Ganga Mail At 200

The previous post, I just realised, was my 200th. A reason to celebrate? Maybe yes, because I never realised I could touch the 200-mark, considering the insipiration and effort that goes into writing posts. Maybe no, because as a professional writer, I should have had no problem writing at least one post a day, in which case I could have touched the 500-mark by now!

Blogging is a funny thing -- it is a lot like your morning workout. At times you wonder: what's the point working so hard at keeping fit when disease or death can come knocking any minute, irrespective of how hard you work out. But most of the days you feel happy working out because it makes you feel on top of the world: you know you are doing your bit to keep yourself healthy, while everything else, including death and disease, are a matter of destiny.

There are days when I spend hours writing about a subject -- usually sex or women -- and then at the end of it, wonder: "What am I really getting out of it?" If I had channelised that energy to write guest columns for some magazine, I could have earned Rs 2 a word. But what do I get out of the blog? Not even honest comments, because most honest comments come from 'Anonymous' readers, and their anonymity, notwithstanding the brilliance of the comment, takes away from the credibility. It is like being patted on the back by an invisible hand: you know it is there, but it is still not there.

But on the other hand, Ganga Mail is like my second home -- rather my hideout. That's the place from where I can write about anything under the sun without bothering to censor my thoughts to suit readers' sensibilities. Most often, it is censorship that readers find most offensive and that way, after a year and a half of blogging, I find myself on a pretty strong wicket. Talking of wicket, blogging is also excellent net practice, in case you aspire to reach out to people through your writings. It is only here that you can learn -- or sharpen -- the art of translating your thoughts into writing, and nobody (save a few Anons) is going to laugh at you or take you to task for not having written well enough. "Well enough" today can be "good enough" tomorrow -- that's what consistent blogging can do to your writing.

I started blogging in October 2005, when this laptop was my sole companion. Today the machine is about to breathe its last any moment -- so much I have used and abused it. I have kept it on for days and also for nights -- just to have the faint glow of the screensaver and the songs for company while I slept. I am too scared to sleep alone in the dark. I had read about R.K. Narayan encountering a friendly ghost in his house in (I think) Nungambakkam. And Nungambakkam is not very far from T. Nagar, where I live. Most often, I would write or be awake till the birds began to chirp, for that's when I felt safe enough to sleep.

Today, even though I have company in the form of a wife, I write till late hours because it is a matter of habit. There is no longer the fear of ghosts, but I somehow feel that kindred spirits roam the atmosphere only during the wee hours and that the best way to communicate to them is by writing. Spirits are faceless and formless; and you seek to persuade them into assuming a face or a form by writing something worthwhile. But they give you the slip, and you write on.

So here I am, writing on -- for who, I don't know, but there's someone definitely out there persuading me to. But persuasion makes no sense without passion -- and of many of my passions, music is one. Oh yes, there's sex too -- but I can't link to a pornographic picture to celebrate my 200th post. What I can do is make you listen to a song that I am passionate about and about which I had written an entire post in January 2006. If you listen to it and happen to like it, I could justify the existence of myself as well as of my blog:

Raat Banoon Main.w...