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The three hundredth one

By Nickunj Malik - Aug 31,2016 - Last updated at Aug 31,2016

This month I arrived at two personal milestones simultaneously. One was that I had now lived for six continuous years in the same city- Amman, and the second, that I completed 300 weeks of writing my column — Talespin. Both the landmarks occurred for the first time in my life, and filled me with sheer and utter delight. 

In our wonderful age of abbreviations, a few months after I began Talespin, some of my readers started referring to it as TS. I had to carefully scrutinise the letters to make sure it was not called BS, the full form of which is exactly what your imagination implies. 

Initially, the feedback was slow. The reason was that not too many people got to read it because the online version of the newspaper was erratic. Subsequently, the technical team at the office smartened up, and got the website running smoothly. I also learned, after several patient tutorials by our daughter, to attach the link on my Facebook wall.

Soon, this self-deprecatory piece, detailing the life of an expatriate woman in an alien country, caught the fancy of my friends in the social media — mostly my school and college mates. The enjoyment they got out of reading my column almost matched mine, at writing it. The outpouring of commentary that came my way thrilled me to bits. They not only identified and empathised with it but every week, gave me fresh ideas, for the next one. It was almost as if, without even asking for it, an entire community was assisting me in a joint brainstorming exercise. It amused and scared me at the same time. 

At one point, when I wrote about the loss of my mum, TS became practically like an interactive medium. I got such long e-mails from readers recounting their own individual tragedies that I became a part of their lives and relived those moments with them.

Over the last six years, the only time I missed a deadline happened when I was hospitalised with high fever. Even then, I asked the nurse to pass me my laptop, but she thought I was hallucinating, and struck an intravenous needle into my wrist instead. As the infusion of medicines reached my bloodstream, I stopped fighting the drowsiness and slept off. 

In one instance, I was writing a travel piece on an airplane, literally in the middle of my journey, when an airhostess surprised me with a glass of champagne. Those days I had a picture byline which made it easier for the readers to recognise me. She loved TS she said, and the joy this unexpected praise gave me was better than the effervescent tumbler of bubbly she gifted me with. 

How would I be celebrating TS’ anniversary? I don’t know but I will definitely start by thanking some of my loyal readers who are scattered all over the globe. I would not be inspired enough to write week after week without their steady motivation. To this vast extended family, I express my most sincere gratefulness. 

“Did you know TS is six years old today?” I asked my spouse over lunch. 

“Who is this?” my husband was surprised.

“My creation,” I declared. 

 “Your child?” he was stunned. 

“You can say that,” I smiled. 

“You adopted a baby? Holy Saint!” he exclaimed. 

“Not HS! It’s TS!” I corrected him. 

“Talespin?” he guessed. 

“Exactly,” I giggled. 

 

“Happy birthday TS,” he heaved a sigh of relief. 

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