Blogger Booked

 By the Will of God Almighty, I have been successful in getting a post from my friend as the celebrations finally start. This post comes from my close friend Neha. Neha enjoys writing poems, anecdotes and short stories. She found out that she had a flair for writing after she started blogging in the off time. She later went on to become a celebrated name among bloggers who enjoy poetry and esthetic writing.  Shes a popular name on the biggest Blog networking sites like Indiblogger and Blogadda. Surprisingly though, she started blogging this time last year, which makes her just as old as Dr Timepass. But what made her bigger than Dr Timepass is the pure pleasure that she generates out of her words.

Heres Neha... 


 


 
One of my good friend, Shree Harsha is celebrating his blog’s 1 year anniversary and during the months of June and July he is asking some of his friends to do a guest post on his blog and I got a chance to do my part too at his blog. Hearty congratulations for him and his blog. And while I was talking with him about what I should write, I remembered that even my blog needs to celebrate its anniversary which was on 10^th June actually. So I’m an eleven days late in recognising one of the proudest moments of me being a writer. Nonetheless, it’s never too late right?

So he asked me to write about me being a blogger and what got me into writing and how is my journey in the blogging world so far. I’ve never written about myself and especially on my creative writing side and so this is a first and quite a toughie for me as anything related to me, results in a lot of writer’s block in my mind. Since I hate being in the writer’s block loop, I’m going to try and make this post readable and interesting (oh, please don’t fall asleep!).

So here are some of the questions asked by my friend and some other questions that I ask myself to give an outlook for this historic journey of the author behind Neha’s Journal. (Since this is all about me, I shall shamelessly brag here and there!).

When did I start writing?

It all began with a pencil and a paper and also a chalk piece and a black board when I was about 5. I had just learnt my alphabets and the teacher at the kindergarten had done an excellent job in making me write my very first set of cursive alphabets. And that was when I realised, 17 years later I would become a famous blogger. Okay, that might have gone a wee-bit over the top!

Coming to the genuine part: Writing has been one of the most familiar things for me. Well, everyone writes. Even kids who hate writing has to write when given assignments. Even I was one of them. I hated writing. My hand would pain and I never really learned to improve my hand-writing. So that was me when I was 7 or 8.

But one day my whole perception towards writing changed. All because of a movie called “Harriet the spy”. I was 11 when I saw this movie and somehow spying on friends and writing about them in a book fascinated me more than anything else (talk about television having its influence on young minds!). Even playing with stuffed animals and barbies started to become boring for me from then onwards.

And so I started with this whole diary business. At first it was just a book filled with drawings and stuff and not much related to any actual writing. But when I stepped into 7^th grade, that was the starting point of the whole teen-age drama for me, I started to notice things other than pencil boxes, erasers, insects and butterflies. I started to notice “people”. My classmates and their individual behaviour, their laughter, their temper and their voices seemed very interesting for someone who loved to observe and write about them.

Somehow without my knowledge, genuine observing became notorious spying and I became the mecca of class gossips. I with my gang of friends used to spy on some of the class boys who went to weird places to play cricket. The boys came to know about this and we got into trouble. And I used to write about everything that transpired at school. Now when I turn back those pages, and read my past writings (with sever grammatical errors and heart-rending spelling mistakes!) I feel good to go back to those days through my words. They are fun to read. So who said writing isn’t fun?

Can I give a little insight to what actually I write in my non-digital journal?

Okay, my journal book is too mundane. It’s filled with typical stuff about fears and gloominess. Somehow I write there when I’m lost. But there are times when I write when I’m extremely happy too but they are rare. Ever since I started blogging, I’ve declined writing in my journal. It’s a sad thing for me. But I do write whenever I get an idea to a story. All the story plotting stuffs are extensively done in that book as of now.

So here is a little sneak-peek into my non-digital journal. It’s something I wrote a few months back on the occasion of buying a new journal to continue my writing extravaganzas;

In the silence of the night, I sat staring blankly at my new un-penned book. Is today another day for the reign of the “writer’s block” to take over? Or should I just write about writer’s block for the sake of writing something in my new purple notebook that I purchased from the local mall for a very high price plus taxes? Sigh, maybe a random poem might help;

The things I do,

I do for reasons unknown.

Unknown is the reason,

A reason nonetheless.

Nonetheless I try,

Try I do, to bring out the best.

Best is a wild, wicked dream;

And I dream for a reason,

A reason nonetheless.

                                            ~Neha 

When did my blogging journey begin?

I seriously started blogging in 2011. But before that in 2009, I first created a blog page for fun. Back then I was in 2^nd year of engineering and even though I was a computer science student, the simple blog layout used to confuse me a lot and blogging seemed like a complicated business. All those tools, labels and pages... sounded like some geeky place to scroll over.

