Problems we content writers face

Off-late ATMs in Hyderabad (at least the area I live in) have been going dry leaving the commoners in a lurch. Most of the ATMs sport the ‘NO CASH’ board outside making it really annoying.

Two days ago, after hours of hunting for an ATM, I finally found one which had cash. Though there was a really huge line, I was ready to wait.

Anyway, in that line, I happened to meet a man (probably 30 years old) with whom I randomly started talking. As soon as he learnt that I was a content writer, he raised his eyebrows in a way that made me want to bite off his head. He boasted about how stressful his life as a financial analyst was. He signed off giving you an envious look and saying ‘So, article writing. How easy’.

While most people think all we do as content writers is write, and then do some more writing, we actually do more than just that.

When a lot of people hear the terms “content writer” or “content strategist,” they may not have the slightest clue what the words mean. Explaining jobs to family and friends who don’t work in media is a nightmare. Many think being a content writer is a simple job. Yes, most people harbour such notions about content writers – that our lives are very easy, we can write anytime we want and do not need to follow any schedule so on and so forth.  

However, life for us is just the opposite. Our life is full of pains that only we can understand. It is only me who knows how it feels to write thousands of words on a topic which is absolutely alien to me within a few hours. Only I and not the financial analyst (whom I met at the ATM) will know how difficult it becomes at times to include the SEO keywords within the article while maintaining the flow of the post.

Having ‘Content writer and a communication strategist’ as a designation might sound cool to others but not to us who have clients hounding us to submit assignments within deadlines. Yet, we all face it and try to deal with it.

And oh yes..generating ideas. That is like the biggest pain. At times, I stare at the screen for hours without any notion of how to begin an article that would pull the readers to read an article. There are times when I cannot even pen down a hundred words. Sometimes, there are people who make demotivating comments that really dampen my spirit.

I’m not boasting here, but this is just one of the roles I play in my organization. I also develop communication strategies, manage a team of 5 and handle a few projects too. Just imagine the plight of my situation. Phew!  

I can go on and on about the problems we content writers face. But I have already missed 3 calls from the client and I am running behind schedule. Have to write an 800-word article within an hour’s time. ☹

Happy Women’s Day? Not really!

I live in a country which is totally ironic. A country where goddesses are worshipped, but women are disrespected, a country that promotes ‘Beti bachao, beti padhao’, but kills female foetuses, a country that talks about women empowerment, but decides how I talk and how I dress.

I keep coming across news articles where women’s head was shaved because she could not deliver a male child or a woman was set on fire because she was dark skinned and her husband wanted to remarry a fairer bride. For those living in urban areas, this might be unbelievable or hard to digest. But the sad truth, my friend, is that such things do happen.

Travel less than a hundred kilometres from any of the cities and towns, you will see that women must do most of the family chores, but have no exposure to growth opportunities or health facilities. Most girls, not boys, handle household chores from childhood, at the cost of going to schools. Women are suffering from malnutrition, neglected health ailments, domestic and sexual violence. It’s a scenario where a woman owns nothing, not even herself.

And this is not just in case of rural areas. Pick up the newspaper and you will read at least two stories on rape. And the funniest thing is that the rapist claims that the women’s dress or behaviour is what provoked them? Dude, like seriously? With such incidents happening we see our family imposing terrible rules on us. But, we can’t blame them.

Somehow, tradition claims it is okay to nurse men’s sadistic entitlement to something as petty as women’s dress code, simply because it has always been that way. Well, here’s my two thoughts: How about real men started exercising self-control? We don’t jump into ditches daily just because they lay in front of us along the street. So why not ignore, or resist those women with whom your ‘indecent’ standards don’t match?

And oh yes, if you’re not brutalised and are fortunate enough to be born into a family that actually cherishes you, prepare yourself for a biased society that is itching to blame you for everything. Sometimes, you will be given less respect and you will be expected to sacrifice more.

There are so many things that we are subjected to on a daily basis. Eve-teasing, harassment, disrespect and what not? I’ve just cited a few points. And under such circumstances, I feel it does not make sense for an Indian to celebrate women’s day. Is celebrating women’s day not a mockery of oppression suffered by women?

