Blogger Awards

The saint and the dancing girl

He was filled with remorse. He had insulted her by refusing to witness her performance. She was a pious woman and an artist dedicated to her art. He had failed the divine Mother’s test. He had been too proud of his saintliness and it had lead to his fall. He at once begged her forgiveness.

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Sometimes we become too high brow and consider ourselves above certain things. I have always felt tags and blogger awards are frivolous and not keeping with the dignity of a sober blog. So I have always politely declined to participate in it. Recently I have been thinking about it and realized being tagged is a kind of acknowledgement of my presence in the blogging world.  If we look deep into our hearts, what we need most is someone to acknowledge our existence. I wanted to acknowledge the last award I received itself. But I kept postponing and meanwhile another blogger gave me yet another award. So I thought I will make haste and put up a post expressing my heartfelt gratitude to the bloggers who have passed awards to me.

My first award came from Vibuthi Bhandarkar, a wonderful blogger who has published her own book of short stories. She was one of my earliest friends in the blogging world. She honored me by sending me a free copy of her book for review.

My second award came from a girl called Tejaswee Rao in July 2010. I had somehow missed it then. Today I went to her blog and to my shock and dismay found that she had expired within a month of tagging me and the blog is currently being maintained in her memory by her mother. It is a small thing but I am wishing I had accepted the tag when the blogger was still alive.

My third award was from a lady who calls herself confusedyuppie. Unfortunately I do not know anything about her. But still she has mentioned my blogs as one of those she loves and regularly reads. Nothing makes a blogger happier than a reader who loves and regularly reads his or her blog.

My fourth award was from Elvira Lobo. She has left a few lovely comments on my blog now and then. Beyond that I do not know her too well. Nevertheless I am extremely delighted to be chosen as one of the 15 bloggers worthy of receiving recognition.

The most recent award is from Kajal Chanchani Nayar who has recently become a regular follower of my blog and a great friend on Indi Blogger. Last but not the least; I thank her also from my bottom of heart not only for giving me an award but for being the catalyst finally precipitating me into action to put up a post thanking all those who honored me.

Now coming to the challenge part, here I am dealing with 5 different challenges. It will become a complete mish mash if I were to take up all of them here. So I would request you all to kindly excuse me from the challenges for the time being. Maybe sometime later I will come up with a post that will incorporate all the challenges. 

The other part is me passing on the award to 15 other bloggers. Whereas I greatly appreciate this gesture of being conferred an award by a fellow blogger, this is not my way of expressing my appreciation to my favorite bloggers. I do it though my comments and reviews. So I would request to be excused from this part as well. As I said the idea in itself is good and I am thrilled at receiving these kind of awards. But I feel it would be tad out of character for me to be giving these awards.

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Donkey in doldrums

He wondered what he had done wrong. He only wanted to express affection to his mistress. After all isn’t that how the poodle welcomed her daily? And she seemed to love it. But when he had tried to jump on to her lap and lick her face, the washer woman had given him the cane.