It is that time of the year when one tends to look back to see how it had been so far, so here we go. When Rahul Raj approached me early this year asking me to write for Bhaksala I was quite honestly not sure if I should. Not that I was apprehensive of my ability to write, but the relevance of what I would write in a kick ass platform like this followed mostly by youngsters who are half my age or lesser. The generation gap is there for me with most of the admins of this page too which is popular for its witty and pithy one-liners and short statuses. So honestly I was not too convinced about the likeability for my kind and style of writing here and was reluctant to accept the proposal. He convinced me by arguing that a different perspective from a more experienced (read elderly!) person like me would add a new dimension to this page and he wanted me to write long articles on various issues and themes to encourage reading of long posts by the young readers. The brief was to write as interestingly and informatively as possible without getting too preachy or prescriptive. Well, that was indeed a challenge to keep all those in mind and still write long enough. He himself gave the first topic to write which was on the social media itself and how it empowers us to express, sometimes even before we validate what we express from a factual point of view. It so happened that it was a friday evening that I wrote the first article sometime in February this year and we thought friday evenings are ideal for long posts for people to leisurely read. That was how this weekly column in Bhaksala started and duly it was signed off with a message Have a great weekend. TGIF (Thank God Its Friday) Since then it became the standard sign off by me for these articles and I chose Friday afternoon 4pm IST as the time slot to publish these. Until about end of September, it was Rahul who used to ping me the topic every week, either on Thursday evenings or Friday mornings and then I will try to articulate what he conveyed to me, as a full article. We did not expect too many likes or shares or good comments for these posts as we knew atleast initially not many people would bother to read but may even mock these posts saying saala kya lamba likha hai, kaun padega and all. As expected the initial few posts received some such mocking responses and we chose not to react to that. But slowly those who were interested in reading these posts started replying to such commenters and eventually got those people to stop doing that. We tried to cover as many topics that could be relevant for the youth, like politics, movies, books, mythology, sports, career, history and such other themes of sociocultural relevance, contemporary issues, learning, luck, love, lust, time, travel, change, college, or even such topics like sleep, attire et al. It was indeed exciting to wait until Thursday evening or Friday morning to get the topic from Rahul, who has an uncanny knack to come up with as many wide ranging themes as possible, much as it was challenging to write about those in a short time being mindful of the brief. We were encouraged by the growing number of regular readers for this column though that was a minuscule percentage of the overall number of page followers. We also assumed for x number of people who liked or commented, there would be some multiple to it who would also be reading but not liking or commenting especially since the negative comments started to dwindle. A couple of other admins too contributed some topics as Rahul eventually told me he was done with giving topics to me and asked me to write on my own topics. Initially I found it very difficult as I was used to getting the topic and then think. Now I had to do the thinking all by myself and the entire expanse of Universe would intimidate me as to what should I choose to write on. Sometimes I used to simply go blank until the last moment to decide what to write on. It was then I realised how important was Rahuls contributions to these articles by way of giving me so interestingly different topics each week. Nevertheless I attempted to write on my choice of topics since then but given my preference for topics I felt they were done without feeling the pulse of bulk of the readers as much as if Rahul would have chosen. The only other thing that I could do then was to change my style of writing, so I experimented with fictional style of writing or short movie script style of writing which you would have noticed in the last so many TGIFs and I observed it worked, with more people reading those. I am not sure how effective these articles were to achieve our original purpose while starting this column which was to develop reading and dwell upon different perspectives among as many youth as possible. So when youngsters message me or comment saying sir it was really touching, it was indeed a moving experience personally for me. More so when they look forward to the next one and keep asking me what would be the topic for next week. I used to answer them I did not know which was an honest answer as it was Rahul who gave me most of the topics until recently. When they ask me sir how can we write better? I have only one answer to give them. Read a lot more. Thus having done this now for 45 weeks on trot, I now feel I should give it a break as anything that was started should end some time. Let me assure you, it is not because I am exhausted or there isnt anything left to write on. It is simply because anything that is regularly done beyond a point becomes monotonous and also one should stop when people ask why did he? rather than why not? I am sure for the majority of the followers of this page it may make no difference whatsoever. For the occasional readers of TGIFs they would quickly get used to TGIFs not being there. But I am really sorry to disappoint those of you who consistently without fail look forward to 4 pm every Friday. Honestly, you are the true reason why I could carry on this long and I am really thankful to you. Besides, you give me the hope that if ever I decide to write a book, there would be some buyers! To you guys, it is not that I have stopped writing, but I may not post them every Friday 4pm, that is all. So keep looking out! Thank you all once again for following TGIFs for all these 45 weeks and for your sincere support to it. And for one last time let me sign off by saying, Have a great weekend and even a greater new year ahead. TGIF!
Posted on: Fri, 27 Dec 2013 10:30:01 +0000
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