–  a true story of  blog addiction

Being away or rather forced to be away, from the net for long gave me chance to muse about the blogosphere and the hold it has on us bloggers. Is Cloud Nine when you get a comment to your blog, the Indianhomemaker a passionate blogger herself, had once wondered. Hmm… I wouldn’t go as high as that, as Cloud Nine is otherwise reserved in my case, but would certainly assign it a Seventh Heaven.

How addicted are we really to the blogosphere and blogging?? I bet each of us has a story to tell and here is mine. I might have been slightly more than a year into blogging when this happened. Tell me if you can beat this one.

Those were Ancient Times when all the members of a household had to share one lone computer amongst themselves. Usually there was a tyrant who monopolized the PC and then there were the oppressed that had to go by his/her rules. In our home, the senior son was the (gentle) tyrant who owned the PC and with the iron hand in the velvet glove approach threw us, the oppressed ones, scraps of computer time. The junior son and I still recall the dreaded phut-phut-phut of a slowing mo-bike followed by the ‘ttttang’ of the opening gate which sounds heralded the return of the Tyrant PC Owner and filled our (respective) hearts with dismay.

Every dark cloud has a silver lining and mine had a super silver lining. Soon the senior son got hold of an Engineering degree and a job which thankfully took him to far away Bangalore. The junior son as a certified computer game buff with the monster Board Exams to contend with was not qualified for automatic transfer of ownership of said lone PC. Dad aka the Lord and Master being out of station did not enter the equation at all. So Mom got the honors and oh boy, was she thrilled.

Of course from then on it was blogs and comments, burnt food scraped off vessel and served, blogs and comments, burnt food scraped off vessel and served, blogs and comments…. Oh well, you get the drift. And whenever the Writing-A-New-Post Devil had Mom in its vise-like grip and she was in no mood to serve even ‘burnt food scraped off vessel’ the junior son obligingly and happily ordered take-away dinners. He and I surely and definitely were getting to be fat, were headed towards getting fatter and seemd to have our eyes firmly set on the goal of fattest when…. But that’s a different story. Let me not (infamously) digress.

One day the junior son had to go on a school trip. He needed a bag for his things. The L & M as the Keeper of Bags and Other Sundry Things and also The Mighty One With Answers To Everything was consulted over the phone. Go and look in the basement room, we were advised, you ought to find something suitable there.

Now a word about this basement room: It is the kingdom of the Lord and Master. He hoards all useless things that should have been thrown out long back essential things there. Mysteriously so, after each ‘adukkiveppu’ (tidying up) when some things are reluctantly discarded by him, the room looks fuller than ever.

The evening before the day he had to leave, the junior son, as is the habit of children anywhere, was sprawled in front of the TV as if he had all the time in the world. I prodded him to go find a bag and pack his things. Being a Meanie Mom unlike the Goddesses that are the Bharatiya Mummy-jis who make me sick even in their doddering old age fetch and carry for healthy adult sons, I want my children to do things on their own and not bother me from doing my own thing. He reluctantly got up and went down the stairs. Soon after, I heard him call me.

“Ammmaaaaaaaa”

I was alarmed. A spider, my sixth sense told me. Meanie Mom or not, when a child calls in distress, a mother has to respond, even if her instincts tell her there is some creepy-crawly which she herself is so terrified of involved somewhere in all this. Besides, the junior son is equally if not more scared of spiders than I am. In such a situation, a mother has no option but take on the role of Jhansi ki Rani and enter the battlefield.

Years back I had vanquished and chased out of the house with a handy broom and a most determined look, a slimy tree frog, on seeing which my usual habit would otherwise have been to go eeeeeeeek and make myself scarce due to their habit of jumping on you when least expected (not that expecting it to jump would make it any better) from where they sat on the wall, at just the right psychological moment to scare you out of your wits end, all because it had dared scare the senior son who was at the time all of two years old.

“Ammaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!” the call came again more urgent now.

“I am coming!” I replied in a hoarse whisper.

I quickly went down the stairs trying to make as little noise as possible when a new thought struck me. It could be a mouse. I almost scurried back up the stairs. But mothers, even meanie ones, cannot leave kids calling for help, stranded in basement rooms, to face fearful monsters on their own.

“I am coming!!” I repeated.

Even as I descended, my body was poised for instant flight back up the stairs in case of emergency. These mice are such stupid creatures, just like lizards are. They make straight for those who least want them (me, for instance) in their vicinity.

On reaching the room, the junior son pointed to a Gargantuan Spider which was the spitting image of the one the senior son, ably assisted by me, had dealt with on a previous occasion. It eyed us malevolently from atop a trunk, sending shivers down my spine. Even as we watched in fascinated horror, it disappeared among the maze of trunks and other paraphernalia, all of which are an indispensable part of an army man’s accumulated wealth luggage.

What were we the Scaredy (of spiders) Cats to do now?? Not prepared to venture into spider infested territory, we gave the room a cursory glance and decided that no appropriate bag was available.

Now we had to get back to the Lord and Master of the basement room (and of course the whole house as well) and apprise him of events. We closed the door hoping the spider wouldn’t take any cues form Mary’s little lamb and follow us back up the stairs.

The junior son went back to lolling in front of the TV while I walked back to my room. Slipping into the chair in front of the computer, I picked up the cell phone lying on my table and called the Lord and Master. I listened to the phone go triiiing triiing as I open my web page.

The L & M promptly picked up the phone at the other end.

“Hello darling” I said.

“We looked in the cellar room, you know…”

“Yeah..?” he asked, “Find any bag there??”

My eyes were on the computer screen, one hand on the mouse clicking away. I smiled to myself reading the latest comment and formulated an answer in my mind……. and I heard myself answer the L & M,

“No darling. There are no blogs in the cellar room”

Oh well…