Long live Erma !

2 years ago, at my favourite book store in b'lore (Blossoms, for the uninitiated), i came across this book by Erma Bombeck. I was told in a very animated way by the book store guy that it was really good [btw, whom i miss a lot, he doesn't sit there now a days :-( ] I picked it up, it was called "At Wit's end". It started what became a chain of Erma Bombeck's in my book shelf :-)
What I particularly like about her is her witty and sarcastic genre of writing and not to mention that most of it is actually excerpts from her own life. She always writes in first person and its endearing to read what you can actually empathize with. Well, considering that she is generations older than me, I found a few things that did not hold true now but you can always correlate them with present times and challenges women face today. Oh, did i forget to mention that she writes mostly women stuff :-)))
Well, the funny thing was that I actually never read the "About the author" section that usually books have. And I mean never once in about 7 books did I bother to read about her. So, for some reason, I thought she was somebody who still writes, you know a contemprory of sorts. After I exhausted all the books that Blossoms could provide, I gave up thinking that lady just stopped writing anymore after 80's.
Fast forward to May this year and I was at Barnes and Noble at Seattle and I find this one copy of a book I didn't possess. I was happy beyond belief and I take this book to the check out counter where the lady behind the counter is almost as old as my granny. She smiles at me and says- " Erma Bombeck ? I didn't know the present generation liked her writing". I am like - "What are you talking about, I love her. I am just sad that she doesn't write anymore". She has this bewildered expression on her face and says - "O gosh, my dear, Didn't you know she is dead?"
You should have seen my face, my jaws dropped and silence prevailed. I guess we just didn't know what to say to each other after that so I quietly left after collecting my book.
Somewhere I felt really bad that despite enjoying so much of her work, I knew zilch about her. Considering that all her books were mostly about her family, I could almost visualize her hubby and children as well but did i bother to know anything at all about her? No !
So, next day I spent a substantial part of my day googling about Erma Bombeck, glad to say found a lot of articles and odes to her articles :-)

Anyways, for the folks who have never read Erma's works and who may decide never to, here is a set of quotes by her that I found on the net, its from her various books and articles.

So, here's to Erma, a writer who will be truly missed ...

http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/9599/quotes.html

Hello Dave Glardon :-)

I am not quite sure how I bumped into this person's columns on the net but it was a very pleasant surprise :-)
He has an extremely warm and heartening sense of humour and a good style of writing. I think he is a professional stand up comic and a humour columnist and believe me he seems to be doing a pretty decent job of it.
Not a particularly impressive website, leaves a lot for improvement but what the heck, I was busy digging for more and more articles :-)
Check it out here www.daveglardon.com

Quite endearing !

ps: Did mention that last month's find were articles by this gentleman called Melvin Durai, check them out at www.melvindurai.com.

Given my present state of joblessness, I am spending time usefully by catching up on my online reading :-)

I wish..

I wish I could write fiction. No, I really do, like really really do. Wanted to do that since I was like 11 years old.

Those were the days when i was on this marathon to finish off the whole Enid Blyton series. My dear mum initiated me into book reading ever so gently at the age of 6 with a Noddy. (I will be forever grateful to her for that zest of reading that she gave me, she is a voracious reader herself). So, ya starting with Noddy's I slowly transitioned into Famous Five's, Five find-outers and Secret seven's and so on. Not to mention Faraway tree and Wishing chair and Farm stories. Ok, I am forgetting, Bed time tales, Anytime tales, Funtime tales and so on :-)) (yea, all these are actually book titles and series by Enid Blyton and I actually had these books when I was a kid, believe me I had a huge book shelf !) Slowly digressed to Nancy drews and Hardy boys for a while before I got sucked back to Enid Blyton's with the boarding school stories. Those were my favourites, those were things I longed for, things I could relate to.
That phase lasted a whole 3 years during which, proud to say I didn't leave
a single book untouched :-). So, yeah, coming back to me being 11 years old with
this fire in me telling me that I could grow up to be a desi Enid Blyton.

