A place to paint our little dreams,
A shoulder to cry when none comes true,
A rooftop to shout out the simple joys,
A street to rebel, even if it may be vain;
It’s just bits and bytes afloat in ether
Yet home, when it all comes together.

Returning home is a bitter sweet idea - the happy memories of childhood faced off against the the nagging fear that the outcome could be the total and absolute erasure of those very memories.

Every time I think of home, I am reminded of green mangoes, gossip at the peaceful temple grounds, gorgeous saris, family and friends I can share childhood jokes with, the smell of fresh mud after a rain, and just the simple happiness of belonging. But then I also hear about hartaals and bandh, and violence and rape, and moral police and racism - and I wonder whether the home that remains is the one I remember.

Procrastination is my usual solution to that dilemma. Deciding by not deciding. Action by inaction. Call it what you may, but it’s something that is tucked away in the far recesses of my brain.

Come to think of it, its not that different for one’s virtual home, is it? Your blog is your virtual home, and imagine that at some stage, perhaps due to a passing whim or a well-thought out decision, you choose to leave it behind. You have had enough. Or you want to explore what lies beyond. Or maybe because you thought that your homepage is more of a page than a home. Just one of the millions of websites that linger on the outskirts of the blogosphere. Not very different from living in one of the millions of home dotting this earth, is it really?

I missed this home. For 1 year 1 month and 24 days, I wanted to come back. I tried to remember the many good reasons I left this home behind, not one of them resolved yet. With the drop of a hat, I had packed my bags and said my goodbyes. I was off to unknown shores. I wrote in several random blogs - blame it on the ease in which you can start up one - but something just didn’t feel right. I missed writing here. I missed standing by my writing. But most of all, I missed the friends I had made here.

I am finally back. Back where I can write my fears away. Where, then, I move from hope to confidence. Where I celebrate my happiness. Where I cry about my lost dreams. where I remember days long past. Where I can curl up on a sofa, prop up legs with the laptop neatly balanced, retreat from the cruel world outside and discover the haven that is only mine.

I know not what I will write about. Will it be the same or be beyond my own recognition? I can’t see beyond the one post I am writing now. It worries me that I will have nothing to say, it worries me that I will say all the wrong things. It somehow seems harder when you start again. As if the whole village is waiting for the NRI to act like an arrogant firangi. As if the kids next door expect you to pull out a rabbit out of your hat. Yet it’s time to come home. The solution is no more to run away further, but to start on the slow path home. Shall I start with this one?

I ended my last post by writing about change, the faithful puppy that keeps following me around despite my impatient kicks.

“As I realise and accept once again that change is the only thing that is constant in life - the silence of silent eloquence will just be yet another change”

Now, it’s again time to give the eloquence a try.

Just a few notes on the moving process:

Installing wordpress and porting over to your blog is really a simple process. So, if you are like me and have been procrastinating a move, you really have no reason to. Thanks to the many good people, there are several free softwares with great documentations that will guide you through the whole process.

Some useful links:

Wordpress
List of wordpress themes
Another list of wordpress themes
Yet another list of wordpress themes
A great blogger to wordpress import tool
A good documentation to the above tool

I am yet to complete the rather painful process of sorting my posts into different categories. It takes a while and I am yet to find a better way than going through each one individually. Not just that - after I decided on some categories and then starting sorting out my posts, I realised they dont really match. For now I have just categorised a few - Will get down to the rest some other day.

If you read my blog, please update your links:

Blog mainpage: http://silenteloquence.suryaonline.org
RSS feed for posts: http://silenteloquence.suryaonline.org/feed
RSS feed for comments:
http://silenteloquence.suryaonline.org/comments/feed/

“Does the blogosphere have a diversity problem? Viewed one way, the issue seems a bit absurd. These self-generated personal Web sites are supposed to be the ultimate grass-roots phenomenon…So why, when millions of blogs are written by all sorts of people, does the top rung look so homogeneous?.”

Interesting because in my random blog surfing, I have admittedly come across more males, but never felt that the blogosphere had more whites. But considering the high penetration of Internet in predominantly-white countries, the self-perpetuating nature of blog popularity and the fact that women tend to have less free time than men ;o), I guess the results are not that unexpected.

Well, the good people at blogspot let me have a new password and I regained access to this..and so I am gonna give blogging another shot. Come on, there are so many people out there who blog, and I do entertain myself by reading them..so I gotta contribute in some small fashion too, right? And of course, I cant deny that li’l smug voice inside me which says..haha..oh u so indisciplined one, u cant do it, its beyond u. Aw come on, thats one thing I could never resist. I know its a stupid silly flaw, but everyones allowed some, arent they? I could never resist a “its beyond u” challenge..so here we go again..am giving blogging another shot! Yippee…and this time I have bookmarked my blog - so hopefully I wont forget abt it for too long at one stretch..=))

I usually type in little scrap notes all over the place. It doesnt help that I have four different computers ( two at office and two at home) that I use regularly and interchangably. So I have stuff all over. So, hopefully the blog will help me consolidate my thoughts at one place.
Writing has always been a way of venting my emotions. Maybe that comes with being an only child. I have notes from the time I was about five, in my scrawly kiddish handwriting. The first note I ever have is about my first day at school, when I was so freaked out that I insisted on holding onto my dad’s car keys to make sure that he wont leave the school without me. So, ya, when I feel sad or happy, I used to take it out on a pen and paper, and now on the key board.

It sorta helps to record stuff. You know, maybe fifty years later, I can laugh at this and say - ha! how immature was i!

And may be, just may be, I will get so good at writing, that I will be rich like J.K.Rowling one day.!

This is not the first time I have tried to have a blog. I have tried before and failed. I could never keep up. And lost motivation sooner or later. Well, this time I am gonna try a little harder. And I have a new laptop and hopefully i will be motivated to write more regularly. So, friends and to-be-friends, comments are appreciated. May be that will help to keep my motivation high.

The power of the written word has been accepted in our society for ages. That is the power of words to influence people who read them or come into contact with them, voluntarily or involuntarily. The power of the written word as a tool for documentation is intuitive. Less well understood is the power of words on their source. Man writes when he is sad, when he is happy, even when he is without emotions. As words flow out, he experiences a lightness of heart that is way better than even a heart to heart talk with one’s soul mate. He knows himself better, he makes decisions on for every word that he chooses and each line of thought leads to deeper and broader realms of thought.

So shall be born Silent Eloquence - a blog that celebrates the beauty and power of words.