'Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away'

28 January 2000 | Reflections

Some Philosophy! Some Coffee!  ☕

Memories from diaries! 😍

While going through my past [and personal] diary jottings of almost around two decades ago, down the lovely little lane of nostalgia, I couldn’t help connecting my recollections with Astrid Erll’s famous take on ‘Memories’ - which goes thus - 

… memories are small islands in a sea of forgetting.

From my personal diary jottings, 28 January 2000

A bevy of lovely friends, classmates, batchmates, teachers – they all find mention in this particular day’s jottings – along with a host of events / incidents that made this day memorable for me and we!

Both individually and collectively!

Well, now, take a moment to just imagine catching up with your school friends or college mates one fine day, over a cup of coffee!

Or again,

Just imagine getting back for a grand alumni get-together, after say, 25 years or 30 years, where you gather together in the same school premises where you had studied!

What would you do?

I guess, you won’t be that interested in discussing a Donald Trump or a Bill Gates with your lovely friends of the good ol’ days, as much as you’d be interested in recollecting those snatches from memory that ‘take your breath away’, ain’t you?

The cute bunkings you did, when you wanted to play cricket or football with your classmates in the playground, or the evening tea time with pals that were filled with myriad delightful, ‘sweet-nothings’ of a conversation, that went on and on and on...

or 😊

during exam time, when you all came together, (like those cricketers in international cricket, making a circle before starting on a game, just to boost the confidence levels of their team mates, or to discuss on ‘specific strategies’ for the game) in one great grand circle, and indulged yourself in the sensational phenomenon called, ‘combined studies’, where even the most playfullest of the lot would sit, as good as could be, not batting an eyelid, in utmost concentration, dedication and devotion to the subject being discussed – a concentration that escaped a hundred lectures given by those towering scholarly professors! 🥰

Well, as Sartre rightly points out,

One does not possess one’s past as one possesses a thing!

However, you can bring it back from memory, through recollections of specific memorable events!

That’s because there’s a magic in recollection!

A charm in recollection!

An inexpressible, indescribable delight in recollection!

As Maya Angelou says,

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Yes! Those charming moments that ‘took our breath away’ in days past!

That’s hence, to Erll, Astrid Erll,

… memories are small islands in a sea of forgetting.

How beautiful, ain’t it?

And Astrid Erll, adds up to say,

Since forgetting is the rule and remembering the exception,

memory studies seeks to ‘reconstruct’ the ‘intellectual history of forgetting’, and emphasize the social, historical, and ethical significance of forgetting and related aspects, such as amnesia, oblivion, silence, and forgiving.

Now comes the most important part to Erll, that connects with my diary jottings -

Well, moving on to Cultural Memory, she quotes Halbwachs when she says -

Individual memory has to go hand in hand with cultural memory!

Quite fascinating an insight, ain’t it?

When for the first time Halbwachs came up with this hypothesis, his contemporaries and critics alike, were not favourably disposed to accept these validations from their friend!

Interestingly, it was Halbwachs and Warburg who were the first to give the phenomenon of cultural memory a name (‘collective’ and ‘social’ memory, respectively).

A student of Henri Bergson and Emile Durkheim, Halbwachs wrote three texts in which he developed his concept of mémoire collective and which today occupy a central place in the study of cultural memory.

Halbwachs’s theory, which sees even the most personal memory as a - mémoire collective - a collective phenomenon,

provoked significant protest, not least from his colleagues at the University of Strasbourg, Charles Blondel and Marc Bloch.

The latter accused Halbwachs, and the Durkheim School in general, of an unacceptable collectivization of individual psychological phenomena.

Stirred by this criticism, Halbwachs began elaborating his concept of collective memory in a second book.

For more than 15 years he worked on the text The Collective Memory, where again he emphasises on the importance of individual memory to Cultural Memory, because, of the default dependence of individual memory on the range of social structures to which he/she belongs!

So individual memory has to go hand in hand with cultural memory, says Halbwachs.

That means, there are collective elements in individual memory that makes it collective memory or shared memory or cultural memory!

