When the urges get creative, the creative go blogging, or at least, that's what's happening to me, and am glad that it's so. Between yesterday and today, I've managed to clear a lot of clutter - mentally and physically - and dude, it does make me feel that I've cut down on a lot of my problems. Spring cleaning not just for the house, but also for the mind...

Anyway, work also begins now on my photography blog Eternal Revelations (http://photographerinquest.blogspot.com), where, thankfully, I can put pictures of people and things I like, without having to think of how perfectly lit my subjects were.

But of course, all this is not without reason, and for those who know me the bestest, like I've been telling you, the aspiration this time around is not just a whim. I know I'm meant to tell stories, and tell them my way. Along the way if Sassy Satan needs to don the garb of an entertainment journalist, so be it. If capturing the essence of Delhi in my camera is the first lesson that I must learn in order to understand my subject better, then so be it. If stories need to be created before stories are told, I've been tempted long ago to become part of this cult practice. I must say, it's taken me the longest while - 25 years of my life - to know that I'm headed towards the magic of the moving screen. And now that that's been decided, it's time to think of a title and let the work begin!

The second role

I think I was far more romantic and dreamy four years ago, and I'm definitely jealous of that fact today. For almost two years now, I've been making sporadic attempts at being regular here and penning my thoughts, instead of looking for random friends who discard my emotional outpourings as flippant conversation. But, I've failed each time, rather miserably. But, the believer that I am, I saw so many 'signs' today that it was difficult not to make the attempt again, for the umpteenth time to forgo of old inhibitions and rewrite my role here. And the oddest names have come together for this - Rushdie, Neruda and Sassy Satan.

My day began with me going back to start Rushdie's Satanic Verses, a copy of which I finally managed to find in Hong Kong, and which is more precious than the most precious of things. By afternoon, I finished watching Il Postino,which reaffirmed my love for Neruda and all things that sprang forth from his pen. And by the time I came back to changing the look of Eternal Temptations so that it becomes the new face of the new Sassy, I saw Neruda on one of my lists on this blog, and also found one of my best older posts (http://saintinquest.blogspot.com/2007/04/eternal-temptations.html).

I am not going to look dreamily back at the past and wonder how easily words had rolled off my tongue at that time. How easily I had proposed to be a seller of indulgences! Along the way, I think, I've been robbed of most of the indulgences that I could give away, save what is most precious to me, in my heart. I know I want to come back, and I think I will. But now, the seller of indulgences has also become the teller of stories, and inshallah, that is where the new role will start.