As the semesters went by, I started to show more interest as started to understand what a web page was. Of course, even a small kid can blog these days, but I was under the wrong assumption that only people who knew about the technical stuff can blog! But extra knowledge doesn’t hurt too. I see blogging differently these days. It’s not just a place to post my writing but it’s also a place where I study different HTML and CSS codes with interest.

What does writing mean to me?        

                   

From a year and a half I’ve been seriously bitten by the writer’s bug. Now that my creative writing side was starting to wake up, I started to write a lot of poems. And poems helped me to think in an abstract manner. Poems actually have the ability to broaden the way of thinking. They are creative, fun and imaginative and it’s every creative writer’s dream to escape from reality now and then.

For the first time I actually completed a four page story called “The Premonition”. I was really happy with my effort as it was one of those attempts in writing that I had truly completed so far. I wanted audience to read my writing and provide me with valuable feedback. At first I was apprehensive that people would laugh at my work. But most of my friends and even my mom (she is a tough critic) said I really did have something going here. So finally, took the leap and started to share all my work at Neha’s Journal.

Why the name Neha’s Journal?

Well that’s how I started to write. Initially it was a typical girl’s personal diary but as I grew up, so did my knowledge and my experiences in life. I underwent a lot of failures and even saw a little bit of success here and there. I fell in love and broke up too. Its experiences and milestones such as these that strongly triggered the writer in me.

The bottom line for me when it comes to writing: IT GIVES ME PEACE.

It leads me to join all the pieces together – life, love, misery, death... you name it. I find that I’m in close contact with my life and surroundings through my writing. Many people live their entire life on the go and when they die, their stories go untold. I feel that it’s a waste of a person’s soul. One should at least leave behind something from which the others can actually know who they were.

Photographs are only still memories at a particular point in life. But writing... it’s like a movie of your life, a movie which the readers can view in their minds when they read a person’s writing. It’s a movie each person can witness in his or her own terms of imagination.

By now I can tell without a hitch that I have practically grown up writing and hence writing for me is LIFE.

Blogging and Bloggers:

For some of my earliest posts, I had some very few visitors who were patient and kind enough to leave behind a comment or two. Their appreciation and constructive criticism encouraged me to better my blog as well as hone my writing skills. In the last one year, I have had around 16,000 visitors and counting. Around 97 bloggers are kind enough to support me through following my blog.

I’m no famous or top rated blogger. I’m still an amateur and I have a lot to learn. I write to attain peace. Writing is always stress-free. And reading other blogger’s post is also a nice way to forget about my own worries. Writing and reading go hand in hand. If you want to be a good writer and want to people to recognise your work then you have to get out there and appreciate other bloggers. One shouldn’t do it for a selfish reason. You must develop genuine interest in reading other writer’s work. And reading is definitely not a waste of time. Think about all the ideas you can get through reading different posts by different authors. Each person has his/her own style of writing and you can always gain and learn different ideas from them.

And just a few months back, I registered myself at Indiblogger and started to post my work at the Indivine. It’s a top Indian blogging site with over a 100,000 bloggers from all nationalities and inter-states of India who get together at the site and share their posts. If people like your post then they vote for you at the indivine. You can follow fellow bloggers and broaden your network. It’s one of those sites from where genuine readers visit your blog and give back valuable feed-backs.

And I’m very happy to say that so many people have visited my blog and it’s a privilege to visit their blogs and interact with them and in turn grow my network over the months.

There are so many bloggers/authors out there who have a huge potential to become the future Paulo Cohelo or Rabindranath Tagore or Enid Blyton. I’m glad I could be a part of the blogging world and even gladder that I get to share a part of my world with them.

~ Neha

Phew, that was big You can read her on Neha’s Journal

Look at 'em talk!!

Hey all!

We are (finally)celebrating The First Year Anniversary of  Dr TimePass this July. 

Around this time last year, the idea of spreading awareness, making observations and bring it all up as news in a simple, funny and yet make realise the seriousness came up. 

No one knows how successful we were in doing all that we intended, but its 1 full year now! and its time do something new!

Now, New kinda sounds old these days. Doing, thinking or making new things is a little cliched. Why cliche itself sounds a little old. So we'll just do what we've done, that is type till the keyboards too oily to touch and try to end up making a little sense. But the thing we plan to do this year is to bring out friends. 

All of us have smart, lame, fighting or struggling achievers. Friends, colleagues, cousins and yeah even parents may have special talents, drives or ideas of doing something big with their lives. The idea here is to bring them out on this blog. 

