Dear Blog….I am extremely sorry for not writing anything for more than two months. It’s not that I have forgotten about you, but as you know that I have been writing so much for a newspaper that I have no energy left to think about something and write again. Writing is all I have been doing since October 31, 2011. That’s the day I began writing for Postnoon newspaper inHyderabad. As much as I was excited about my job, I didn’t foresee this new phase of life where putting a status message like ‘busy’ becomes mundane. I sincerely apologize to all my friends whom I haven’t called or returned their calls/SMS or buzzed on Gtalk, Facebook and Twitter. It’s silly to come up with random excuses but it’s true that I have been quite busy and this phase is likely to continue in the coming few months as well.

Last year was quite eventful for me. I managed to survive for months together without a good paycheck, thanks to my family and friends who were magnanimous enough to support me. It wasn’t the money that I was worried about. What really scared me was a question – Do I still have the same passion for writing about cinema? For couple of months in mid-2011, I thought I had lost the inspiration, which, as you know, is quite critical for a writer. Without inspiration, you just can’t write anything and even if you try to write something, you can sure that you wouldn’t want to read it ever again. So, I took a break and stayed away from reviewing or writing features, essays. But I couldn’t sit idle for long and eventually I got a job as a correspondent in Postnoon. I have no clue what my designation means but it was a great opportunity to write stories on a regular basis.

I cannot tell you how excited I was to interview several celebrities and technicians over the past three months. I am glad that some of them recognise me instantly and with few others, it didn’t take too long to break the ice. There were some funny experiences too. I was interviewing a director and suddenly I ran out of questions since he wasn’t the kind of guy who would elucidate his replies. I had to wrap up the conversation within ten minutes. Was my preparation enough for that interview? I wouldn’t know. Another time, I asked someone if that person had ever been in love. I swear, that was the first time I asked someone about their personal life. Thank God, the person took it sportively and I didn’t have to endure the silence, which scares me the most.

If you ask me what my most memorable experience in the past couple of months was, then I would say it was an interview with this actress. The conversation began about her films and after a point of time, it ceased being a formal interview and we ended up talking for over two hours. One of the perks of being a film journalist is that you get to hear some amazing stories about people. Of course, no one tells me their dark secrets and frankly, I wouldn’t want to hear them either.

Here’s the small list of people I have spoken to in the recent few months – Chinmayi, Rahul Raj, Venu Sriram, Vijay K Chakravarthi, Shruti Haasan, Amala Paul, Puri Jagannadh, Kajal Aggarwal, Venkatesh, Nagarjuna, Shweta Menon, Vishnu Vardhan, Sowmya Sharma, Varun Sandesh, Nikhil, Abburi Ravi, Krishna Chaitanya, Nithin and there’s more to this list.

What I am really happy about my work is that I have been able to learn a bit about everyone I have met over the course of last few weeks. I hope all of them thrive and go places in their line of work. Quite frankly, I have stopped ranting about films and people. It’s not that I have found reasons to rave about everyone but I have realized that it’s much better to put your anger to better use than to vent it out on people who have their own share of problems to deal with. Did you know that it’s not entirely a music director’s fault if you hate the songs? Or for that matter, did you know that an actor or an actress does what he’s told to? Even the directors and producers are under immense pressure to hit the bull’s eye all the time. So, no one knows where the fault lies.

So, I guess, in a nutshell, that’s all I have been thinking and doing in the past few months – Writing about Cinema. It’s fun, frustrating and extremely fulfilling on so many levels. Just like life. Oh…wait, I guess I don’t have one, except that my work and life beyond work merge into a maze.

Yours truly,

Hemanth