Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Haylooooo!



In June I had launched “Uma’s Journey” primarily to keep friends posted on my travels in Europe in the summer of ’05. When I returned home in August I somehow decided to continue with the blog. What the heck, even if no one was going to read it any more I figured it was a neat way for me to keep track of the goings on in my life. My thoughts, the happenings, people I meet and odd stuff. Who knows I might even come up with a new book for critics to get their teeth into!

Recently though, I felt the need to wrap up the old blog and start afresh. I decided to use part of the title of my book (“Bombay to Eternity – Memoirs of a laidback Rebel”) for two reasons. First of all I feel that "laidback rebel" describes the way I really am.

Secondly, re-reading the book yesterday evening I had the feeling that, well, hmmm, it’s not as bad as I thought it was! A couple of critics who soon after its launch, had mauled it, had suggested I should stop writing altogether. (I felt even then, and my opinion is now confirmed, that they were too dim-witted to have understood the contents. It is just that then I thought that maybe the rest of the population was equally dimwitted and that being so, of course the book may well have been a waste of time for me to write). A handful of my friends still refuse to read it. (If they secretly have, well they’re not letting on what they think of it. They probably hate it and are too embarrassed to say so. Okay. No sweat guys, I am pretty critical myself of other people’s writing and your not liking what I write is not going to make me feel less friendly towards you. Accepting the fact that friends sometimes want to kill each other. Ha ha).

But then, there is a brighter side to the story, see. There were some reviewers and a whole lot of friends who actually liked the book and I thought, isn’t it typical that one should be affected more by the negative rather than the positive things that happen to one in life! What really helped me out of the defeatist mindset I think, were some mails I got from people I didn’t know at all, saying they had read “Bombay to Eternity” and loved it. Now, a year after the book appeared, I get the feeling I can hold up my head again and it doesn’t depend on how many copies the book has sold or not sold. (It’s not yet a best seller for sure!) In the final analysis it is always the personal touch that counts. If my book helps me to make just one more friend in my life, a real friend that is; if it helps just one more person to see their own life in perspective, it will have been worth writing it. I guess this has happened already.

Well, I decided to call this blog “Diary of a laidback Rebel” because I got the idea I would like to carry on from where I stopped in the book, in a way. I guess what I am going to share here with you are my thoughts and experiences and fantasies and insights into life and relationships, and a bit of my madness and foolishness as well, among other things. Maybe I will sometimes share with you stuff that other friends write to me. I am going to let myself be surprised. Hope you will be too!

1 comment:

uma said...

Nice to get a real comment Jules instead of the garbage people send in the guise of a comment ... like the previous one!!