Vanakkam. Vandhanam. Namaskaram.

Blog. blog. BLOG. bLog. BloG. Blawg.

I’ve repeated this word over and over in my head. It doesn’t mean anything to me right now. So now what do I write in this blog of mine?

Well, what do I write?

My first dabbling at writing was hilarious. I’d have a friend give me sets of rhyming words and then I’d make up all the words in between. Like this.

Once there was a king who was bossy,
He had a daughter named Rosy.
The princess had a golden ball
Which rolled into the assembly hall.
There stood an ugly demon,
Who thought the ball was a lemon.
Instantly he picked it up,
And squeezed it into his teacup.
He began to drink,
Without a think.
It tasted bitter,
And very much like litter.
Hence he poured out the tea,
Into the raging sea.
In came the princess so red,
With lots of tears to shed.
When the demon tried to make her calm,
The princess felt for his palm.
Surprisingly she became small,
And had a great fall.
She landed in the demon’s belly,
And felt very much like jelly.
The princess was seen for the last time,
All because of the demon’s lime.
So next time you get stomach pain,
Think of the princess’ efforts which went in vain.

I was ten.

Then I played around with rhyming schemes. I rhymed nice with white mice- wait for it- in a poem about the lady of spring. Then followed writing assignments, competitions I was pushed into because nobody else wanted to do it.

And I wrote. I won my first writing contest with the cliche of all short stories. “It was all a dream”. Then when I was given topics and wasn’t feeling very creative, I resorted to high drama. A man lay dying. His life flashed before his eyes. Everything from family drama to existential crises.

When I was feeling creative, I wrote one article containing all of the below.
Purple feathers. Maggi noodles. A rabbit. The oil situation.
I wrote two pages about shoelaces.

Then I realised I could write without forcing it. What followed were teenage attempts at poetry. More refined, though might I say, a bit less entertaining. I lost my affinity to rhyming and played with words and rhythm. I wrote stories and made my friends look at the mundane differently. My subjects were human. And ordinary. Always. Well, almost.

Then I got out of school. The customary blog started and stopped. The typical excuses. The no time. The busy with exams. The perfectionist. The lazy goose. I wrote only when it overflowed. What came out was way too personal to share.

So now that I’ve run out of excuses, let’s write again. That brings me back to this blog. BLOG. Oh, god, I’m doing it again.
So what do I write about? The bulb went off in my head. Bells ringing in the background. The one topic I’ve always had something to talk about. Let’s write about books. Words. Stories.

So here goes, to getting started, and not stopping.