This is to introduce Maria, aka Gaelikaa, who is Irish married to an Indian and who writes two fascinating blog posts on the life of an expat in India. You can find her two blogs here and here.
Recently, Maria had honoured me with a blogger award and in exchanging views on that, I had asked her as to why she uses two blogs and her reply is reproduced below unedited by me. Among the regular readers of my blog I know of Jean with two posts but none other that I can think of. If there are any more, I would be very keen to know about the second ones.
Dear Ramana,
Thank for accepting the award. I am honoured that you have done so. There are various games such as tags, awarding virtual awards and memeing played by bloggers and some bloggers are really into them. Others avoid them. But I feel it is good to get involved to the level that you can. We all blog because we want to say something and when we get readers who like our work, it’s great!
I don’t mind your question at all. Actually, when I began my ‘gaelikaa’ site, I just did it because I liked writing. I wrote about anything that came into my head. I often neglected the site for months if I got busy at home. But gradually, I started taking it more and more seriously and I noticed that I always got a good response if I wrote about the desi garh/videshi bahu aspect of my life. So my blog became a long discussion on the east/west aspect of my life. In short, an expat blog. There are a lot of expat bloggers out there. One I particularly like is Ayak’s blog Turkish Delight. She is an English woman married to a Turk and living in Turkey. She comments on almost every post I do, as I do on hers.
You may have noticed that the posts in ‘gaelikaa’ are rather long. I love writing long posts, Some of the topics I cover merit long discussion. I find it quite cathartic. But not everyone likes reading long posts, although thankfully, plenty do.
Moreover, I have quite a universal taste in blogs. I visit all types of blogs and have had a number of these virtual awards passed on to me. Often, these awards are accompanied by an assignment of some sort, ‘a post on a plate’ some bloggers call it. The assignment consists usually of naming and linking the person who nominated you, nominating and linking a specific number of bloggers, and sometimes answering a set of questions known as a ‘meme’. It could be something quite trivial like ‘who is your favourite film star’ or something quite deep and personal like ‘reveal a little known fact about yourself”. Here the challenge is to reveal something interesting without giving away too much personal information. On one such question I simply stated that my real name was not really gaelikaa, that it was just a blogging name and that my real name was something else entirely.
Often you are simply tagged for memes with no award at all. Well, I always try to do the memes I get assigned because the bloggers who tag me are ones who have visited my site and shared their thoughts regarding the posts. When you are getting support, it is nice to be able to return the favour in some way, especially if circumstances allow. However, I was getting tagged so much that I found these tag/award/meme posts were getting in the way of the things I really wanted to write about. . So I started the ‘gaelikaa’s diary’ blog for these posts and also just to write shorter posts for readers who might prefer that. It’s a different kind of writing and I find it interesting But my main blog now renamed ‘gaelikaa – Out of Ireland, Into India’ remains my favourite. I find the diary blog quite useful for posting information about myself, such as the fact that my son was ill recently. I tend to post more frequently on the diary because the posts are short. I post to on the main blog ever eight/twelve days.
It is quite interesting how the second blog came about. I was bored with the usual blogger templates and with my daughter, I surfed the net looking for an interesting alternative. We narrowed the choice down to three – the night sky, the undersea world and the diary look. I settled on the night sky for my first (then the only) blog because of its’ international aspect. After all, whether one lives in Ireland or India, we are all under the same sky. Lucknow is so inland that the undersea world holds no relevance. Then, thinking about the diary, I thought it would make a perfect layout for a blog with short, almost daily posts.
So, I started the second site so I could continue doing long reflective posts on the first site. Blogger sites are free, so it has worked out pretty well so far. I don’t think it was a bad idea after all!
Thanks for contacting me.
gaelikaa (Maria)
Many of the reasons that Maria gives for blogging are bound to ring bells with most of us who blog for the pleasure of it and to see our thoughts published, appreciated or otherwise by others, commented upon and to expand our network of bloggers. Over the last year and more, I have been able to expand my network by this simple process and I have come to know many people from many lands and about them and their surroundings, as I am sure, they have from my blog.
Maria’s response has set me to muse about starting another blog. Perhaps concentrating on one subject/theme. Any ideas for the subject/theme?
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