It could be a cup of coffee at your favourite bistro, with your friends, it could be a delightful book that you bought at your favourite book shop with your friends, it could be those delightful long trips that you made with your bevy of friends – be it on train journeys, local autos or even by the grand bicycle on ‘double pedal’ modes!

Coming back, hence,

Much more fundamental for Halbwachs, however, is the fact that it is through interaction and communication with our fellow humans that we acquire knowledge about dates and facts, collective concepts of time and space, and ways of thinking and experiencing.

Because we participate in a collective symbolic order, we can discern, interpret and remember past events.

It is only through individual acts of memory that the collective memory can be observed, since ‘each memory is a viewpoint on the collective memory’.

Every individual belongs to several social groups: family, religious community, colleagues, and so on.

Each person thus has at his or her disposal a supply of different, group-specific experiences and thought systems.

Thus, what Halbwachs seems to suggest is that while memory is no purely individual phenomenon, but must be seen in its fundamentally collective dimension, it is the combination of various group allegiances and the resultant frameworks for remembering that are the actual individual element which distinguishes one person from another.

Repeating Erll yet again,

It is only through individual acts of memory that the collective memory can be observed, since ‘each memory is a viewpoint on the collective memory’.

How true, Halbwachs proves!

'The paparazzi would spit on her (Princess Diana) to get her reaction for it!...'

25 January 1994 | Ruminations

Diary, Diana, & Dinamani

#memoriesfromdiaries

News of the day - from my personal diary entry - 25 January 1994

Presentiments are strange things! 

These are the opening lines to Chapter 21, in Jane Eyre.

And yes! Presentiments galore great all through the novel!

Earlier, in Chapter 14, she says,

…my tenderest feelings are about to receive a shock: such is my presentiment.

In Chapter 25 again, Jane remarks -

I set out; I walked fast, but not far: quarter of a mile, I heard the tramp of hoofs; a horseman came on, full gallop; a dog ran by his side.

Away with evil presentiment!

Yet again, for the last time, in Chapter 27, Jane quips –

On a stile in Hay Lane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself.

I passed it as negligently as I did the pollard willow opposite to it: I had no presentiment of what it would be to me; 

The Cambridge Dictionary defines presentiment as –

a feeling that something, especially something unpleasant, is going to happen.

Going down memory lane, and looking back in wistful nostalgia at my past diary entries, I now realise how true this word proved so true for Princess Diana – dubbed the ‘most hunted person of the modern age’.

One reason why her elder son Prince William is allergic to any media coverage of him or his family members.

Picture courtesy: Newsweek

What he once said in her interview, could really move our hearts.

He said that the paparazzi would spit on her (Princess Diana) to get her reaction for it!

How shameful an act!

William adds,

If you are the Princess of Wales and you're a mother, I don’t believe being chased by 30 guys on motorbikes who block your path, who spit at you to get a reaction from you… and make a woman cry in public to get a photograph, I don't believe that is appropriate.

Most of the time his mother cried, because of press intrusion into her private life,

he adds.

Right from the time when news of her engagement to Prince Charles was confirmed, Diana was followed by the paparazzi, until the time they hunted her down to her death!

In a memoir titled, Dicing With Di: The Amazing Adventures of Britain’s Royal Chasers, Harvey and his paparazzi partner Saunders, recollect on how they hunted Diana for those sensational ‘million dollar’ clicks of the Princess in March 1994.

Mark Saunders and Glenn Harvey were sipping coffee in Kensington, west London.

The pair had spent the day attempting to photograph the most famous woman in the world, without success.

Then Harvey’s cell rang; Princess Diana had been spotted!

Seconds later both of them were in hot pursuit of the Princess, through red lights, driving down the wrong side of a traffic island and accelerating in front of trucks, until the Princess began turning into the entrance of Kensington Palace.

Harvey – leaping out from the vehicle, camera in hand, and dives across the bonnet of the car, firing his camera at the Audi as it disappeared from sight.

“Please, please, let that picture be sharp,” he prays.

It was. Harvey’s photograph of Diana was then sold to the British tabloid News of the World in an exclusive deal, for a fortune!

Well, Diana ‘screams at’ photographer (as I’ve jotted down in my diary), was something that she had to do on a regular basis, day after day after day, all through her life, to avoid the hunting photographers, up until that dreaded day, just three years later, when she was finally hunted down by the same paparazzi!

