All’s well!!!

Sometimes, you are not on a holiday yet you take a break! A tad tough, it may sound, but I can say it does happen after I worked it out with myself. Here I am, back writing after a gap of a few days, close to a month. I had never decided to give my writing a break. I didn’t require one either. It started happening for some reason or the other and later on, I extended it for some more days. Let me mention that I had not stopped scribbling but like I said, I had taken a break though I wasn’t on a holiday!!

I knew it well that neither would life stop nor would heavens fall if I didn’t write! Mind you, writings are more original (self-praise?) once you keep in mind that you are not doing anything earth shattering. Still I found the gap bothering others more than it did me! Some asked why I was off the scene. A few thought I was unwell. A few felt the workload was too much or I was perhaps outstation. I was okay with all of them.

Interestingly, a friend of mine called to enquire if all was well. First, I thought she was asking just like that. ‘Where were you?’ she asked. I told her I was where I should have been. I said my home, my profession, even my email id everything was unchanged. When I wanted to know why was she being so inquisitive, she said since there were no blog updates for long she thought there was some problem. Another close friend literally encountered me the other way round. She had always found my insistence on regularity and consistency a bit too much. Citing example of this gap, she quipped it was not always possible to be regular. “Stop being demanding too much from yourself”, she grabbed the opportunity with both hands!

Does visibility matter so much? Forget me, I am nowhere in the big picture but what about those who are constantly in the public eye?  Sportspersons, politicians and filmstars want to hog the limelight all the time. That’s the reason probably why they are seen attending public events, endorsing brands or issuing statements to make their presence felt. In India, it’s not that difficult to hit headlines. Make some ‘controversial’ statement and you catch eyeballs. For a time being at least, you become a matter of hot discussions.

Nevertheless, someone not being in the public glare doesn’t always mean something is wrong. Absence on the silver screen for a year or two can never spell failure for a superstar and skipping a tournament or two wouldn’t tell on a sportsperson’s popularity or game. A little absence shouldn’t make room for baseless conclusions. 

Coming back to my break, not that I was in turmoil or was running short of topics. I have learnt the knack of making no topic, a topic (!) Being in this profession, we are too much used to assessing ‘news’ value of happenings. I may apply it to ‘non-news’ at times. We consider 24-hours as a shelf life (of our product) and so any topic, not posted within 24-hours, becomes stale for me and I refrain from writing on current affairs!!  

Not just writing, for a few days I had totally stopped thinking and analyzing. That’s why I say I was not on a holiday though I had taken a break. Writing is a byproduct. What’s fundamental is thinking. We should stop both sometimes, I feel. We can spend a few days just being an observer, with wholehearted acceptance to everything that comes our way. It works wonders.  Try it  for yourself.

-KanChan