It was getting so popular, and like students being forced to do engineering, I was also made to tempt with an inflated yoga balloon. So this time, I am thinking of giving Reiki a try, but still not decided on when.

A bit of goal searching, led me to register on various sites, of which LiveYourLegend tops the list. It made me realize there are several other people in world, like me, searching for life goals, passion, mentors, guides to help them out. The Fleximoms was the first website I stumbled across, where I heard about career counseling. The concept of life coach and career coach was entirely new to me. The flow of questions thrown at me for answering and the resulting brainstorming session with myself, somehow gives me hope to move on.

I had started this post on 9.30pm, thinking I would do some meme to write for today’s post. But rather than revealing myself, it came naturally, that its better to share the few links I had, to others who may be in the same boat. So go on, find yourself, change yourself and pull yourself.

blogathon/Mélange – Random Tidbits

Weekend tidbits

Posted on by Archana K B / 4 Comments
Its holiday for N because of the Pongal festival. Two full days hands on with N is enough for me to drive insane. If RK gets involved with more work at office, then on the third day, you can see a different side of mine. I would be quiet and broody, bottling with suppressed emotions, because I could not get time for myself, or to talk it out (RK is busy in office, remember?). What do I do if at all I got time? Yes, I don’t work. But if I don’t get my daily dose of internet usage, my mind gets hungry and the balance (yes, the mental one) comes tumbling after.. oops, i meant tumbling down. (I am now “speaking” rhymes!) You may wonder, why not call someone else to chat out. That’s where Murphy appears. The law of time allows very few people to be actually called friends whom you can call or chat anytime and anywhere, and on top of it, this Murphy will add his own tweak to it by making the very few one unavailable at the right moment.

Anyways, as you might have noticed, I was struggling (I still am) to get on some meaningful posts over this blog this weekend. I still have to get a hang of how to do so much in very little time, like, writing a blog, reading other blogs, commenting on them, marketing yourself, and making your presence felt on social media, gaining some knowledge  for your personal development etc in the time available here and there, when N sleeps, or when RK take cares of her, etc. Most of the days, N pulls me to bed since she wants only ‘yours truly’ to cuddle up with her, though internally I love that crushing hug.

So I was reading some blogs, and came across the series of posts which can be called blogging debate, on whether Rama of Ramayana was a good man or not. Frankly, I am not fully religious, and hence neutral towards all of these mythological stories. For me, they are just made up stories told again and again over the ages, and should be considered just that, symbolic fantasy stories formulated over the ages by ancient people, so as to form a base ground or principles, which were to be followed by others for good living.    But what is remarkable is how these stories have some similar traits in this century too. And then there are similar right or wrong debate on the deeds of Chanakya and many other historical events.

I have noticed majority of the young people question the unanswered questions the same way, either by being atheist or agnostic. Are you one of those or one of those very few ardent believers in this new generation?

blog-related/blogathon/Thoughts

Writing prompts and ideas

Posted on by Archana K B / 4 Comments
Yet another Saturday. The Writetribe will bring out “100 words on Saturday” prompt soon. It brings out prompts on Wednesdays too. And if you are in need of daily prompts, the daily post at wordpress blog has published an free ebook for publishing blogposts daily. And then there is the “pressure” theme related prompts for those participating in Nablopomo January 2014. Recently I found out another Blogathon January 2014 post containing prompts for the month of January.

Why am I listing out all these prompts? Because I am very bad at them. If given a prompt, my mind will shut itself out and refuse to think on the topic. This also reminds me of the popular exam question from the school days, on making a sentence to include the given word. This is one of my main hurdles to overcome in the process of becoming a better writer. If you are a lyricist, you should be able to write to a given tune. And if you are a writer, you should be able to write on a specific theme, or a prompt, right?
Another improvement I wish to bring in is to include photos in the posts. For every travelogue I have written in this blog, I should have uploaded some photos, to say the least. But I am that lazy to copy, crop or resize, edit and upload for just a single post. A picture do say a thousand words, and being the photo lover that I am, I should be including more pictures from Google even if its not a photo post. Also, most of the posts in this blog are unedited and written on the go. I feel I have a lot way to go if I really need to hone my writing skills on that aspect. The post can be more structured, planned and organized into sections, or points, edited for proper English, you get the idea? But what if my post then seem artificial and not straight from the heart. That would be my worst fear becoming true.
I remember reading about Blogathon among personal blogs from the blog of the famous author, Preeti Shenoy.  There are innumerous blogs, which make money, by providing tech content, news, reblogging other posts, posting daily and making it more professional. They did had a reason to blog daily. They needed to bring traffic to their site to gain money. But here she was blogging away for happiness because she loved to write. And each of the posts, were straight out of the heart, as if a virtual friend is talking to you about some topic, or how did the day went etc. On reading such posts, it made me happy. Every day I would look forward to her posts, so that it brings in some cheer or some positive thought to my lonely mind. And the guest posts by her husband, Satish Shenoy was sprinkled with lots of humour, that you end up having a lingering smile on your face.
Then I read a similar Blogathon on Subha’s blog, which again was another personal blog. And I was really surprised at the huge lengths of the blog post, that I could not finish reading them. Most of them were a potpourri of thoughts, travelogues, day to day happenings, or pieces of life which passed its vibes onto me, watering the seed in me to write more and more. The new year rang at the right time when the iron rod was indeed hot. And here I am, trying to write a blog post, for the tenth consecutive day!
For me, writing such heartfelt posts gives me immense satisfaction rather than writing with keywords and SEO in mind. And that’s why I failed in the last attempt to write actively. Do you feel the same?
blogathon/Thoughts/Travel

The story of hand prints

Posted on by Archana K B / 3 Comments

When you are doing a daily post challenge there is an invisible pressure to churn out new blog posts. The background thread in your mind has to be running full time to generate new ideas, or view  the day to day happenings with a blogger point of view, just like a photographer views a real picture with his photographic eye. There are some days when I write two posts together and schedule them over the days, while this post was written with a blank mind. And that’s when some of the lingering thoughts from your mind, pours out of its cocoon to fill the blog post.

One of the key takeaway from the Rajasthan trip we had in December was the Mehrangarh Fort. It was the most impressive fort for me. The entire Jodhpur view, huge walls, the intricate carvings on the stone with the bugle music and drums echoing through the corridors, and the winds blowing right on your face. The guide was helpful in showing only the main art museums and galleries and was rambling many names of the kings and wars happened at the fort. He left us on the way back when we declined his offer for visiting shops and he missed out some interesting points which I had found online.

While I was searching for reviews and travelogues for planning this trip, I had stumbled across many blogs. One of them had a post on this Jodhpur fort. It was a photo showing the handprints of the queens who performed sati ritual. And as we walked down out of the fort, I did notice them on one of the gates. Unfortunately, the camera was with RK who was already few steps ahead and hence I could not take the photo myself. Though some forum say they are symbolic, the mere fact that women like you and me underwent that ritual sent shivers down my spine. Our next stop was the Jaswant Thada which was the cremation ground in the olden days. The combined effect of the handprints and the logs of wood lying scattered around the rocky hills has left an imprint in my mind thinking how the grand lives led by the queens and kings came to an end.

Though I could not find that exact post which triggered this series of thoughts, I found another post describing the visit to Mehrangarh Fort which shares similar view on the old ritual.