Life is really tough for women. I firmly believe that nobody needs to dictate to a woman what she should wear. We all say that India is a developing country. But are we really? I believe that development also involves breaking free from the so-called restrictions and concepts. After all, it is one’s choice.

The real India, which reels under poverty, struggles for survival and earns daily bread to sustain life, is least concerned, bothered and impacted by such events like Women’s Day. So, to say, women empowerment is really non-existent in rural India?

The innocent times of the past - School life! :')

My friend, who happens to be an active reader of my blog (probably the only one: P), suggested I write about the school we studied together in. So, this blog is about my school – BHAVANS SRI RAMAKRISHNA VIDYALAYA! It in fact talks about school life in general.

I remember way back during the school days, I used to hate waking up early in the morning. We had to be in our school by 7.45 am to make it on time for the morning assembly. It was mandatory to attend the assembly. If we didn’t make it on time we used to be sent to the latecomer’s line - a line where the students received horrendous punishments. But to be honest, we enjoyed being there.

To make it on time to school, I had to wake up by 6 in the morning. Unwillingly wake up, dress up to go to school, recalling all the previous day's homework that was forced upon us all. I used to think to myself every single day, “Oh god! When will I grow up?”. But now I would just do anything to go back to my school days, sit in my classroom, play pen fights, flames and tic-tac-toe with my friends, and visit our tiny canteen which has been our favourite place to visit in the school after school playground. I'm sure there are a zillion other memories each of us have with our school.

                                             With our canteen uncle. :)

Remember when our teacher was on leave and we got a substitute teacher? Yaaaay! Free period was the best thing ever. And when our other subject teacher poached the free period, we would be cribbing about it for the whole day.

Wearing casuals on birthdays made us feel top of the world. The entire class singing ‘Happy Birthday to you’, distributing chocolates in class and giving our best friend an extra chocolate and taking them along to give chocolates to the teachers in the entire school was undoubtedly the memory I want to relive.

Eating lunch before the lunch break (interval is what we used to call) is something each one of us have done at some point or the other.  If not ours, we would steal someone else’s tiffin box and gobble all of it down (under the desk) and pretend as if we are listening to the teacher very carefully by nodding and making serious facial expressions.

Remember the Games of PE period well all had twice in a week? The best time ever. The day we had our games period, our mornings would kickstart with a happy face. Summers, winters, monsoons we just won’t care as long as we got to play.

And when we step out of the classroom, there was no way we will not walk around the entire building to kill some extra time. In fact, we would go to our friend’s classroom to get them along with us too.

Teacher’s Day, Children’s Day, Annual Day, Sports Day – Our school time would be incomplete without these big celebrations. From decorating our classrooms to make teachers feel special to practising marchpast for hours together for the sports day, we all enjoyed doing every bit of it. Remember draping a saree for the farewell? Haahha.. nightmare, isn’t it?

What’s the best part of school life? Some would vouch for the great education, the great learning experience, the knowledge sharing, and other such scholarly pursuits. But many would admit that the best part of school life is all the fun one has. Hope this blog took you on a trip down memory lane.

School life - the innocent times of the past, times which would NEVER come back ever again!

Growing up with strict parents :P

If you have really strict parents, then you can totally relate yourself to this post.

The way strict parents deal with their children is very different from how the liberal parents deal with their kids. That is why we, kids of strict parents, think twice or thrice or even a hundred times before doing something toofaani. Because if our parents find out about it, we are royally jacked.

In Hollywood movies, we see the concept of detentions or timeouts, but our parents laugh at that idea. :P They have a totally different way of dealing with situations. As a kid, our parents dealt with us slapping us if  we did not listen to them.  You didn't eat your vegetables, PHAT! You get hit on your head which causes immense fear and pain and the sudden urge to eat all the vegetable from the plate. :P

Our parents are PhD’s in child psychology. They know how to get something done by us. They know what scares us and what doesn’t. Starts with stares, followed by shouting, screaming and if you still do not listen to them, then you’ll be treated with slaps and blows. This fear has made us the best liars on the planet. :P

From ‘Never going for sleepovers’ to ‘Never going to for trip with friends’, the struggle of growing up with strict parents is way too real.  

