Storywala - The Humble beginnings & the Happy list

Storywala is my pet project made of dreams, passion and labor. With first post in August 2010  and now over 300 posts, we have come a long way. As I brainstorm to take the blog to the next level, it only makes sense to reflect on its humble beginnings. 

Would you believe if I said the genesis of this blog had to do with the 2008 financial subprime crisis. I am not emphasizing the negative connotation of the crisis, although it was the trigger. I had just joined Lehman Brothers in 2008 and soon found that similar to Jack and Jill, even big companies like Bear sterns and Lehman brothers can come tumbling down. While the US offices were getting ransacked by angry employees robbing it of its million dollar collection of paintings, expensive computer hardware and even petty stationary however fancy, we in India office were waiting to be acquired. 

Our India back office CEO as shrewd as he was had ensured that none of us would loose our jobs and will continue to receive salaries. I was too junior in the corporate ladder to know anything about the closed door conversation. So like a cog in the wheel I arrived in the office everyday logging in and spending hours clicking away at nothing. Almost 3000 of us did this keeping up the pretense of being hard working and committed to Lehman, lest we gave a reason to the employer to fire us. 

The tight IT security meant we couldn’t surf the internet freely especially the websites which were designed for time pass. A side business started when most people mailed in some interesting games on excel sheets to surpass the internet protocols. Though we could read educational articles and websites. That’s when I discovered the online readers paradise - Goodreads for book lovers and the series of interesting book blogs. After months of reading, writing, surfing and interacting, I knew I wanted my own blog. 

The subjects that interested me were pictures, books and travel. Probably it’s my mom’s habit of collecting family pictures that I also tend to diligently collection them. There is something about  capturing a moment in a picture as a precious memory. All these pictures will be something to relive my life in retirement. These particular interests is what led to the birth of my two blogs called - 

Pictures and words

Pictures and places 

The names are obviously given by a novice 🙄 I did try a lot and played with a few names, but I couldn’t wait and had to start writing and publishing. I had written here and there but this was the first time that Writing as a passion was taking a life of its own. You can blame Lehman in letting out my inner devil. Thankfully later as more and more posts started giving a certain shape and theme, I renamed them 

Storywala

Keepsakewala

The idea was to keep them gender neutral name however I don’t completely understand gender connotations and a ‘wali’ somehow didn’t sound appealing.  While Keepsakewala a relatively quiet one, is about nostalgia, emotions, and travels StoryWala is always buzzing with books and stories. It even got selected amongst 100 Top English blogs in India 

https://storywala.blogspot.com/2021/06/top-indian-blogs-in-english.html

This feat (not sure how authentic) gave me a certain faith in my capabilities to take it to next level. And the class assignment from my Creative Writing workshop led me to the author interviews. Yes a Creative writing class by Journalist Ramesh Menon. I am happy I am taking my love for writing also to the next stage. We were required to interview a stranger. And while trying to figure out who could it be. The one person that came to my mind was the author of the book I was reading currently. 

You will get to read her interview in my next blog. I also made a happy list while surfing on the joy of the esteemed author agreeing to be part of Storywala. A very happy list of authors I would love to interview - international, Indian, dead or alive. I can’t interview my fictional subjects but I can meet their creators. Authors are the Gods of the literary universe as their creations become a part of our daily lives, dreams, feelings, memories, learnings, minds and hearts. They stay with me and prod me to create my own. 

So here is my wish list… 

Adichie

Amish

Anuja Chauhan 

Anjum Hasan

Arundhati Roy

Arvind Adiga

Azar Nafisi

Bulbul Sharma

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni 

Devdutt Patnaik

Devkinandan Khatri 

Dharamvir Bharti

Gulzar 

Gurcharan Das

Jane Austen 

Jhumpa Lahiri

Kamila Shamsie 

Khaled Hosseni

Lavanya Sankaran 

Manu Joseph

Marjane Satrapi

Moni Mohsin 

Murakami

Murzban Shroff 

Namita Gokhle 

Namita Devidayal

Premchand

Rana Dasgupta

Ruskin Bond 

Saddat Hasan Manto

Salman Rushdie

Siddhant Dhanwant Shanghai

Vikram Seth

Yaa Gyasi

And many more…. 😀