My Mother, Rekha Karmakar, writes on being a guest blogger

For the past four years my mother has been blogging by writing it down on sheets of paper and getting it typed. This is the first time, after much goading that she has typed out an article and sent it to me. I am quite happy to have her as a guest blogger as she brings in her set of fans here. Incidentally I couldn’t type when I started working in Kolkata and used to give the team secretary things to type. My stint in advertising in Mumbai taught me to use the keyboard as we didn’t have the luxuries of a secretarial staff which market research offered then. KK

The coinage of the two words ‘ blogging’ and ‘bloggers’ was unknown to me even a few years back. I was blissfully unaware of them. But wonder of wonders, I am now myself a ‘ guest blogger’ though I do not know if it has any status in the blogging world or not. I occasionally write in my son Kalyan’s hugely popular blog ‘ finelychopped.net‘ and cash in on his popularity. (Hope you will excuse a mom’s fond remark about her son’s blog).

It all started one fine evening in December (2010) when I went  in search of the house in Delhi, where I lived forty years back. The present occupant was kind enough to allow us in and see all the nooks and corners of the house. I was, as if, in a trance. When K called me from Mumbai, I transmitted some of my excitement  to him. He asked me to put my feelings on a paper. The very next day I wrote down about my experiences.  Soy, my daughtert-in-law, typed the post and mailed it to Kalyan, which he published in his blog.   

Being emboldened by the response, I also wrote about the experience of visiting my school and college in Delhi after almost half a century.  There was no stopping after that and I kept on writing about my life ,which had always been on  a roller coaster ride.     

Meanwhile, my younger son Sid gifted me a mobile phone with internet facility in 2011 and asked me what I would like to do with the internet. I blurted out ‘ facebook’ without knowing fully what it really was. Sid was also very surprised and exclaimed ‘ Hmm !’ I started fiddling with the internet of the mobile and soon grew out of it. Almost two years back, K gifted me a computer tablet, which was a turning point in my life. Though very diffident in the beginning , I was very much encouraged by K’s friends, many of whom were by then my fb friends.

My blogging, however, had nothing to do with my computer tablet as I always wrote on paper . I , sort of, trained a local computer guy,whom I had to coax and sometimes admonish for typing my stuff, that too in exchange of money.  I started writing  posts on various experiences of my life. I wrote about the lives of the NRI doctors in the U.K. in the seventies. Not only that I also wrote about the turbulent phase of our lives in Iran during the transitonal period of pre and post Khomeni era, our trips to  Europe and Scandinivian countries. I also wrote about attending medical conferences with my husband in Stockholm and Kyoto in Japan.  Needless to say, we visited Thailand and Phillipines as well. But all these mostly date back to the seventies.                                                              
Soon I exhausted the list of the foreign countries so I started writing about my childhood experiences of living in Delhi, my recent trips to Mumbai and Delhi to visit my sons or going to Haridwar and Rishikesh, Dadhiker Fort and Kuchesar Fort in Rajasthan with my son Sid and his wife.  They also took me to Diamond Harbour in West Bengal to see the dilapidated house of my paternal grandfather, where we we used to go during our summer holidays. The childhood memories of my maternal uncle’s house in Jalpaiguri in North Bengal also made its place among my posts.  

 I do not go out much now. I am more of an ‘armchair traveller’ than a traveller. I learnt this phrase recently while surfing through a travel magazine. There is a separate section for the ‘armchair travellers’ so that they can enjoy themselves by reading about places or seeing pictures.                                                                                                                       
As I was looking out for a topic to write about, my daughter in law Kainaz suggested that I write about my teaching experiences in various  colleges of Delhi and Kolkata. It appealed to me and I wrote about them interspersed with my personal life. Three parts are out but the last part is still with my computer guy. A few more posts are still in the pipeline. But I do not think they will ever see the light of day.

Being fed up with the nonchalant attitude of my computer guy, I thought of typing this post myself on my comp tablet, the first one that I ever did. I know, typing on a comp is a small step for the young genre, but for me it is a ‘ giant leap’, being used to write with a pen on paper. So ,please, bear with my typos and formatting.

It gives me immense pleasure when I hear of any bloggers’ meet. The , congregation of the bloggers, recently in Bangalore, prove that the future of blogging is very bright. The broad smiles on the faces of the bloggers show that it was a huge success. But do spare a thought for the ‘ guest bloggers’ too. We just need a bit of your love. I, for myself, blog because the creativity of writing gives me a lot of pleasure in my otherwise dull retired life. I must admit that I was showered with love and appreciation by K’s friends and readers. I thank each and every one for his/ her encouragement. 

Happy blogging!