OK, I give in. To the connoisseurs frequenting this blog (Yes, yes, I know flattery will get me nowhere.) who insist that snuffing out a blog is a crime that ill becomes me.
The dust is spat out, SB! And I return.
So what did un-blogging help achieve? Well, among other things, there were soulful early mornings and late evenings spent gazing into those trees that you see in the image below. That’s the view from my balcony at home. A view enjoyed over a companionable morning coffee with the spouse. And a fretful evening one when I generally give myself hell brooding over everything I’ve managed not to get done during the day.
If you look closely you’ll see a patch of lighter green through the branches of those trees . That’s what I’m usually gazing at. Mournfully.
Let me explain.
That patch of green is the number one reason we moved to this flat a year ago. It’s a park across the road in front, which the balcony, the entire flat in fact, overlooks. When we moved here the park was still under construction, but I had wonderful visions of robust and regular morning and evening walks. It’s a year now and the three gates of the park are still locked, the park still out of bounds.
A couple of months before the elections there was hectic activity and it looked like it would be ready before voting day. Well, the Congress won this constituency (although I didn’t vote for them, which fact revealed to me the significance of my vote), but, inexplicably, after the elections all work stopped and hasn’t resumed since. The children of the locality simply jump over the wall and romp on the grass. The curse of adulthood prevents me from doing likewise.
Yet another instance of a citizen of this great country denied a basic right. The right to walk. That park seems positively evil now, a force conspiring to keep me from walking. And health.
Now that I’ve recognized and confronted (but not really done anything about!) this self-fulfilling prophesy, the park has come to symbolize something else, too. The book I’m struggling with. In my bid to make it one of the world’s great ELT masterpieces, I’m dragging my feet and can’t let it go. While the publisher waits wrathfully.
There will be a great place to walk pretty soon, so I’ll start walking then. My book will be a masterpiece if I give it more time, so I won’t give it in now.
The mind. And heaven. And hell.
In other news, in all the reading that I’ve been wading through over the summer, three books that I thoroughly enjoyed were David Crystal’s txting. the gr8 db8, Watts and Trudgill’s Alternative Histories of English and Sailaja Pingali’s (a colleague) Dialects of English: Indian English. All full of great ideas and insights that I will blog about. Soon. I hope.
