Looking back at my 2 years of
blogging, the only thing I can say to bloggers out there is that editing is
more important than writing itself.
To
entertain your reading buds I have come up with a special edition. This post is
a tribute to ‘Thinking Cap (TC)’ as it matures and finishes 2 successful years.
Nobody has a slightest of idea how it was born except for a few. So to
celebrate the second anniversary of TC, I want to share the story of how I lost
my virginity and got pregnant with writing and gave birth to Thinking Cap. Here
it goes!!
During
my graduation I was a poor chap in the English language. In an effort to
improve I adopted an innovative method of exchanging ‘letters in English’ with my
pal Keshav Jha; a dark guy from
Jharkhand who was in the same boat as me. Our letters fantasised about career,
girls, dreams, money, gossip, movies etc.
Opportunity
struck while I was seduced by writing. One of our professors asked us to write
for the college magazine, though he had the least of expectations from us. And
it was my chance to debut, to emerge. I ended up penning down an article on
Delhi Metro.
The
article in the magazine along with my black & white passport-size photo was
convincing enough that creativity gives me a high. And so began my journey to be creative, to be a writer. I started
with hard-hitting editorials like She,
Where Struggle Never Ends and Idle Hands. The inspiration behind was
the cult newspaper, “The Indian Express”.
Initially every article costed me a month as I was obsessed with vocabulary and
a fine finishing. Above all I was slow. Keshav
and his ex-girlfriend read all the crap I wrote and were the pillars of my
fragile confidence.
So
how TC came into the picture? Well, the thought to start a blog was never there
in my mind as I was highly hopeful that some magazine will publish my work
someday. But destiny never leaves you. It was at one of the Delhi University’s bus
stand when my tech-savvy friend Neeraj,
sold the idea of blogging to me. I loved it because it was free. So on 8th
Feb, 2010 over-night on e-blogger ‘Thinking Cap’ was born. A strange number 999,
being lucky for me for donkey’s years became my URL.
Year
2010 was when the world was super-excited about blogging. Every day we’d have
thousands of new blogs popping up. So to make a place for Thinking Cap I exploited
Facebook, the social sensation during those days. By constantly bugging people
with the blog updates, tagging their names or messaging them I gathered the
requisite crowd.
The
blog made its mark with “Suicide Note”
which talked about a man’s fantasies to face death. It became the darling of the
blog and introduced me to the world of sarcasm and humor. The achievement
didn’t die there and was followed by another crazy piece called “Eaters Comma”. TC was admired for
being true to heart. “Sons of the Soil”,
a conversation between a Hindu and a Muslim at the JFK Airport broke all the
records and established this blog as a real thinker.
Readers
like Sukanya, Nidhi Bindal, Sabyasachi,
Keshav, Neeraj, Ankit, Nidhi Khanna, Riddhi, Akanksha, Ankita Bali, Gurleen,
Shyam, Ashna Banga were the frequent visitors. In fact Deepa Kashay of Bhopal became my friend after reading the blog whom I haven't even met. They are TC’s biggest admirers
and critic. “Without you I am nothing”
My
writing got better after a year and I published articles like Dream India, Different smells of my life, A complete Nonsense and The actor in the negative role
etc. Every article was a take on the society and left a high impression. TC
turned out to be a gold reserve when impressed with it I was offered to write for
an amateur production house. The association went for a year. I wrote 3
episodes of a tele-series, 2 short films, and a reality show plot. Unfortunately,
apart from the reality show nothing got executed but that phase gave a new
direction to my career. I dropped the idea of MBA and decided to be in media.
Print
outs of TC accompanied me in my interviews at SIMC (Pune), ACJ (Chennai), St Xavier’s,
Bombay. When I got the admission in Xavier’s Bombay, life took a turn. I
developed keen interest in writing poetry, shaayri
and copy for ads. I even interned as a copywriter and intend to do this in
future too. I also wrote another short film. Sadly, I could give no time to Thinking
Cap where everything started.
Thinking
cap has given me readers which I love the most. It has given me confidence to
write, a hobby which was a passion and then an obsession and which will be my
profession. Whatever I’ll do in my life it will be creative and will be related
to writing. In a nutshell how can I not say “Thank You Thinking Cap; you have launched me”.
Yours Truly
999
Photo Courtesy: Ambrish Patil, Dhavalya Kalem &Ankit Saxena.
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