Don't cry, baby, don't cry

There was a time when I was sixteen and my creative juices overflowed like nobody’s business
Which led to a high turnover in hankies, not to mention a certain dizziness
But more than groaning, more than spots, more than the tendency to turn red and make small yipping noises when my wife-to-be wore her corduroy pants,
More than the inability to actually appreciate anything other than doggerel such as Ogden Nash writing about the inner angst of industrious ants,
More than just about anything else, this embarrassing
Excess of hormonal productivity led to my harassing
Certain unfortunate classmates with poetry. Or what I called poetry because
I didn’t care to admit that as a poet I was a total loss.

Because I tried to Use Big Words and I tried to Sound Profound
Neither of which makes much sense when one is the most superficial sod around.
And I tried to be clever and I tried to be witty
And other stupid people encouraged me, more’s the pity.
So I spent five years or so doing very stupid things like entering for competitions in creative writing
When I should have been busy with healthy uncomplicated male things, like hitting a ball or scratching myself in public or just fighting.
This had several side-effects, all of them unfortunate.
Where I should have been comparatively carefree and occasionally (in my pleadings with ladies, for example) importunate,
I ended up with intellectual ambitions and an air of being constipatedly superior
Which did nobody any good and gave me the general demeanour of a sat-upon posterior

As time wore on I realised that I would never be a Nobel Prize contender
In fact I could not even aspire to be an Asian-Age-short-story-competition pretender
So, albeit reluctantly, I stopped mass-producing merde and switched to more productive things
Like exams, passing and job, getting (one may “pliss excoos” this lapse into rhyme-scheme, for the purpose of, words-backwards-putting)
For years thereafter I was this nice dull file-pusher and my life was comparatively placid.
Then I discovered the Internet and it was like a large injection of formic acid.
Quite apart from Google searches for … well, never mind,
And the subsequent subconscious guilt pangs and fears of going blind,
This business of surfing when I should have been working did not augur
Well. Ere long, literary longings re-surfaced and I became a blogger.

For two years now I have churned out post after post
And though I am nowhere near as prolific as most,
At least I don’t write my posts in SMS-ese or describe in detail my last trip through Sion-Koliwada
Or spend 2000 words describing the love-life of my puppies and finish the post with “yadda yadda”.
I am aware that my blog lacks the cachet of being erudite in any way or even faintly libertarian
I don’t link to The New Yorker. I don’t party at TC. I don’t have a PhD thesis. I’m far from being Uncut, in fact I’m more of a “no-hair-ian”.
I can’t hand out tips on picking up women, I’m not an erudite economist with comic-book panache,
I don’t know where I can pick up good weed, let alone post about sharing my stash.
I last read a book some years ago and I have no idea of the Booker short-list
I know little or nothing about world cinema though I do know that Hitchcock did not make “The Shootist”
In fact I can’t even hold forth on the filmography of Mithun Chakraborty so I am definitely not a cineaste
I don’t surf the Net enough to find weird or learned articles and even if I did I couldn’t make witty comments about them, all I can aspire to is cut-paste
I don’t have a secret identity as a call-girl, nor am I a leading literary critic
I can’t be a youthful investigative curry because when I make allegations I can’t make them stick.

I freely admit that my blog isn’t the biggest thing since Desibaba, it can’t even claim a wardrobe malfunction
But even so, it’s my blog and I love it even if it’s ugly and cross-eyed and I don’t want it to suffer from feelings of rejection
So when I find that it has not been shortlisted for the Best Indian Blog by the Asian Blog Awards I feel like a father whose child has been left out of the cast for the school play
And my first reaction is emotional and I mutter dark threats about suing them and making them pay.
After all with only a couple of million blogs from India they could well have emulated the Pharakgandh Screen and Telly Awards and created award categories to accommodate everyone
They should understand that this whole elitist approach of shortlisting less than a dozen blogs is Just Not Done.
Therefore I shall console my blog with the inalienable truth that we have known all along,
To wit, that it is the Best Blog ever written by this Sad Old Bong.

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