Still Tied with Amitabh’s Blog; Manjul’s Novel “Before Evening Falls”

So your blog has tied with Amitabh’s blog, is it? They ask me in church today. As a church-going Christian I don’t know what impact it will have on how my fellow worshippers: as a radical, as an upstart, as a nerd and a techie, or what, I don’t know.

Meanwhile all I say is, “Wait and watch while I cross his ranking.” My ranking was up around 20,000 with an authority of 130, but it slid down, don’t know for what reason. I guess there is justice on the Internet, giants are but toddling infants when compared to tech-savvy smarties. Hehe! But I, sort of, used technology to do all the things you see on my blog. Knowing a bit of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) helped.

Meanwhile a few thoughts on Sunday. The sun is shining, the day is hot as I sit in my eyrie keying this in. There’re a lot of hammering sounds going on in the background. Guess, people are building and re-building their homes in Artiste Village. From my window I can see the planes going to land at Sahar and Santa Cruz, as it flies directly over New Bombai when it loops and then descends like a huge celestial bird about to land. Feels like Kerala, as I can see my neighbour’s coconut and betelnut trees through the door, has a pastoral feel to it you know.

Speaking of pastoral I am reading Manjul Bajaj’s pastoral novel, “Come before Evening Falls.” I just love her style, it takes you along so enticingly that before long you are a part of the picture, the story just drags you in, not brusquely but gently. Manjul and I were finalists in the Penguin-Sulekha short story contents “India Smiles” and she already has published her novel. Got to speed up mine, but how? We met recently at the Kala Ghoda where she read from her novel and also won the first place in the Kala Ghoda Poetry Slam. Some talent this!

I will go for a walk today, in the dam area. I must try and find a book to identify the birds in the locality (I read Artiste Village has a high bio-diversity of 329 species, which is the highest in the New Bombai area). My mornings are spent in a daze sitting on the terrace listening to the sound of birds. The crows are annoying, but I say they are birds, and then I look at them more compassionately.

One drawback of having a bigger house is the amount of cleaning involved. One hour today was spent with broom and scooper. The cleaning lady who comes on alternate days and the terrace is not in her work schedule. So neighbours were wondering what I was doing with a broom on the terrace. Ah, life!