Again, this act of ‘screaming at photographers’ could possibly be a premonition or a presentiment on the part of the Princess!

Comparing Diana’s predicament with Jane’s – on the topic of presentiment, premonition and foreboding – could yield a range of literary insights and interpolations!

Well, coming back,

Quite coincidentally, in today’s Dinamani, a famous Tamil daily newspaper from the Indian Express group, there is a very thought-provoking article on a similar topic!

The writer Mr. K. V. K. Perumal, a Retired Central Govt Officer, has highlighted on the immense harm caused by the media in damaging people and their reputation by their unverified, inauthentic ‘representations’.

The article is titled, ‘Can a blessing become a curse?’

Says he -

Some people never understand the intensity of pain and mental torture they cause to the people on whom they write and gossip!  Those who find joy in the grief of others are also, in a way, mentally ill patients!

Indeed, freedom of press and power bring along with it a great sense of responsibility!

As the popular adage goes -

The right to swing my arms in any direction ends where your nose begins!

How true!

with inputs from dailymaildotuk and & newsweekdotcom (picture)

Your ‘way of seeing’ is your ‘reality tunnel’...

Milne & ‘Ways of Seeing’

[Robert Anton Wilson & Our Reality Tunnels]

A.A. Milne, [born January 18, 1882] English humourist, is best known as the originator of the immensely popular stories about Christopher Robin and his toy bear, Winnie-the-Pooh!

From a theoretical standpoint, the books that Milne wrote for his son, underscore the importance of ‘perspectives’ and ‘ways of seeing!’

Coincidentally, today also happens to be the birthday of Robert Anton Wilson, American author of several science fiction novels, and a futurist, whose take on ‘perspectives’ and ‘ways of seeing’ are highly liberative in their appeal!

Your ‘way of seeing’ is your ‘reality tunnel’ says Robert Anton Wilson.

When someone has a differing viewpoint that’s contrary to yours, it just means that,

“They just have a different reality tunnel, and every ‘reality tunnel’ might tell us something interesting about our world, if we are willing to listen.”

Quoting his favourite German philosopher Husserl, who says, “All perception is gamble,” Robert Anton Wilson continues –

“Every type of bigotry, every type of racism, sexism, prejudice, every dogmatic ideology that allows people to kill other people with a clear conscience, every stupid cult, every superstition, written religion, every kind of ignorance in the world all results from not realizing that our perceptions are gambles”.

“We believe what we see and then we believe our interpretation of it, we don’t even know we are making an interpretation most of the time. We think that this is reality. In philosophy that is called naïve realism”.

“What I perceive is reality.”

“And philosophers have refuted naïve realism every century for the last twenty-five hundred years starting with Buddha & Plato, and yet most people still act on the basis of naive realism”.

Never believe fully in anybody else's Belief System, he adds, and says -

I don't care if it's Roger Neich, the Pope, L. Ron Hubard, Al Gore, George Bush.

I don't care who it is, don't swallow all their belief system totally, don't accept all of their BS (belief system).

The second rule is like unto the first, don't believe totally in your own BS (Belief System as he says), 

which means any belief system or reality tunnel you have got right now is gonna have to be revised and updated as you continue to apprehend new events later in time not simultaneously.

This is the natural functioning of the human brain, it's the way children brains perform before they are wrecked by the school system. It's the way the minds of all great scientists and artists work.

But once you have a belief system everything that comes in either gets ignored if it doesn't fit the belief system or get distorted enough so that it can fit into the belief system. You gotta be continually revising your map of the world.

In like fashion, coming back to Milne and his world,

What to the adult is a ‘mere shelf full of stuffed animal toys’, to the little child it becomes a beautiful world by itself – they aren’t toys at all – rather fully developed, distinct personalities – in flesh and blood in front of his little eyes!

Milne has been called a connoisseur in the art of observing children’s behaviour, their mannerisms, their whims and fancies, and catering to their sensibilities with gusto!

His wit is amazing! His dialogues so endearing! And his way with words so appealing!

