Dear AA,
I have been reading your column since the beginning, ever since Mr. Mathrubootham quit writing his letters (did you read them?), and they’ve gotten much funnier as time goes on. I am also a newbie blog writer, and I want some tips on how to get that beautiful flow you have. Maybe then I will get more popular on social media.
Desires Emergency Advice Report
Dear DEAR,
This is the ideal place for me to insert an emoji with rolling eyes, but will the print medium allow me to do so? Heaven forbid! Which is why more and more people are simply reading WhatsApp these days. In fact, I am a big fan of WhatsApp. Sometimes people talk and talk and there is nothing you want to say in reply. You just want them to go away. What should you do? You should simply send them one Thumb’s Up, and conversation is over. Or if someone keeps boasting about his son and dog and house? Send one yellow face with round eyes that is supposed to be ‘Wow’. Enough. Nothing else is needed. Imagine if this was IRL? You have to keep nodding and saying, ‘my god!’ and ‘excellent!’ and ‘congrats!’ and the person will keep talking nonstop.
But to get back to your question, this is really too much. Not only do I have to write one advice column, now you want me to give writing tips also so that you can become rich and famous? I am a fool or what? I have many talents and every one of my near and dear friends and relations and building residents knows this. If anything happens means they will always say, go to Akka, she will give solution. Why, only last week the neighbouring building’s watchman’s cycle got stolen. Lot of hue and cry happened. I heard it from my balcony and immediately went down. I told everybody how to complain to police, how to lock cycle, gate etc. I gave watchman a good lecture about careless habits. Everybody calmed down immediately.
That is why this newspaper has asked me to write a column. They have seen my talent. But if you think I am going to share writing tips with you, you have another think coming. You want to take over my column or what? Why you people don’t like to see a good woman prospering I don’t know. Just like Jacob, my first-floor neighbour. All I have to do is tell him about my new 55” TV set, and he will immediately launch into one long story about how TV watching is bad for the eyes and how we must all read books. And if I tell him I made a fantastic salad for lunch, within 24 hours he is bound to send me a long WhatsApp forward about how somebody in Nashville in U.S.A. ate a lettuce salad and how there was a worm in the lettuce leaf and how the worm travelled into his brain.
Golden rule in life is that we must ignore all such Jacob-type people. Like that, there are many, many golden rules about writing also. Foremost among these is that it is impossible to share writing tips. Writing is like Chennai corporation water, either it will flow or it will not flow. And there is nothing you can do about it.
Meanwhile, who is this Mathrubootham you are dragging into the conversation? I don’t know him. Perhaps he was another Jacob? Always giving doomsday advice? Maybe he will give you writing tips. But on this mail ID, there is only myself, Akka.
— AA
agony.akka@gmail.com