During the summer break, when all our friends went to other cities and countries for holiday, ours always happened to be a temple tour. Don’t even dare questioning or arguing with them on this.

Yes, I do not deny the fact that our parents care so much about us, look out for us and are very considerate. However, we get so frustrated at the same time because we can’t meet our friends often, can’t go for night outs, can’t go out for the whole day….. can’t do anything remotely fun.

So, here’s a very common scenario that happens at almost every strict parent’s house.

Child: Amma, can I go out with my friends today?

Amma: Go ask your dad!

Child: Appa, can I go out with my friends today?

Appa: Friends? Who friends? Why friends? Why do you keep going out? Can’t you sit at home? When will you be back? Come home soon. *With the irritated look*

Our friends who have liberal parents do not understand our situations. Even though our parents already say no, our friends tell us “ask them why”, “ask them again”. So sometimes we tell our friends that our parents did not give us permission to go out even without asking them for approval, because we know that it would anyway be a no.

And oh yes! You are not allowed to close your bedroom door. If you happen to do so, they will anyway come and open it. So, it’s better you leave it that way. Sometimes, they happen to sneak around in your room during the night, just in case they can catch you talking to some person over phone. And if this happens, you will be interrogated and lectured for hours together.

Some of the things we face or do while growing up with strict parents are:

• Rehearsing what you are going to say for about an hour before you ask your parents to go somewhere
• Changing all boy’s names into girls in your phone so that they don’t question you
• Put our phones always on silent when we are at home. Cause if anyone calls, you’ve to give your parents huge explanations as to what the call was about.
• We get a mini heart attack whenever they ask us to give them our phone, though sometimes we do not have anything to actually hide from them.
• If you have strict parents, there’s no such thing as last minute plans.

Growing up in the 90’s and growing up today

Probably this is a very common topic, but I decided to write about this because of a recent incident. 

So, I recently happened to meet a group of kids, all of them immersed in their cell phones, (read: phones much posher than what I own). I observed them for about 15 minutes, they hardly spoke to each other. One was busy using Whatsapp, while other was on Facebook and the other on YouTube and so on.

Looking at them, I remembered Albert Einstein’s famous quote.

“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”

I eventually started a conversation with them. We spoke about various topics…their schools, tuition, phones, interests, dislikes and so on. They started complaining about how tough they have it. They said they had to deal with tough choices in life. I was dumbfounded!

After having an encounter with those kids, I decided to write on how it was growing up back in the 90s and how it is today.

Firstly, I feel lucky because I got to see the both sides of the spectrum. - the world before the technology invasion and the world after. However, when I look at kids (who are very pampered, ) around, I sometimes feel sad for them because they will never know what it was like growing up in the 90s.

Our generation did not depend on Google for assignments or YouTube for entertainment. We didn’t stay indoors because there was nothing to do unless it was raining and even then, we would beg our parents to go out, at least to the porch.  

We were born in era where we did not have cell phones (They did exist, but was not common in a middle-class household) and Facebook and the internet. We did have video games (remember Contra, Duck hunt, Aladdin?) and Walkmans.

Though there was a TV at home, we did have a radios as well. And when either of the child had their board exams coming up, the television connection would be disconnected. 

In my house, the radio was on all the time. I clearly remember, when "Samprati varthaaaha shuyantham pravachakaaha... Baldaevananda Sagaraha" boomed the voice of the Sanskrit newscaster at 7:05 am on All India Radio, my mother would yell asking me to get ready for school. The Sanskrit news followed by the “School chale hum” song… nostalgic!

Yes, I definitely agree that today, kids face a lot of competition… often termed as a ‘healthy competition’. But, I strongly believe there is no such thing as ‘healthy’ competition. In a competitive culture, a child is told that they aren’t enough to be good. They must triumph over others. But the more they compete, the more they need to compete to feel good about themselves. But winning doesn’t build character; it just lets a child gloat temporarily.

