Thinking Cap: The Journey

Looking back at my 2 years of blogging, the only thing I can say to bloggers out there is that editing is more important than writing itself.

To entertain your reading buds I have come up with a special edition. This post is a tribute to ‘Thinking Cap (TC)’ as it matures and finishes 2 successful years. Nobody has a slightest of idea how it was born except for a few. So to celebrate the second anniversary of TC, I want to share the story of how I lost my virginity and got pregnant with writing and gave birth to Thinking Cap. Here it goes!!

During my graduation I was a poor chap in the English language. In an effort to improve I adopted an innovative method of exchanging ‘letters in English’ with my pal Keshav Jha; a dark guy from Jharkhand who was in the same boat as me. Our letters fantasised about career, girls, dreams, money, gossip, movies etc.

Opportunity struck while I was seduced by writing. One of our professors asked us to write for the college magazine, though he had the least of expectations from us. And it was my chance to debut, to emerge. I ended up penning down an article on Delhi Metro.

The article in the magazine along with my black & white passport-size photo was convincing enough that creativity gives me a high. And so began my journey to be creative, to be a writer. I started with hard-hitting editorials like She, Where Struggle Never Ends and Idle Hands. The inspiration behind was the cult newspaper, “The Indian Express”. Initially every article costed me a month as I was obsessed with vocabulary and a fine finishing. Above all I was slow. Keshav and his school friend Akanksha Jha read all the crap I wrote and were the pillars of my fragile confidence. In fact Akanksha always had the expectations in those days that I should write for a newspaper or a magazine. 

So how TC came into the picture? Well, the thought to start a blog was never there in my mind as I was highly hopeful that some magazine will publish my work someday. But destiny never leaves you. It was at one of the Delhi University’s bus stand when my tech-savvy friend Neeraj, sold the idea of blogging to me. I loved it because it was free. So on 8^th Feb, 2010 over-night on e-blogger ‘Thinking Cap’ was born. A strange number 999, being lucky for me for donkey’s years became my URL.   

Year 2010 was when the world was super-excited about blogging. Every day we’d have thousands of new blogs popping up. So to make a place for Thinking Cap I exploited Facebook, the social sensation during those days. By constantly bugging people with the blog updates, tagging their names or messaging them I gathered the requisite crowd.  

The blog made its mark with “Suicide Note” which talked about a man’s fantasies to face death. It became the darling of the blog and introduced me to the world of sarcasm and humor. The achievement didn’t die there and was followed by another crazy piece called “Eaters Comma”. TC was admired for being true to heart. “Sons of the Soil”, a conversation between a Hindu and a Muslim at the JFK Airport broke all the records and established this blog as a real thinker.

Readers like Sukanya, Nidhi Bindal, Sabyasachi, Keshav, Neeraj, Ankit, Nidhi Khanna, Riddhi, Akanksha, Ankita Bali, Gurleen, Shyam, Ashna Banga were the frequent visitors. In fact Deepa Kashay of Bhopal became my friend after reading the blog whom I haven't even met. They are TC’s biggest admirers and critic. “Without you I am nothing”

My writing got better after a year and I published articles like Dream India, Different smells of my life, A complete Nonsense and The actor in the negative role etc. Every article was a take on the society and left a high impression. TC turned out to be a gold reserve when impressed with it I was offered to write for an amateur production house. The association went for a year. I wrote 3 episodes of a tele-series, 2 short films, and a reality show plot. Unfortunately, apart from the reality show nothing got executed but that phase gave a new direction to my career. I dropped the idea of MBA and decided to be in media.

Experimentation continued and I began writing film reviews. I wrote around ninety of them as I wanted to start a film review blog too; which could never happen though. But writing scripts gave me the confidence to make short-films and I made my first called “Silent Songs”.

Print outs of TC accompanied me in my interviews at SIMC (Pune), ACJ (Chennai), St Xavier’s, Bombay. When I got the admission in Xavier’s Bombay, life took a turn. I developed keen interest in writing poetry, shaayri and copy for ads. I even interned as a copywriter and intend to do this in future too. I also wrote another short film. Sadly, I could give no time to Thinking Cap where everything started.

Thinking cap has given me readers which I love the most. It has given me confidence to write, a hobby which was a passion and then an obsession and which will be my profession. Whatever I’ll do in my life it will be creative and will be related to writing. In a nutshell how can I not say “Thank You Thinking Cap; you have launched me”. 

Yours Truly

999

Photo Courtesy: Ambrish Patil, Dhavalya Kalem &Ankit Saxena. 

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