Interestingly, it was J. M. Barrie, [best known for his children’s book Peter Pan], a good friend of Milne, who helped in the production of Milne’s first play.

Now here goes Milne and his world – with a few beautiful excerpts for us – from the Introduction and Chapter 1 – to appreciate and celebrate the wit and the wonder of Milne and his world!

INTRODUCTION

If you happen to have read another book about Christopher Robin, you may remember that he once had a swan (or the swan had Christopher Robin, I don't know which) and that he used to call this swan Pooh.

That was a long time ago, and when we said good-bye, we took the name with us, as we didn't think the swan would want it any more.

Well, when Edward Bear said that he would like an exciting name all to himself, Christopher Robin said at once, without stopping to think, that he was Winnie-the-Pooh. And he was.

So, as I have explained the Pooh part, I will now explain the rest of it. You can't be in London for long without going to the Zoo.

There are some people who begin the Zoo at the beginning, called WAYIN, and walk as quickly as they can past every cage until they get to the one called WAYOUT, but the nicest people go straight to the animal they love the most, and stay there.

So when Christopher Robin goes to the Zoo, he goes to where the Polar Bears are, and he whispers something to the third keeper from the left, and doors are unlocked, and we wander through dark passages and up steep stairs, until at last we come to the special cage, and the cage is opened, and out trots something brown and furry, and with a happy cry of “Oh, Bear!”

Christopher Robin rushes into its arms.

Now this bear's name is Winnie, which shows what a good name for bears it is, but the funny thing is that we can't remember whether Winnie is called after Pooh, or Pooh after Winnie.

We did know once, but we have forgotten... I had written as far as this when Piglet looked up and said in his squeaky voice, “What about Me?” “My dear Piglet,” I said, “the whole book is about you.”

“So it is about Pooh,” he squeaked. You see what it is. He is jealous because he thinks Pooh is having a Grand Introduction all to himself.

Pooh is the favourite, of course, there's no denying it, but Piglet comes in for a good many things which Pooh misses; because you can't take Pooh to school without everybody knowing it, but Piglet is so small that he slips into a pocket, where it is very comforting to feel him when you are not quite sure whether twice seven is twelve or twenty-two.

Sometimes he slips out and has a good look in the ink-pot, and in this way he has got more education than Pooh, but Pooh doesn't mind.

Some have brains, and some haven't, he says, and there it is.

And now all the others are saying, “What about Us?”

So perhaps the best thing to do is to stop writing Introductions and get on with the book.

A. A. M.

Chapter 1

IN WHICH WE ARE INTRODUCED TO WINNIE-THE-POOH AND SOME BEES, AND THE STORIES BEGIN

HERE is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.

It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.

And then he feels that perhaps there isn't.

Anyhow, here he is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you.

Winnie-the-Pooh.

When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to say, “But I thought he was a boy?”

“So did I,” said Christopher Robin.

“Then you can't call him Winnie?”

“I don't.”

“But you said-”

“He's Winnie-ther-Pooh. Don't you know what 'ther' means?”

“Ah, yes, now I do,” I said quickly; and I hope you do too, because it is all the explanation you are going to get.

Sometimes Winnie-the-Pooh likes a game of some sort when he comes downstairs, and sometimes he likes to sit quietly in front of the fire and listen to a story.

This evening - “What about a story?” said Christopher Robin.

“What about a story?” I said.

“Could you very sweetly tell Winnie-the-Pooh one?”

“I suppose I could,” I said. “What sort of stories does he like?”

“About himself. Because he’s that sort of Bear”.

“Oh, I see.”

“So could you very sweetly?”

“I’ll try,” I said.

So I tried.

Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday, Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders.

(“What does ‘under the name’ mean?” asked Christopher Robin. “It means he had the name over the door in gold letters, and lived under it.”

“Winnie-the-Pooh wasn't quite sure,” said Christopher Robin.

“Now I am,” said a growly voice.

“Then I will go on,” said I.)

One day when he was out walking, he came to an open place in the middle of the forest, and in the middle of this place was a large oak-tree, and, from the top of the tree, there came a loud buzzing-noise.

Winnie-the-Pooh sat down at the foot of the tree, put his head between his paws and began to think.

