A MIDDLER TURNS BLOGGER

It was when I was in high school that I discovered my flair for story-telling. This became apparent when my friends regularly gathered around me and listened with rapt attention at my narratives. And then, my teacher assigned to me the task of writing a story for the school magazine. I wrote a piece titled ‘In the Moonlit Darkness”, which was about the night I spent in a dormitory as a member of our school cricket team. (See the next blog)
There was a lull in my literary output until, half a decade later, I wrote another article called ‘In Pursuit of Pleasure” for our college magazine. Though nothing much happened on the writing front from then on, the longing for putting words on paper persisted.
Two decades later, I decided to try my hand at writing ‘Middle Articles” for an English daily published from Bangalore. It was called ‘A Puzzling Malady” which dealt with the witty side of crosswords — my favourite pastime. With bated breath, I waited for its publication and finally, when it did, I knew that becoming a ‘Middler” was within my reach. From then on nearly 50 of my middles saw the light of the day in the same daily and a further dozen or so in another daily with major presence in South India.
A couple of years ago, my ‘Middles” suddenly dried up. It was as though the literary tap was turned off leaving me high and dry. It was a writer’s block of sorts. Then someone suggested to me to try blogging to get out of the mire. The idea was to ignite a spark that would light up my muse. And I am waiting for that spark.