Random. Rambling. Revival.

Hello, there! Well that is one way of starting a post when you don’t have anything set in mind and the objective is just to ramble on. Life has seen its fair share of ups and downs since I last wrote a blog post with the real intention of writing one. The last 2 posts that you see in this blog, posted towards the fag end of 2018, were originally posted in Facebook and I posted the same here in order to avoid a blank in terms of the no. of blog posts in 2018.

I sit and wonder how our preferences change over the course of time. Our priorities change and things that were prominent once, no longer feature in the prioritized list of things to do. Certainly, opinions change too. With the boom of social media, I have learnt from personal experience that it’s best to keep our opinions to ourselves, as far as possible, rather than air them in social media.

One strong opinion that I had 2 years ago, crumbled over the past few months. If you remember this post, you would know how much I adored this city of Bombay, back then. A few people told me then that since I was living close to my place of work, I was saved from the brutal experience of travel in Bombay, especially during the monsoons. This year, the monsoon rains set a record and they certainly tested my patience on more than one occasion. I now strongly feel that it is not okay on the part of Mumbaikars to take everything in their stride and move on like nothing happened. The city certainly needs an infrastructural revamp to keep up with the growing needs of the exponentially growing population. Having said that, I should also acknowledge here that there are more infrastructural projects in the works in Bombay than in any other city in the country. The pace of the projects need to be improved.

Writing reviews for films is something that I started by chance. Over the course of the last 3-4 years, it is something that my friends and followers in Facebook have come to associate me with. I was surprised to know that some friends and family members, even in the US and the Middle East, decided on films based on my reviews. This cheered me up. At the same time, it also made me more responsible as it was important that I give out unbiased views. I try my best to see a film as a film. As a form of entertainment. I try to present my views as a layman would. I succeed and I also fail. In some cases, some biases do creep in, subconsciously. I am human, after all.

A sea change that has happened over the last 3-4 years is the transition from the big screen to the small screen. Here, I mean the transition from laptops to mobile phones. With the advancement in mobiles, I rarely use laptops outside of office, these days. Mobile gets every work done for me. But this also means increased risk of health issues like eye strain and neck pain.

One certain thing that mobile has done to me (and many like me) is that it has created enough distractions that my actual reading (non- screen reading) has dropped dramatically. This is something that I am ashamed of and I crave for the guy who used to sit with his books for hours together, completely forgetting the fact that there was a world outside. It helps that my wife reads every day, despite using the mobile extensively. This has kept me vigilant of the fact that I have many books waiting to be read. I hope it’s only a matter of time before I turn the corner on this front. Let’s see.

I think I have rambled enough for a post to revive a blog. I am not going to promise anything to myself or my readers, but I feel I should use this blog more frequently to ramble on about random stuff, if not for anything, but at least to keep the writer in me alive and kicking, outside of Facebook. That would do for now. In my next post, I wish to write about some interesting podcasts that I have been listening to, lately. Hope it materializes soon. Adios, amigos! (caught on to that bye-bye phrase, thanks to my new Boat Rockerz Bluetooth earphones which sign off that phrase when turned off).