Absence

I started this blog in 2019. It started with a post on either of the days of a weekend. The posts were random, just like I wanted them to be. Since they used to regularly be written and posted on each weekend, my friend coined the term “WEEKEND BLOGBUSTER” for them. And that’s how the journey went, one BLOGBUSTER after another. Sometimes I observed a break of one weekend or so, and compensated that with writing something on a weekday. Gradually the blog grew from one post, to now with more than 130 posts. These posts discuss my views on social events, politics, cinema, books etc. There is no defined pattern. They are just stories in some form or another, mostly inspired by observations made on an event or person or experience. But this last month, I have not written a single post. This WEEKEND BLOGBUSTER is coming after a lag of 3 or more weeks. Today also I had nothing to write, only till the time when I started pondering on the thought that do I have no story since so many days? What changed? Are the events so uninspiring now?

Looking back at how I spent last few weeks and the experiences I gathered, speak of a different story. Few weeks back itself my husband went back to Sydney for his work. So there I had a big story to write about, that could have been enriched with love, longing, grief, and rationality. Yet I found myself struck with null in the following weekend.

Next week I went for my first ever desert and camel safari. The day was packed with first time events, that included watching sand dunes, badly maintained archaeological sites that were screaming their stories to me, great company of Deepak sir and Nisha, who made me feel at home in the day long journey, and many more experiences as well. Yet the words fail to flow out of me, and I couldn’t pen down anything worth sharing.

In the week followed by that I went for my first ever “village safari”. This was by far one of the most unique experience for me in Jodhpur. We saw blackbucks in the wild, went to authentic Bishnoi village of Rajasthan, practiced pottery, saw how block painting is done, happened to accidentally celebrate Eid with the women of the block painting family, and a lot more than I can write here. To my surprise though, I yet again had nothing but my absence to share on my blog.

So the question struck me today, that what was different now than earlier? Was all that nothing worthwhile? I know it was. But only when I sat with myself today, I realised that despite of many new experiences in the past few weeks, I was internally overwhelmed with all my professional and personal events. And instead of internalising my thoughts , I rather agreed to sweep them under the carpet, and kept myself busy with engaging in external distractions. Writing however takes channelling your internal thoughts with definitiveness. To write even a sentence you have to be firm in your thoughts, have a much more understanding and clarity of the subject. That is the reason why it is said that when you are worrying about an event, write what is bothering you, that itself will solve half of the problem as then there is a definite issue to be resolved. Writing this post today makes me feel like I am back home. Surely this activity that started as a habit, is also my abode now.

P.S. I am writing this post while sitting in a parlour that has kept me waiting since past 1.5 hours. See there is something good hidden in everything 😜.