Waqt Ne Kiya kya haseen sitam: 2008 in APSCAFORVIMAL

Sounds a bit strange but the first blogger to get off the blocks in 2008 as well as the person to whom it was intended for never re-appeared in the blog for the entire year.

On the 3rd of January 2008, Ratna (along with Abhiram, Abhilasha, Anshu and Kritika ) set the ball rolling for the year by wishing Henry and Dorothy all the best for their married life. It elicited 3 comments. 23 days later Stanely suggested that “Henry was suffering from the after effects of marriage after his long flirtation with bachelordom”…. Henry is yet to respond.

Believe me this was the only activity for the entire month.

February was slightly, just about slightly better, with five entries from two NRI’s based out of Dubai and Canada. Four of them were from Faiyaz confirming his talent for playing with words wrapped with a contagious sense of humour. Three of them did not receive a single comment. Tasneem revealed her compassionate side by asking everyone to log on to "freerice.com" to feed the hungry and poor of the world. In all there were 10 comments and again believe it or not all the ten of them were shared between Tasneem and Faiyaz. They were just the two of them in the blog land for the entire month and the classmates almost managed to have a quarrel (presumably) over the choice of words. What a lonely and forlorn place this blog is.

March was an action replay of February witnessing five blogs. Three were from the valiant Faiyaz and one each came from Alpana and Venu. People were equally miserly about comments totalling 8 for the month.

April saw a total of seven entries and “By-now-you-should-guess-who” blogged five of them. The two V’s Vimal and Vinita make their presence felt with a blog each. Vinita proudly announced that she had become a grandmother opening the floodgates of comments (19). Faiyaz blogged pictures of our school but the comments were again lukewarm. However there was an improvement in the feedbacks with 39 comments made during the month.

The month of May again saw seven blogs. “By-now-you-should-guess-who” had four of them with Vinita, Naresh and Stanely scoring singles. Vinita blogged her letter to Amitabh Bachchan, Stanely recommended books written by Khaled Hosseini while Naresh wanted Vims to change his pix (that pops up in the comments section) which reminded him of Marlon Brando. In all there were only 14 comments during the month.

Faiyaz raised his sense of humour to a new level with creative entries: “Corn Apna Corn Paraya” and “Maple pal do pal ka shaayar hoon”- both standouts for me. It’s really a sad commentary on the bloggers of that time that both got 0 comments.

In June things turned for the worse. There were five entries with “By-now-you-should-guess-who” making three of them with Vims and Naresh coming up with one each. Naresh’s mellifluous flow of high octane verbosity was on display as he narrated his meeting with Alpana and then went on to explain (can I call it the raison-d-etre) the physical distance between them in the pix!! There were 30 comments in all.

The going till now was lukewarm but July was a complete disaster. Just two blogs and both from “By-now-you-should-guess-who.” He blogged a cat asking for the “catreenas” to re-appear. Sarita and Alpana promptly appeared on the blog. Faiyaz had finally cracked the Da Vinci code. Moral of the story: If you want ladies in the blog compare them to Katreena Kaif!! In all there were 7 comments during the month.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

August therefore rightly began with our school prayer (O father thou art in heaven..) blogged by Vims on the 10th of August. His prayers were answered and the blog witnessed a U- turn. There were 19 blogs in this month and a total of 134 comments! In the history of this blog it was the first century of comments made in a calendar month.

Yours truly joined the blog and opened the flood-gates of nostalgia. It was the literary version of precision bombing. Target the past, target the times that one would never like to forget, target childhood emotions and launch missiles after missiles on that bastion till the bloggers wake up. And sure it worked!!

Come September and the tune was really upbeat. It was Rock ‘n’ roll time in APOSCAFORVIMAL. August was great but September proved to be the greatest. There were 75 blogs! YES 75 BLOGS!!!!!!!! Photographs from the past were blogged, nostalgia overflowed, Omkar, Bani and Reena joined in. Nargis made her second coming. Sentiments were running high. A re-union was called for. All this evoked a staggering 631 comments.

October saw a marginal dip with 60 blogs and 557 comments. Dr. Santa and the young and handsome Kausty joined the blog. Free passes for the Boney-M show were on offer! There was a pix of Sheila too, blogged by Vims and someone said Zeenie baby is back. Reena too promised 30 pictures- one for each year spent out of St. Vincent's. But it was just a false dawn.

November saw Mumbai being attacked with guns and grenades. There were 41 blogs triggering 372 comments. The blog on “The Call of Cuttack” made history of sorts with 53 comments and an “angry” Hilu promising a rebuttal. Despite this mock fight, signs of ennui and lack of enthusiasm could be detected.

Recession well and truly set in during December and the decline continued with 32 blogs and 170 comments. Vims and yours truly were making desperate calls to each other. I tried my hand in photo-journalism while Vims blamed it all on the Yule tide spirit which had sent all and sundry to the hibernation mode.

What a year it was for me personally. Met friends like Vims, Stanely, Sarita, Debashis, Nargis and Shankar. Spoke to Miss Shamim, Sister Rosalie, Naresh, Venu, Aashu !!!!!!!!, Faiyaz and Henry.

What then were the highlights of the blog for me? Apart from my own emotional journey into the past there were quite a few moments I shall always cherish:

# Stanely slipping in the innocuous line: “The gorgeous Purnima Panda whom I used to call on platonically at Stella Maris.”(Comment made on August, 17). We are lucky Sigmund Freud is not part of this blog!!
# Naresh blogging a pix where I saw myself standing next to my first crush (September, 8)
# Getting the honorary title of the “Pebble thrower” courtesy Stanely (October, 20)
# Reading with glee posts from Alps delivered in breathless style and from Ashu with all the exclamation marks, commas, semi-colons etc.
#Nargis sharing her “dream” and spitting fire for her right not to vote.
#Tasneem spreading the sweetness with Chenna Podo…
#Vishnu informing us all that the statue of St. Vincents has been removed (September, 21)
#And above all the solitary maple leaf of Faiyaz and its title, “Maple Do Pal Ka Shaayar Hoon”(May, 24). Truly symbolic of the times in which we live.

I wonder what 2009 holds for the denizens of this blog. Will we all hide behind the convenient excuse of “I was busy” or will we do better than the 259 blogs and the 1975 comments we managed in 2008?

Shall we just better the numbers or better the cozy warmth and mellow sunshine of nostalgia that we snuggled into last year?

Will we put in the efforts ourselves or shall we all wait for a Godot?

Only time will tell………….

P.S.

Hey guys you may be all busier than Barrack Obama but surely the hours and hours of research deserves your comments….. Aakhaa bhai log, ladeeeze log fultooch respond karney ka... Boley toe kya!!