Blogache

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  http://paintermommy.com/funny-cartoons-about-blogging 

"...The truth is that we text and tweet and email as much to feel like we are in touch, to be part of things, as to pass on information. But we should temper this with a little old-fashioned respect for language. Just because it takes only a second to send a missive doesn't mean we should take only a second to compose that missive.

There is no reason we cannot see ourselves as living in a new age of letters, and write all our texts and mail, craft all our photos, with the kind of care, thoughtfulness, and sense of grace, style and humor required. In fact, there are some signs that this might be the way the Internet redeems itself. It's now fashionable among 'Net natives' to spell out their texts properly and use decent grammar. It's only parents who text C U L8R these days..."

...Clarissa Tan in Spectator at DC, 13 August

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It is comfortable to know that there are others who are as uncomfortable as I with twittees like: C U L8R

My first encounter with them was in July 2005, a month before I quit IIT KGP on my retirement. To please my dear wife I had invited her only brother (thank you!) and his wife and two school-going daughters to KGP promising I would show them the sweet spots of Cal...like my favorite Victoria Memorial. 

This salah of mine appears in a somewhat popular earlier blog-post:


http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2012/01/salah-darling.html


And we were riding a hired Tata Sumo on the bridge of the full-throated Roopnarayan. It was a lovely Bengal monsoon morning (I knew it would be my last) and I became somewhat lyrical and posted an SMS on my brand new cell phone to my friend in Hyderabad that went somewhat like:

"On our way to Cal. Lovely morning with fleeting clouds and drizzles punctuated by bouts of sunshine...bla bla bla..."

And within minutes I got this Reply-SMS:

"GR8"

And I started wondering what he could have meant by that ideogram and was trying to tease out its cryptic meaning. And the whole of my picnic got spoiled by that GR8 till we were on our return journey late in the night when I could decode it...Eureka!

My medico B-i-L types 'd' for 'the'. I am sure RKN would have fainted at this.

The only barbarism I commit in my blogs, apart from inventing screwy words like the 'twittee' above, is to use American spellings.  

Some readers are alienated by these...like this e-friend: 

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"...Just a thing which i have never observed in your posts - a spelling if you would like to correct - or may be i'm wrong - the word Gynaecology..."

To which I replied:

"I often have trouble with my Blogger's spell-check...whenever I spell words in the British way I am accustomed to, it gets angry and shows it with a blood-red wavy underline; and I ask it what is wrong; and it replaces my Brit spelling with the American one...and I go with it since I guess my regular readers are by now American in spirit.

Here is what the online All-American Webster says about the gynie thing:
 

'Definition of GYNAECOLOGY

...chiefly British variant of gynecology' "

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Supratim too is not happy with American spellings. He insists I retain his 'colour' and 'fervour' and such when I post his Guest Columns on my blog. 

But he uses small 'i' for the capital 'I'. And I am yet to get used to this miniaturization. Mainly because the regular punsters of ToI use it in print and I don't like punsters...a pun a day is about my upper limit.

I guess everyone has their idiosyncrasies. 

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This happens to be my 1400th blog-post (excluding the 50 odd limericks I deleted out of fear of our Didis and Dadas).

It has been a long haul. What started four years ago as a hobby became a pastime and now full time.


Although the pageviews have reached a lakh and more, most of them are by occasionals.  There are less than a dozen regular readers...some daily, some weekly and some monthly. I guess I keep writing for their pleasure.


What I write doesn't seem to matter to them...it is mostly trivial...nothing heavy.


But I suppose the regular readers read them for how they are writ...with a mixture of irreverence and good old cynicism...and an occasional smile.

Yella crossed 2000 pageviews...and I am happy for the crazy chap's memory.

Good Day!

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