One morning, I got up with a brain wave and said to myself, why not ? I mean, I was good at English in school, good at spellings and grammer etc, why can't i write ? I mean, she does ! She being Enid Blyton of course...Fortunately those were lazy summer hol days when i was really idle with nothing to do. So, I go to my mum who was in her usual hurry to get to work and this is how it goes:
me: "Mamma, I am going to write".
she: "Good good, I have been telling grandpa that you will write one of these days".
me: "No no, i mean like write write"
she: "Ya, thats what I meant and stop troubling me now, I am getting late, go paint or something" (She thought I was like a little picasso in the making, after a few years though she came out of her delusions)
me(slightly getting impatient now): "Ma, are you listening, I want to write, in fact I think I will start writing a book today"
she (paused for a moment and then laughing hysterically): "What"
me: "A book, a novel, like Enid Blyton"
she (quite inconsolable by now): "Why?"
me (quite zapped and not quite sure what she meant): "What do you mean why, I want to.." And stomped off.

Little do we realize that these are quite defining moments of our lives. Anyways, I toiled for a few days, 4 precisely..And came up with the first chapter of my story. I had designated a small pink notebook for the task and with immense pleasure I looked at the 2 1/2 pages I managed to fill up, titled "First Chapter". I thought that was a good enough title back then and that it was clever :p. Next day morning, armed with my pink notebook I walked up to the kitchen again.

me: "Ma, do you want to see this?"
she: "Why do you always show me things when I have 2 mins to leave for work?"
me (dissapointed): "I completed it only last night"
she (bewildered): "Completed what? Homework? Oh my god, really? You just started your summer hols !" (wants to kiss me by now ! My mum has these spurts of affection especially when it comes to things like school, marks and prizes)
me (breaking away from her): "Ma, don't you ever listen to what i say? Its my novel !!"
she (rolling up her eyes to say good god, she was not kidding !): "Ok, fine you will not let me leave in peace till I see it, let me see that."
Reads the first few lines, 2 actually and bursts out laughing. I mean hysterically. And would not stop, she had to hold on to the kitchen shelf to keep her from falling. She had tears in her eyes and no, not the "khushi ke aansoon", they were really coz of laughing so hard.

That was really the end of my creative career, later on she told me that the stuff i wrote was like different lines from different Enid Blyton books ! mmppttt, Didn't she know anything about "being inspired" ??

Anyways, it was too traumatic an experience which has left me scarred for life :p I still have that pink notebook, I never threw it away. It still reminds me of the what could have been and that fleeting drive I had one fine day for writing fiction..

:-))

Maybe someday I will show it to my daughter but till then.. I wish I could write
fiction....

The Unspoken

Bumped into this friend of mine yesterday by chance. She didnt know that I was back and i also had not bothered to ping her saying I am back. Why ? Well, for one, i somehow didn't really think she would be interested. But when she saw me i felt there was something in her eyes which said, why didn't you tell me. Maybe i was just imagining things. After so long, I dont really expect anything from her and i think its likewise as far as she is concerned. I wish things were different. I wish, i had mailed her saying I am going to be back and make plans to meet and all that. I wish I had called her after landing and asked her what she was doing. I didn't so much as ask her how she was doing and it had nothing to do with me being in a hurry or lack of interest. It just didn't happen. In fact, i think there was a weird moment of discomfort where I didn't know where to look. There is just that much of gap between us now.

But there is somewhere a part of me which longs for old times. Something in me which wants to sit with her in the EC lawn all over again and talk about things that she did or I did. Talk about men and women part of our lives. Talk about things we don't care about and the ones we would never give up. Talk about happiness, dreams and things we want. I would like her to tell me what is making her happy or sad now, right this moment. I want to tell her that I am there if she wants a shoulder to cry on, I want to tell her that i have always been there. I want to aplogise if it didn't seem like I cared. I want to say I am sorry if you needed me but felt you couldn't reach out. I want to share my happiness with her, talk about the wedding, apprehensions and aspirations. I want to tell her that I felt hurt when i didn't think she was happy for me. I want her to see that I am happy now and that I know she cares somewhere deep down. I want to tell her that I care too..

zzzzzzzz........

slow..............dying...................crawling...........and non existent are some selective words I would use for my net connection speed right now !
Sorry my dears, it really puts me to sleep to sit and stare at this screen while even the blogger page loads.
So, I am gonna just sit back and wait for better speed sometime in near future.. or at least wait till i get used to this all over again so that i don't cringe at the thought of blogging :-)

PS: Did i mention that I am back in good ol' b'lore ? :-)))