Okay.. I’m getting diverted from the actual topic. I’ll write about this some other time. :P

So.. I understand that kids today have access to things which we did not have. They have more access to educational materials, larger social circles (social media), lesser likelihood of losing contact with existing contacts...blah blah blah. Although there are definite perks to their childhood, in my opinion no time period was better to grow up in than in the '90s.

The beautiful and fulfilled evenings when friends would come around and we would play video games (usually one player at a time because not many people had two joysticks, that was quite posh) for about an half an hour, then we would go outside to play or meet our friends on the common. This of course meant lots of time outside, running, jumping, climbing trees and of course GULLY CRICKET. I was pretty healthy and happy as I recall, and blissfully unaware of how lucky I was.

Birthday parties meant so much though it was typically a piece of cake, chips, coke and chocolate. Nowadays kids are hardly a part of the social gatherings. Even if they do, they are immersed in their cell phones.

On the whole, I think 1990's was one of the best decades to have grown up in because we had a taste of both the worlds. We were admonished and sometimes beaten, if we did something wrong. We were disciplined and taught to respect elders more than we acknowledge.

I do miss being a child! :(

P.S: I have surely missed out on many points like the floppy's, cassettes..etc. However, if you (my non-existent readers) are a 90s kid, you will surely know the amazing fun we had back then.

P.S2: I have nothing against Facebook, YouTube, or social media for that matter. 

P.S3: I don't think this article exactly talks about how proud I feel to be a 90s kid. But, honestly speaking, I'm very glad. 

My first tattoo experience..

So, I got my first tattoo two weeks ago. I had been contemplating it for a long time, but I wanted to be 150 per cent sure of what I wanted before I got it, since tattoos ARE permanent (unless you fancy spending lots of money on tattoo removal, bearing the pain, doing lots of research on the tattoo removal techniques available and getting variable results).

Actually a lot of research went into my first tattoo – it wasn’t an impulsive decision. I’ve been researching for about 2 years on getting a perfect tattoo done. Before getting my tattoo done, I prepared myself mentally that it’ll be very painful. When I walked in on the day of my appointment I was TERRIFIED. Though I prepared myself mentally, my biggest fear was not being able to handle the pain and having to quit half-way through. But after my artist showed me the design he had drawn up, I fell in love with it and my fear quickly evaporated.

I had also taken a friend along with me for a moral support. After getting all the equipment ready, the ink artist cleaned off the area with a sterilizing wipe and applied the stencil. After doing this, he let me go look in the mirror to make sure the placement was exactly how I wanted it. Once I saw the outline of the design on my hand, I was way more excited than scared, and was ready to get started. My friend was keep me engaged in some random conversation when My tattoo artist did the outline first. I quickly realized that the pain wasn’t just bearable, it was practically non-existent! I soon got used to the feeling of the needle on my hand and settled down for what I knew would be a very long process.

As he went, the tattoo artist kept rubbing ointment into the tattoo to keep it moist and to make sure it didn’t get too irritated. Once he finished the outline, I was getting more and more joyous by the minute.

While there was a certain place that hurt more than the others, which the ink artist explained was due to the curves in the tattoo. The whole process took about two and a half hours. When I saw the finished product for the first time, I was so pleased. It turned out better than I expected, and was definitely worth it. 

"Ahamasmi Yodha"- in Sanskrit means I'm a fighter.

It was the aftercare portion that was difficult, and I sure was ready to have that thing healed! During the aftercare stage, the tattoo has to be washed multiple times a day, and an ointment has to be applied to it. Also, depending on where the tattoo is, it can get stuck to your clothes during the first few days, and if you aren’t careful in removing the fabric, some of the colour can permanently come off. The first night, mine got stuck to my blanket while I was sleeping, and when I carefully took it off the next morning I saw that some colour had bled onto my sheets. I was terrified. I immediately texted my artist, who asked me not to panic.

During the healing process, It itches very badly, but if you pick or scratch at it you can permanently put scars in the tattoo. If you really have to do something to stop the itching, you can gently pat the tattoo, and that helps without damaging the design.

Now that it is in the healing process, I’m planning to visit the tattoo artist for touch up. I want to make Yodha a little thicker.

