To be conferred with the tag ‘inspiring’ by someone who is herself an inspiring blogger is indeed very inspiring. I know, I know! That sentence is rather uninspiring with the three inspirings jostling with each other for space and attention. Anyways, getting back to the all important word, inspiring, I have been fortunate enough to be conferred with the Inspiring Blogger Award by none other than Sumana, the inspiring blogger I alluded to above. Now here is someone I would say is serious about her writing. Her blogs are testimony to the fact. Any of you who haven’t read her, go and do so pronto and be enlightened and also entertained.
Though I didn’t exactly go around waltzing and strewing rose petals from the proverbial hat on coming to know of being awarded, the obvious reason being a lack of sufficient quantity of rose petals and my good neighbour refusing to part with the precious few roses in her garden, I came very close to wanting to do just that. And yet, my euphoria lasted only as long as it took the realisation to dawn that there simply had to be a catch somewhere. There usually is, in this business of awards. Experience has taught me that. Sure enough, I found that the conditions, though not in minute letters indecipherable to the human eye as is the usual norm, stated that I had to write Seven Things About Myself.
Now, truly speaking, that is not such a difficult task. The problem is, this page, as described by a casual visitor who sauntered in one fine day, is a I-me-myself sort of blog. Such being the case, I seriously wonder how I can ever come up with seven new things about myself, be they significant or insignificant. You see, they have almost ALL been written, and what has not been so far will, I doubt, ever find its way to this blog. Errr… ummm… contrary to popular belief, I am secretly a secretive old bird. Haha.
At this point, I am going to recount a story. Nope, I have not gone bonkers. Some might view this as digression which I am famous notorious for. Not at all. Bear with me while I go about recounting and things will be made clear, but certainly not ‘bare with me’ as requested by some bloggers of their readers. Imagine getting THAT familiar with your readers as to ask them to ‘bare’! Preposterous methinks, this treating of the blog-world as a nudist camp! Anyways, let me hasten to add, what I am going to tell is not so much a story,but more of an incident.
In the days of yore, while blogging at the extinct Yahoo 360 platform, a group of us bloggers used to take part in writing ‘festivals’. One of us would play host and come up with a topic/phrase. The rest could join in by writing verse or prose or even posting a relevant picture. The written word limit stood at three hundred.
Once, the topic at hand had been ‘rain’ and I was all set to write a story on my favourite theme, rain. Try as I might though, I could not limit my story to three hundred words. So I went a-begging to good friend Brenny aka Branavan who was hosting the Rain Festival.
“Brenny,” I cried, extending my begging bowl, “please, can you give me 200 extra words? My story badly needs them!”
It was only my second attempt at fiction and I had not yet come across 55 word stories or tried my hand at them those days.
“Of course! Take as many as you want,” came the quick reply from the generous man. In fact, after reading my story, Brenny said I could have asked him for more. “What are rules for if not for breaking?!” he added.
Now, THAT is what I wanted to get to, about how rules are there only for breaking. It makes life that much more interesting. But of course that excludes some rules like traffic guidelines and such. Do I want people getting killed or what? Oh no Siree, not at all. But since breaking the tag rule does not involve taking or losing life or even hurting or maiming, I am hell bent on doing just that and make things, hopefully so, more interesting for all concerned.  Who needs to read more of boring I-me-and-myself stuff anyways?!
My love for rain is legendary. Here are seven (the magic number!) pictures of rain/raindrops. Okay I admit they have been clicked by me, so the I-me-myself factor hasn’t entirely been done away with.  Sorry about that!

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The right thing to do next is to pass on the award to others who ‘inspire’ me. I am inspired by all who selflessly work for causes. There are many working for the less fortunate, those discriminated against, the abandoned… the list goes on. I admire you all and salute you. I will just choose two from the many. So this award goes to IHM and Desi Girl. Please feel free to interpret the blog as you wish.

Psst… If there are minimum ten raised hands from among readers to read the Rain story mentioned above, I will re-post it here as my next blog post. Btw, the pictures above have been captured with a Sony Cybershot W-150. Click it to get a larger view.