Hello everyone!

I have graciously been nominated for the Sunshine Blogger Award by the beautiful and gifted Hermione Flavia, the author of the blog – WILDFIREMOVIES. She is an internationally acclaimed film-maker who’s won awards for her work, and you can see why on her blog. She has worked extensively in the movie industry and her reviews of movies are always perceptive, judicious and informative at the same time. She’s currently doing a review of a list of 105 Must See Films, 2016 and you MUST check it out because, apart from universal favorites, sometimes she brings up movies that have long been forgotten and she reminds you exactly why they are greats/classics in the first place. And quite frankly, there are many on that list that I didn’t even know, and I watched them only because of her reviews on them.

Thank you once again Hermione for the nomination. It’s an honor that I hope I can live up to in the future 🙂

As always,  the rules of the nomination are –

The Rules

 

*    Thank the person(s) who nominated you in a blog post and link back to their blog.

*    Answer the 11 questions sent by the person who nominated you.

*    Nominate 11 new blogs to receive the award and write them 11 new questions.

*    List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award logo on your post and/or on your blog.

 

Since I’ve already addressed points 1 and 4, I’ll now proceed to answer the interview questions and then to the nominees and their interview questions.

The Interview Questions:

 

1. How long have you been blogging, and what made you get started in the first place?

I haven’t been blogging for long. Just for nearly 5 months now. I started in end of August, 2016, because me and best friends promised each other that we won’t let our creativity die out under the weight of our family obligations. I had already been working on a book at the time, some of which they reviewed and egged me on to create a blog and get practice for my book-writing skills. But the blog has become much more than that to me now. So that’s how it all started 😊

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2. Say that you could interview someone on your blog, who would it be and why?

If I could interview one person, it would HAVE to be our esteemed Prime Minister, Mr. Modi, or Modiji, as he’s affectionately called by us Indians. I admire him for his guts but I really want to ask him how he wishes to accomplish routing out the deep seated black money hoarding problem that has affected our country for years by just scraping out one denomination of currency, and replacing it by another, which is also being hoarded at places now. He has grand plans, and I do admire him for making the effort of plunging himself headlong into this quagmire, but how will the nation sustain his plans once he’s out of power?

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3. What is your favorite movie or book of all time?

That is a tough one because I don’t have one single favorite. I have several. But to save you all the torture of going through an entire list of favorites,  I’ll tell you the one book that I could read every year – Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. This piece literally transports me to Hardy’s Wessex,  the seemingly idyllic, simple English countryside with its not so simple idiosyncrasies and beliefs. There are several themes in the book that stand true even for the current centruy. The vanity and strength of women, the fickleness and constancy of human love, the comfort and pain that wealth brings, the simplicity and fanaticism associated with a country life, all brilliantly intervowen in this love story that is a Classic in the true sense of the word. Every time I read it,  I gain something new from it.

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4. Do you own any special movie or book or other merchandise? A special item that you can’t live without? If so, what is the thing that you like the most in your collection?

I don’t know anything that I can’t live without except family, but I own a copy of The Three Kingdoms: Russian Folk Tales by Alexander Afanasiev. Why it’s special to me is because it’s a very rare work and I have very, very fond childhood memories of reading it, mostly because of the beautiful traditional Russian illustrations. I bought it a few months back because I misplaced my own copy somehow (kicks herself). I wanted my daughter to read the same magical folk tales and I found just two copies of this amazing book on Amazon, and I snatched one up without a thought. She is still too young to understand the stories or the pictures but I hope she’ll come to love it just as much as I do.

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5. Is there anything you would like to do someday, but just have not yet been able to accomplish ?

Getting a book finished AND published would be the one thing!

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6. What is the post you are most proud of, and why is that?

It’s my Novellas published on the blog; all parts of the ongoing and the completed ones, because they are the result of weeks of careful writing, research and contemplation,  and because they are original thoughts.

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7. Has there ever been a post on your blog that you have regretted writing? If so, why is that?

I haven’t yet regretted writing any of my posts. But my least favourite would have to be my first post – Being Good, Being Kind, because it reminds me of the time when I abandoned someone who may have needed help and to this day, my apathy haunts me.

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8. Why did you get interested in your chosen subject?

I don’t have a chosen subject for the blog. If fiction is a subject, then well, I’ve always been fascinated by wordcraft, stories and the art of storytelling itself. I always fancied myself writing fiction and so, here I am doing exactly that!

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9. Do you have any goals that you would like to ultimately achieve with your blog?

Apart from the fact that I want the blog to be a vehicle for my stories, I want this blog to encourage and nurture, like a fellow blogger rightly mentioned, ‘a sense of community’. I want it to be a place where discerning readers can flock together to discuss and debate, to encourage them to reach out to other writers through this blog, to create a space where everyone is a contributor and a consumer and there’s a free-flow of ideas and initiatives.

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10. If you could have one famous person from history over to your house for dinner, who would it be and why?

That would be Cleopatra. If I can manage a conversation with her, I’d love to ask her how she managed to rule, even if briefly, a patriarchal nation, maintain strong foreign ties AND look the way she did inspite of all the mind-numbing frenzy surrounding her at all times (I’m sure the ‘looks’ part is overrated, but still). She reminds me of Henry Rider Haggard’s ‘She’ – Ayesha and Gone with the Wind’s Scarlett. Her strength is as amazing as her tyrannical rule. It must have been very, very hard at the time to be a female-ruler and she owned it, without a doubt!

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11. What was the worst movie, book or product that you have ever seen, read or used?

Another long list. But the one that comes to mind is Chetan Bhagat’s One Night at the Call Center. I am not in the habit of leaving a book unread, but this one had me dozing off, almost chucking it in the waste basket or burning it, I hated it so much, and the only reason I refrained form doing so was because it belonged to a friend who loved CB *eye-roll*. While CB is generally pretty bad, this one was just gawdawful. It’s as if he dreamt it all up and then puked it over a book. If you haven’t read it, please stay away from it. You aren’t missing anything in life. If you have, my sympathies.

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Now that my monologue is done, it’s time for the nominations 

 

1. Potluckhub
2. Artful Aspirations
3. Londonwhiskyadventure
4. Child of Cynicism 
5. Mind is Everything
6. Divine Spice
7. Scribbles@Arpita
8. Vikas Chandra
9. Chronosfer
10. Writer’s Haven
11. Transcribing Memory

 

And my 11 interview Questions are –

 

1. Why and when did you decide to blog?
2. What is your blog about?
3. What do you hope to achieve through your blog?
4. Who’s that one person you’d like to invite over for a lunch/dinner date?
5. Who would you like to interview on your blog?
6. What’s your ultimate goal in life?
7. Name your favourite blogging memory/moment.
8. Name your worst blogging memory/moment.
9. Who or what inspires you?
10. What message would you give to new bloggers?
11. Give a quote that inspires you every time.

 

It’s not obligatory for any of the nominees to write a post acknowledging the award, but I hope you at least write the Interview Questions so we all get to know you a little better. 

 

Thanks for your time and for being with me this long,

Much Love,

 

Pradita Kapahi, 2017.