The internet is a many splendored thing.
Though ‘splendour’ is hardly the word that I would choose for the sort of vile filth that we all know is out there. But then this is not limited to the world of internet or blogging. Human depravity exists all around us. The world of blogging is just a microscopic part of society.
Finely Chopped to me has always been a ‘happy place’. My personal journal which I have shared with all. I had no idea what I was getting into when I started blogging two and a half years back. It has been a most fantastic ride since. Beyond the wildest of my dreams.
The vile perversion it got recently smeared and defiled with was not the way I had looked at Finely Chopped. It went against grain of everything that Finely Chopped stood for in my life. Disgusted. Dazed. I temporarily closed both Finely Chopped and my travel blog, Faraway Diaries, yesterday morning.
I got the first mail minutes after I closed the blogs. This was from A. A blogger friend from Sydney who had come to visit us with her lovely family when she came to Mumbai. Then from Scarlett, a reader from the beginning and a close friend since. And that was pretty much the story for the rest of the day. Mails, texts, calls, Facebook mails. From friends, virtual friends who became real world friends, virtual friends who shed their anonymous monikers yesterday to write in and people who did not exist in my life till yesterday. All wanting to know why Finely Chopped was now ‘by invitation only’. It wasn’t, but that was the only way I could suspend the site. Wanting to know how they could get on the ‘list’. There was no list. Folks, I would never want to block you 🙂 With each mail came out a rare smile on a day which was gloomy and wet.
I don’t know when my next post on Finely Chopped will be. It could be in a couple of hours. Days. Weeks. Or never. I might start another blog. Or continue here but change the tone. I do not have the answers right now. The only thing that I know is that I will not stop writing.
What I have realised is that Finely Chopped is no longer mine alone. It belongs to those who read it as much as it belongs to me. Without you there would be no Finely Chopped.
I am opening the blogs again.