 So was this worth it?

Yes, I’m definitely happy with my decision to get my tattoo, and I have a few more planned for down the road. A tattoo is a big responsibility though. It is something that is permanent.

I CANNOT WAIT TO GET ANOTHER TATTOO DONE, ALREADY! :)

Life lessons! :)

So, I pretty much broke the golden rule of having a best friend of the opposite sex; do not, under any circumstances, develop feelings for them and try to start something romantic. Because, as much as I believed we would be different, and that we were supposed to be more than friends…it just wasn’t meant to be. Now, as the dust is settling on what I see now was our inevitable breakup, we are both left reeling over the end of two different relationships — the romantic one and the friendship that used to be so strong.

I first met my best friend five years ago, when he walked into my college for sorting out his messy relationship. I hardly knew him. Gradually, this mysterious boy who I hadn’t met before (despite me having really small talks) became my best friend.

We bonded over our mutual love for alcohol, long talks and dark humour. Eventually, we started spending more and more time together, after college, long walks and so on. We would go for a long walk in empty roads, we would call each other to talk about our days. We both spent about an year rolling our eyes at the other’s romantic decisions, but it was so nice having a close friend of the opposite sex.

There was no pressure with him. I could just call him up to help me with literally anything. Eventually, it was as though he was my “comforter” — he had all the roles of a boyfriend, just without the rewards.

We talked about it a little, both realizing we were spending so much time together, doing all the things that people in a relationship do…that it was as though we had fallen into coupledom without even realizing. And, for me at least, it was never a choice. There was never a moment where I had to decide if I wanted to risk our friendship or not, because I already had. And so that was it. We admitted the thing we had been hiding for months now — that we liked each other in a “more than friends” kind of way, and it was becoming more. Eventually things started moving forward and all of this became real. A serious relationship…at least for me.

For a few years, we basked in the realness of it all. We had this amazing relationship, the likes of which neither of us had ever had before. I was comfortable, completely myself, and I think I can easily say we were in love. But at some point, probably around the time that reality caught up with us, we both started missing the best friend in each other. We would have stupid fights, and we both saw horrible sides of the other that we didn’t know about. And along the road, we lost sight of all the things we first liked about each other when we were just friends.

It was really hard. With other complications cropping up, I had a few weeks of back and forth. But eventually we called it mutually. We didn’t want to lose each other as friends, so we tried staying in touch. In the due-course I learnt the harsh reality of my relationship, something that hurt me terribly.  I learnt that as much as I would have loved us to have been right for each other, we never were. We were trying to be versions of ourselves that the other wanted us to be. We were trying purposefully not to be like the exes from before that we’d heard so much about. As a couple, we weren’t quite right no matter how much we wanted to be.

First major break up for me and it was even harder when the person I was breaking up with was my best friend. Initially, just like any other typical person, I was looking for closure. But eventually I realized that its time I choose a different coping mechanism for dealing with the end of the relationship, instead of wallowing and stalking his profile, waiting for a sign that he is moving on just to torture myself further.

I started being proactive. I immersed myself in my writing. I started taking exercising seriously, and both my body and my mind benefitted! And most excitingly, I began planning my vacations, looking forward to visit new places — something completely out of character for me, but super exciting!

It’s surreal and terrifying to me that I could have lived a life (the past three months) in which he was not mine. However, we are trying to leave the past behind and move on with things in life. We are trying to be in touch, however, at pinches me.. we are not in the same place where we used to be…when he was my best friend.

I really hope things turn out to be good and eventually I will get him back, as my best friend again.

In this whole process I’ve learnt that Friendships are important -- and best friends are not something to be taken lightly. Finding someone that understands you on such a deep level is rare, and those relationships should be treasured, nurtured and protected.

We spend so much of our lives avoiding things because we are afraid -- afraid of failing, afraid of getting hurt, afraid of making mistakes. And, sure, things don’t always work out like we hope.

Sometimes we will fail. Sometimes we will get our hearts broken…but not always. Don’t let fear stop you from living your life and taking chances. Maybe, just maybe, the thing you are afraid to try will be the most beautiful part of your story.