Wordsmith at work

 Theme Reveal   Ato It will soon be April, and quite a few bloggers, including yours truly, will come together to participate in the humongous but delightfully chaotic A to Z blogging challenge. My theme this year is autobiography. I aim to give a voice to the everyday commonplace objects lying around our homes, on our shelves, desks, drawers, or in our bags, forgotten or taken for granted. Along with these tangibles, I shall also explore a few intangibles—emotions and states of being that are a big part of our lives. Stringing them together, I hope to weave a quirky and thoughtful tapestry of 26 brief but vivid posts.  Happy writing!

I sing out of tune, and I cannot play any musical instrument, but listening to music always makes me happy. Growing up, listening to the daily request programme broadcast by the Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) Broadcasting Corporation was mandatory. I vividly remember the singing classes at school, in both English and Hindi, the Chaayageet on television, and the Binaca Geet Mala on the radio. MTV and Channel V were two channels I often tuned into. Adolescence saw me enjoying the then-current favourites in Hindi and English, buying cassettes by the dozen, and shaking a leg when nobody was looking. CDs came later, and I remember my sons, now in their twenties, using them. Now, it's music I turn to when I’m stressed and when I’m cooking. Music helps me cook up that storm in the kitchen, because cooking isn't one of my favourite activities. My dad was musically inclined—he loved to sing, and now that I’m married into a musical family, every day is ‘music day.' My son and...

  Happy Birthday Blogchatter   Blogchatter is one of the best things to happen to a writer. It’s a user-friendly platform with lots to do. Opportunities to read, write, learn, and be educated and informed are galore. I joined Blogchatter about 4 to 5 years ago after hearing about it on SHEROES. I’ve been writing, reading, and sharing posts on Blogchatter ever since. It welcomes the young and old alike.  My biggest moment on Blogchatter was when I received the Top Post badge for my very first post. There are these five lovely ladies who keep the platform running and our grey cells ticking 24/7. They are also  never too busy to clear a doubt or make a clarification. Blogchatter hosts activities for both readers and writers—the weekly blog prompt challenge, Write A Page A Day; the Half Marathon, A to Z challenge and TBR challenges, to name a few. I have participated in several of these challenges, and what makes them even more exciting is the redeemable re...

   We are surrounded by color—in the beauty of nature, in the ugliness of war, in the clothes we wear, in the décor of our homes, in photograph albums, and just about everywhere.   We do not live our lives in black and white but in varied colours that life unfolds in.  Science and psychology both hold the view that colours are an integral part of our lives and influence everything we do or feel. Colour psychology is the study of how colours affect human behaviour. It’s that burst of orange, splash of blue, stroke of red, and the other colours in the rainbow that add that zest to our lives. A depressing day may be associated with grey or black; red symbolises your passion and energy, while blue creates an aura of calm and tranquillity, not forgetting that blue is also associated with sadness and a style of music called “the blues.”   Can you communicate with colors? Colours silently communicate moods and emotions and are a reflection of your tempe...