First of all he said to himself:

“That buzzing-noise means something. You don't get a buzzing-noise like that, just buzzing and buzzing, without its meaning something. If there’s a buzzing-noise, somebody’s making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you're a bee”.

Well, that was just a foretaste to the world of Winnie-the-Pooh!

Do grab for yourself a copy rightaway to relish and to enjoy the delightful world of Winnie-the-Pooh!

On an added snippet - Winnie is on Disney+ Hotstar as well!

image courtesy: disney & recoverynetdotca

'I have one purpose on this Earth, and that is to become a great writer. A husband would put a stop to that...'

Dickinson | A Delightful Soap for that Lovely Literary Soul!

A string of literary soaps for the literary soul – are for grabs right here on any many of these OTTs, for all ye lovely literary souls out there!

Like well, if you’ve read the book version of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, then hey presto! You’ve got the film adaptation of this lovely classic up for grabs on yet another OTT!

Dickinson with her prospective groom...

On a similar note, quite recently, I was fascinated to spot Dickinson – the TV Series based on the life of Emily Dickinson, that has aired over 30 episodes up until 24 December 2021.

The opening episode to this amazing TV Series, foregrounds some of the perennial themes and issues surrounding those high-octane literary women who earnestly wished to take to writing, back then in the 1840s!

A must-watch for all of us who would be studying the 19^th century in literature.

Assumes all the more significance for today’s post, since today also happens to be the birthday of Susan Sontag – dubbed America’s most celebrated woman!

Well, Susan Sontag famously declared - on 03 January 1950 -

I marry Philip with full consciousness and fear of my will toward self-destructiveness. 

He was 28 and she was 17!

Almost a similar take by Dickinson on the institution of marriage!

Well, if Susan Sontag was to 1950, then Emily Dickinson dates back a hundred years - to 1850!

The conditions back then are anybody’s guess!

The opening episode to Dickinson – foregrounds a range of possibilities for the viewer!

Subtly and gently orienting the viewer to the realities of what it was to be a woman, 170 years ago – in America.

It goes thus –

Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. She lived throughout her life in her father's house. Near the end of her life, she rarely left her own room. Aside from a few mostly anonymous verses, she remained unpublished.

When she died, her poems were discovered. Some of the strangest, most fascinating poems ever written. Almost 2,000 of them, hidden in a maid's trunk.

Emily’s Mom: Oh, Emily, these buckets are half empty. You let it all spill out. You are a useless girl. Useless.

EMILY: Can't we just get a maid?

Emily’s Mom: Over my dead body.

EMILY: We own six horses, Mom. I think we can get a maid.

Emily’s Mom: When your father married me, I said he was getting the best housewife in all of Hampshire County. No, in all of New England. I'd rather scrape the skin off my fingers than get a maid. And I'm bringing you girls up to be just like me. You're gonna make a good housewife one day, Emily Dickinson. Now, you need to go get dressed. We have another gentleman coming to see you.

EMILY: A gentleman? Mom, no!

Emily’s Mom: This man could very well be your husband. So don't pull any of those stunts like you did the last time, when you dropped a dead mouse in that poor man's lap.

EMILY: Like a cat.

Emily’s Mom: You are not a cat, Emily.

EMILY: Tragically, I am a woman.

[Enter George]

EMILY: Hey.

Emily’s Mom: You have already made my daughter's acquaintance?

EMILY: Mom, this is George. He's in the Lit Club with Austin. We hang out, like, all the time.

Emily’s Mom: Well, I was just telling George here what an excellent wife you're going to be.

EMILY: George, can I talk to you for a second outside?

George: Totally.

EMILY: You know I'm not gonna marry you, right?

George: Never say never, Emily. Like you wrote in your poem, "I dwell in Possibility."

EMILY: Nice. I love when people quote me.

George: Why won't you marry me?

EMILY: You don't understand. I'm not gonna marry anyone.

George: But that's not what your mother says.

EMILY: I have one purpose on this Earth, and that is to become a great writer. A husband would put a stop to that!

George: I wouldn't.

