Guest post for Alka Narula

When I joined Indiblogger about four months back, I had been blogging extremely desultorily for a year and a half. I hardly ever read any other blog and the whole exercise was one of maintaining a sort of personal record of my treks for my own reference, which others were welcome to see or avoid as the mood took them.

Reading other blogs on Indiblogger has been both a great pleasure and a pain. Reading good to great posts is wonderful as anyone who reads for pleasure can readily understand. The problem, however, was that, whenever I attempted to write humour, I realized I was ruing the fact that I could never attain the style of a Purba, Debajyoti, Cybernag or many such others who could make you laugh out aloud about the most mundane of things while you despaired of wringing a reluctant smile from your readers. When I started describing treks and travels, I became aware that I got nowhere close to the evocative prose of Bhavana nor can I describe people in the way Umashankar describes them, which makes them come alive to the reader.

When I started attempting fiction, I found that I could not approach the zany creativity of the misnamed 'The Fool' nor the detailing of moods achieved by young Kirti. I have not even come close to detailing the stand-out features of all the bloggers that I have read. I could probably write a book about the bloggers whose various capabilities I am only capable of envying and I am aware that the sampling of blogs that I have read is a minuscule proportion of what is available.

Poetry is the one form of writing that I do not even delude myself into attempting. Nor, indeed, do I have the ability to enjoy it. There are some extremely good poets in blogosphere and if I have mentioned none of them it is only because of my incapability to appreciate their output. I am, probably, missing out on a whole world of wonderful art from the minds of Saru, Leo, Alka, Amit and other such poets.

I am sure these bloggers will forgive me for saying that I come out of their blogs with my ego badly bruised. My own posts read so insipid, so pedestrian after reading theirs that I wonder about why I continue writing at all. Of course, most of them have been offering complimentary comments on my own posts but it seems to me to be more out of kindness than anything else. Yet, I continue writing because I love doing it and because I cannot entirely lose the illusion that I am capable of it.

When the-NRI accepts a couple of posts from me and when veteran bloggers like Pramod Lohia accept my guest posts, it gives me a boost. Now, one of the most popular poets - Alka Narula - has been kind enough to accept a guest post from me! Not for her poetry blog, obviously! Kindness can only extend so far! When something like this happens it makes me feel that maybe I am doing something right in blogosphere, after all.

This is one of my 'serious' posts.

http://floating-diamonds.blogspot.in/2012/07/does-suffering-negate-existence-o.html