Aparna’s Blog

As I saw the date on the calendar on 16th November, it struck me that I was completing 5 years of blogging on that day and I should definitely write a post to at least celebrate the day. But the combination of laziness + tiredness + lack of motivation which I have been plagued with for the past several months won over once again and thus I let the day pass by quietly only to be weighed down by worries of where on earth the passion for writing/blogging has got lost! Will I be able to bring back the good old days of yore? As I now see these lines filling up the page without me thinking for even a moment as to what exactly should I write about, I heave a sigh of relief that all is not lost and someday, hopefully maybe right away, I will be able to resume regular blogging.

Yes my blog completes 4 years today. Happy Birthday, blog! And a very big thanks to you all for reading this blog for so long!

Blog

Of course, of late, the blog is not updated as frequently as it once used to be. And to think that it is only in the last few months that I have been having free time in excess and I didn’t utilize it even one bit to update my blog! I seem to have given up all attempts at resurrecting the blog. Let me at least do a quick roundup of all that I missed blogging about.

It is only my blog that I have neglected. I have never been as regular in reading others’ blogs as I have been during these months. I hardly have any unread items left on my Google reader.
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I never thought that my blog will ever reach the state in which it is now. Somehow, for the last several weeks, I have been caught up in a pretty hectic routine in which my blog doesn’t figure at all! Thought I will at least say a quick Hi to you all even though I don’t feel like writing anything. Neither the songs of Raavan nor a few other songs to which I am addicted big time nor the architectural beauty of the temples at Thirumalai Vaiyyavur, Siruvapuri and Pancheshti which I recently visited, seem to give me the much needed motivation to write something here.

P.S.: Call it showing off or sharing my happiness with you or whatever you want to, did you see that T.M.Krishna has linked my post in his website? I am so happy!

2006 was a year that was filled with loads of happy, unforgettable memories and happenings. Among the numerous good things that happened to me in that year, my blog is also one. 3 years it has been since I finally decided to give blogging a try after putting an end to thoughts of what I will have to write/blog about. And today I owe each one of you a very big thank you for making my blog one of the things I feel good about at the end of the day. And a big thanks to my blog too for giving me some wonderful friends and acquaintances. Here’s to more ARR’s music, Mani Ratnam’s movies, Sanjay’s & TMK’s singing, sunrise/sunsets ! Happy Birthday, my blog!

Postponing writing post after post will result in the blog becoming like how mine has – a blog getting updated once in a blue moon. But more than that, something you very badly wanted to write about once might become insignificant/out-dated at the present moment when you finally find the time or get the urge to write. I have a looot of unfinished posts in my drafts! Besides there is a chance that you might now not be able to write something the way you initially wanted to. I hate seeing my blog in this state. So, starting from today, I am going to seriously try to restore this blog to how it was quite a few months earlier. Let’s see how it goes…

P.S.: I was thinking whether to post this or not. But I wasn’t interested in postponing posting it either

The last thing I expected to do on a Friday morning, forgetting all thoughts about the impending weekend, was to be forced to do a lot of thinking. This is happening, thanks to all your comments for my previous post. How much ever one might support plagiarism, I don’t think it is fair to copy lines from somebody else’s post. If it’s all right to do that, then I can actually write a dozen posts here every week, copying lines from multiple sources. At the end of the day, what is achieved because of that? A link to the original post is all I expect. If you like the lines written by somebody else so much and feel that those would be the apt lines to use in your post, then go ahead and use it. But do that after giving the source of those lines.

As for there is nothing called your own thought, agreed that all thoughts are triggered from something or other. And I do agree that two people can get the same thought. But that’s irrelevant here. On a lighter note, otherwise, why would there be the saying, ‘Great minds think alike’?

Why are you making me think so much right in the morning, when there is no mistake on my part? Should I really not take this seriously? All I wanted was for the person to know that it’s not fair to copy somebody else’s work without so much as a mention about them. I would have done the same thing if the lines copied were from some other blog too. Anyway, now that I have done that, should I not do anything more about this?

The previous post was just a warm-up of sorts since I didn’t want the very first piece of my writing for the day to be started on an angry note. Nothing can match the joy of writing and seeing your thoughts, observations and experiences getting transformed into words. Sometimes, the writing turns out to be as good as you thought it would be and, sometimes, it wouldn’t turn out to be as good as you thought it would. But that is not the point of this post.

How would you feel when from one such writings of yours, a piece which you wrote with so much passion, you see many lines lifted and used directly in somebody else’s writing? And not just that, it has even won a prize too in some competition! How can people indulge in such plagiarism? When you ask the person about it, the reply you get goes something like, ‘Yes I copied some lines from your post, because those were nice’. What a lame explanation! A writing competition is meant for judging your own writing, how you write, how you express yourself and more importantly, your OWN thoughts/expressions/whatever. Not for judging something which you copied from somebody else’s writing and passed off as your own!

More than seeing my lines being used, what irritated me even more were the lame explanations that were given.