EMILY: You say that now. But little by little you would…

Well, well, well, 

that’s all for the teaser part, dear reader! And I’m sure you’d really enjoy the literary journey down the Dickinson highway to meet, to know, to understand and then to admire the legendary Emily! Emily Dickinson!

Happy viewing to thee!

Snapshot acknowledgements due to: Apple TV

How many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you...

What’s the Meaning of My Life? | Ruminations

[& the Blessedness of Staying Far Away from the Attention Economy!]

My first post for the New Year had to wait this long!

And for a purpose at that!

In their immensely popular book titled, Ikigai, the Francesc – Hector duo delve into that good old question of yore –

‘What’s the meaning of my life?’

In fact, a question for which Viktor Frankl, decades ago, gave us an insightful book titled, Man’s Search for Meaning, where he waxes profoundly on the topic –

‘What’s the meaning of my life?’

To Viktor Frankl, the 20th century Viennese psychiatrist,

There’s no doubt that I survive today!

But survival for what...? asks Frankl!

People today have the means to live but no meaning to live for!

When you have no meaning to life for, you live in an existential vacuum, he says!

And in order to help people live a life of meaning and purpose, Frankl founded a school of psychiatry called logotherapy.

“To put the question of the meaning of life in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: Tell me, master, what is the best move in the world?”

There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game…

How true!

The same holds true for human existence, says Frankl, Viktor Frankl.

In the same breath, let’s now take a quick peek into Jenny Odell’s book titled –

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy!

A book that has the power to repurpose, reshape, retune and reorient our lives for the better!

While pondering over the question –

‘What gives meaning to one’s life?’

Jenny Odell reflects on Robert Louis Stevenson, who called busyness a “symptom of deficient vitality.”

Even the great Seneca, in “On the Shortness of Life,” describes the horror of looking back to see that life has slipped between our fingers.

It sounds all too much like someone waking from the stupor of an hour on Facebook, says Jenny!

Look back in memory and consider… how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before your season!

This book then, is a field guide to doing nothing as an act of political resistance to the attention economy, says Jenny!

Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram act like dams that capitalize on our natural interest in others and an ageless need for community, hijacking and frustrating our most innate desires, and profiting from them.

Solitude, observation, and simple conviviality should be recognized not only as ends in and of themselves, but inalienable rights belonging to anyone lucky enough to be alive.

The first half of “doing nothing” is about disengaging from the attention economy; the other half is about reengaging with something else – and this is where bioregionalism steps in!

Against the placelessness of an optimized life spent online, I want to argue for a new “placefulness” that yields sensitivity and responsibility to the historical (what happened here) and the ecological (who and what lives, or lived, here), opines Jenny!

As an artist and art educator long interested in how art can teach us new scales and tones of attention, Jenny says - 

I look both to art history and to vision studies to think about the relationship between attention and volition—how we might not only disentangle ourselves from the attention economy but learn to wield attention in a more intentional way. 

Digital distraction, then, according to Jenny Odell, is eating into our precious minutes, our hours, our days and weeks and months and years in this world.

That’s hence, ‘doing nothing’ is tantamount to intentional resistance, and a ‘deprogramming from capitalism’, quips Jenny!

Tiny little acts like birdwatching, caring for the environment, learning to deeply listen by paying attention, or planting trees on a sidewalk or watching pelicans could be a beautiful intentional way of resisting the urge to falling prey to the attention economy!

That’s because, after an hour on social media, the brain gets into a dull and stupefying dread, whereas, an hour outside of the attention economy, helps us tune into finer and finer frequencies that the beautiful world has in store for all of us, - far far away from the madding crowd of the attention economy, says Jenny.

PS: Well yes! personally, I attempted a digital detox myself [from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning for almost three months], and I found the dividends were so rewarding by all means!

Added, thanks to the likes of Jennyji and Jidduji, I’m not on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or any of those lovely social networking sites, thanks to Jidduji’s philosophies for life that have pervaded me to the core!

Just surviving on the bare essentials – WhatsApp, YouTube and Blogger for now – to communicate with the immediate world around me!

But here’s hoping to quit them also as soon as possible!

And yes! Dear reader! If you’re seriously considering giving a thought to it, do ping me!

You have company!

To be continued…