One often sees this scene in movies: someone standing on top of a mountain shouting out his ecstasy, rage or a Big Question. It’s obvious he just needs to get it out of his system. For me, this blog has been that mountain. I yelled out in my head a lot of things that I wrote here. Sometimes I found I had typed it all in caps lock and had to re-type it.
I could write the same things in a diary but that would be just between me and myself. I need to express niggling thoughts as if I’m sharing them with other human beings. Transferring them from my head onto a blog, or setting them free in cyberspace, gives a sense of resolution as they are now out of my system.
When I look at what I wrote under ‘About this blog’ in 2012 I find that much of it is not true of today.
About parenting: The kids have grown up and flown the nest. Right now, I only hope they have come to Earth with decent natal charts to see them through this lifetime.
About teaching children to respect others’ religious beliefs: In the present milieu I would find it hard to advocate blanket acceptance of everybody’s religious beliefs as worthy of respect. The problems caused by differing religious beliefs among people are in the news every day. I would probably not talk about comparative religion at all, but just say that people ultimately get their just desserts.
About mental health: The brain is an organ, the mind a process. I broadly accept that everything that can go wrong with the mind has a biological basis, because nerve cells that mediate mental processes communicate via chemicals. Nevertheless, I am now reluctant to use the term ‘mental illness’ too freely.
About history: My interest is only in subaltern history, the story of the common people, rather than that of kingdoms, conquests and colonisations.
About nature: The only thing that hasn’t changed is my pleasure in taking photographs and sharing the nice ones here. It’s still only about capturing a moment on my phone, “nothing hi-tech, just point and shoot” as I’ve said before.
So, what will I be writing about? Whatever wells up and needs to be expressed. With one rule: try not to complain about things too much.
drshyamalavatsa 
We all need a mountain to shout from! How beautifully you shout out what so many of us feel but are unable to express.
I share your views on parenting and children and religion. About “normalcy” – how can we compartmentalize people into black and white when there are so many shades of gray? And then, who are we to judge anyways? What’s the reference point?
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