lalita larking

An obsession with cryptic crosswords. Everything else falls in place.

Name:
Location: Kolkata, India

Sunday, December 31, 2006

Repent in leisure

*Warning: this is a totally unapologetic post about Missus Em and her year where she crows, grumbles, gloats and wallows in her blog. You may leave now.*

At the end of the calendar year, if I look back, the leitmotif has been blogging. I discovered blogs, decided to blog and learnt how to go about it; and have been blogging compulsively.

When I started blogging, I was ignorant about the control key and uses thereof. I wrote, saved, tinkered, refined and published, all online. So when a kind friend taught me the 'ctrl A, ctrl C and ctrl V' method, I was overjoyed. I could actually write out, edit and tinker with my post without getting online. So thrilled was I that I posted twice in a day, just revelling in using newly learnt tricks.

They warn you about marrying in haste, but not about posting on the spur of the moment.

I wrote a post, conceived in the shower one Sunday, out of pique about classified advertisements in the weekend newspapers. It took me some half an hour to write, while luxuriating in the fact that I didn't have to get online to do it.

So, I wrote a post. It has been bringing visitors to my blog ever since. My site tracker tells me that Google searches for massage in Kolkata, sexy massage in Kolkata, unisex massage parlours in Kolkata, sandwich massage in Kolkata, the best body massage parlour in Kolkata, all lead to my blog.

It is depressing.

I do get visitors who are searching for the meaning of Neha, who are looking for the best way to make an omelette, who are trying to find out more about the quote' love all trust a few', or looking for 'I never saw a poem as lovely as a tree', who are researching the Zarapkar System of Cutting, who are looking for sensuous poems, who are looking for factorial tutorials, who are looking for Lalita Sahasranamam or 'young lalita porn' and more.

But this search for massage parlours in Kolkata yields me the most number of unique visitors and I despair that they probably never come back for more. It was a post written in haste, in pique and a burst of irritation. Now I repent in leisure.

Blogging reconnected me to people I lost touch with. Blogging made it possible for my son to acquire a Tatkal passport. Blogging helped me help Anantha when he was looking for an apartment. When an old friend needed to get in touch and Googled with the search words 'kalyan mukherjea telephone number', he was led to my blog and we met up and had a wonderful evening together again.

So blogging has been the leitmotif of the year. But it has had its share of the bizarre. I receive mails from readers, those who don't want to comment on the blog but have something to say about some of my posts. I cherish such mails.

This wasn't the first time a reader who came across my rant about the classifieds wrote to me, nor the first time expressed interest in 'making friendship'; though I much prefer mails that sympathise or add their own pet peeves to my list, I enjoy getting mails as a blogger at all. But this mail I received a few days ago has set me thinking.

hi. this is mayank , 33, executive with dsp, durgapur. want to have quality time wid u. what all services u give n charges. pl let me know. also ye age etc

My first impulse on reading it was to offer lessons on how to write a first missive to a stranger, and further services about punctuation, grammar and spelling. Then I wondered about how much I could charge for a lesson. And then it struck me that Missus Em has another career option, that of a part-time call girl.

A Happy New Year to you all, folks.

Cheers!

21 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Two sides to a coin! If blogging enriches ones' life, it also causes the mind to boggle in several ways! (Including the latest career option)

6:23 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Happy new year, Lali. Call me.

9:05 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So you get visitors searching for Shakespeare quotes, so don't grumble Lali. We met thanks to DesiPundit after all. A very happy and productive new year to you and the Resident Mathematician.

10:26 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Season's greetings to thee, m'lady. Hoping you will be less dismissive next year,
Sincerely,
Secret admirer

10:38 pm  
Blogger anantha said...

Missus Em: Landed in C-town just now! I am already having fun and it's 3:45 am in the morning with Mom bugging me to hit the sack. You in town too?

Secret Admirer: Oh man, persistence is thy name! But give the lady a New Year present and tell her who you are.. heh...

3:30 am  
Blogger Lalita said...

Dipali- :-) There is always a flip side, after all. But look at it this way, I got a post out of it.

Rajesh- Happy new year to you too, Child.

Ash- Look, I will grumble if I want. :-) Happy new year. RM sends his regards.

Anon-Get a name.

Anantha- Welcome home. I will be in the city later, from the 18th. Have a wonderful vacation.

7:42 am  
Blogger Priya said...

Your other career option sounds smackalicious, Babe(to hell with political correctness). My happiness this new year will begin after the 22nd, so go look for it elsewhere till then :)

5:34 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

All is grist to authorial mills:)
Happy New Year!

6:46 pm  
Blogger Lalita said...

Priya- Yeah, I am looking forward to happiness as defined by meeting Ms. Loquacity again; here's looking at you, kid.

Dipali- Sigh. I am dying for an ingrown toenail so I can get a post out of it. :-) Happy New Year.

10:06 pm  
Blogger neha vish said...

Lali, dear Lali.. What a delightful post. :)

1:17 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for the wishes and Happy New year to u as well.

My blogroll was killed when I changed the template (and with the new blogger2). as soon as i figure out how to reactivate it, i'll put up urs up again. :)

1:46 pm  
Blogger Lalita said...

Neha-Thank you. :-) It's crazy what people search for, though.

Ram- I see, I am dreading the time I have to change over, too. It was a fraught time adding the codes and I don't want to do it again. Sigh.

4:59 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am seriously considering a PhD on 'frensip' and other requests from random strangers, mostly male. I am often floored by their uninhibited verbosity and unorthodox usage of the English language. Maybe we can collborate?

10:20 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

*Collaborate. Talk about irony.

10:21 am  
Blogger Lalita said...

TMM- Count me in.
I am not floored so much as puzzled as to how these men think writing such illiterate and vowel challenged mails can achieve anything other than a contemptuous hitting of delete button, or a blogger getting a post out of it.

Typos don't count. :-)

2:04 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Obviously they credit everybody with no more than the same amount of intelligence they possess.

How mean I am to the less fortunate, tchah! I love it!

12:42 pm  
Blogger Lalita said...

TMM- You have a point there. Me too, me too. I know I am being a snob, but I sneer too.

12:52 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hope I'm not nitpicking, but shouldn't your heading be 'Repent at Leisure',not 'in'?

10:10 pm  
Blogger Lalita said...

Dipali- But of course. One can break the rules when one knows them, ditto change prepositions if the spirit moves one. :-) I've had a huge amount of time to rue that post, so it is in leisure, not at leisure.

10:35 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I see you now, wallowing in leisurely pools of repentance!

8:38 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hmm, if you don't want massage-seekers to come to your blog, maybe you should stop moralizing and let people live the way they want to. And no, I did not search for massage, I searched for lalita.

4:22 pm  

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