Not that they will receive help from here, but we will be able to say that we put them on the map before anyone knew who he was! ok thats a little much.. but its a thought, an idea to see what talents the people close to us have. 

The month of July will be dedicated to posts of or about my friends and invited guest authors. 

If you know any of our friends who could use some publicity, mail me now!!!

Rich and The Responsible II

The idea of Rich and The Responsible basically started out to show that there is a difference between those who have money and those who are actually rich. The thought of being responsible towards ones actions or showing and sharing responsibility towards the society is what according to me makes people rich. 

The founding lines of this idea were taken from an extract of a memory from my home to office ride on a cool Wednesday morning. 

A hijada made me realise who the real responsible are.  As I reached in for my wallet I realised that they didn’t come asking for money every day. So I asked her, 

 

‘Don’t you come every day?’

Her answer struck me deep and hard. She said

‘If I come here every day, wouldn’t all your money be mine?’

It sounded like she was just reminding me of common sense. But her matter-of-fact made me think for a long time. I still think about it when I see rich people talking about investments to save tax, evading tax, hiding money and never stopping from making more and more money. 

There’s nothing wrong in making money, but there comes a question when it comes to making money by stopping others from doing the same. And that’s what Obama plans to do. 

In Rich and The ResponsibleI, I spoke about the bad rating of S&P and Moody’s on the Indian economy. The article took the example of the real estate bubble to question the credibility of the S&P’s ratings.

Picking it up from there, let’s look at the recent turn of events.

On June 11 2012, S&P issues warnings of downgrading the credit rating of India and makes comments on India’s leadership stating that India is run by a Powerful Sonia and an Appointed Prime Minister. The Rating agency goes further to make remarks on economic slowdown and a loss in GDP could be the consequence of a lack in policy making. 

Quite naturally this wasn’t accepted by the Indian Finance minister and he went out to say that the Indian economy is one of the most stable economies and growth related problems will be addressed soon. Sadly for him, the very days to follow showed that the Industrial growth had also taken a dip. 

To speak in favour of S&P; or so as to speak, there hasn’t been any improvement on Indian front. But, the World Bank did come public and say that the Indian Outlook is good. The report also said that India will be moving up to 6^th spot in the world’s biggest economies. 

Now here’s what I think is the reason for India going bad. Obama.

The US presidential elections are in this November. Obama clearly wants to remain president for another term and he can do that if he convinces his people of two things:

                       1.      Terrorism is kept at bay.

                       2.       There is enough money in the USA. 

He has made progress on the first point by taking care of osama. Coming to the second, there is practically no way of encouraging investor confidence at a time when there are trillions of dollars of debt on Uncle Sam’s head.

But he has to do it, he needs the people to believe that the Obama and the Democrats can provide jobs and save Americans from mounting debts.

What does Obama do? Is there a trump card? Another trillion of the World Bank’s money? Not really, at least not when the elections are so close.  Taking a loan is inevitable for America, but the longer he pushes it, better are the chances of gaining investors and his remaining in the white house.

What does he do?

He picks on an easy scapecountry. India.

Phase 1: S&P, Moody’s etc issue statements on India’s falling economy and downgrade India.

Phase 2: Rupee starts doing badly on Dollar and then starts doing badly on all Currencies. 

(I have doubts that the USA with allies started selling out the Rupee, and the sharp fall led other countries to do the same, resulting in a falling rupee)

Phase 3: USA issues oil import sanction enforcements on India along with other major oil importers.

Phase 3 evokes chaos in India and the leaders are biting each other’s backs.  

Phase 4: S&P downgrades India from stable to unstable and makes comments on policy making. The restricted FDI along with this comment makes foreign investors think low of India. 

Phase 5: US lifts sanction enforcements.

Phase5 is to show the people that India will comply to the will of USA. As a part of Phase 5 USA still keeps the enforcements over China to show that China’s no better than India and is well covered under their thumb.

In all this, Obama’s aim is to show the investors and the people of USA that USA has control over major parts of the world. The effects of this are:

  

 1. Investors opting out of India, China etc; with the euro zone is complete disarray they have but 1 option, USA. 

  

 

2.       People of USA gaining confidence in Obama and The Democrats.

As an effect, the economy of USA would see an upward trend. More money, jobs and happy people would pave way for Obama’s Second term as President. But what of India? China? Or the rest of the world? Will they crumple under Obama’s success? Or will they hold on to their reputation of “emerging” economies and emerge out of this clutter? If they do? What options does Obama have? Drop the curtains on his ploy and pull out the roofs of his people? Or apply for fresh loans? 

Can he control the monster he has created out of Uncle Sam to feed his greed of continued occupancy of the white house? Is it more personal than it looks? Or more importantly, does he even care?