‘Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom’ – Marcel Proust.
One of the main reasons I started blogging was because I needed some sense of connection. I was living at a small distance from my parents and siblings, yet I craved friends, you know, people you can just ‘hang’ with. All my old friends were in other cities or countries, and I was a stay-at-home-Mom with little or no social life.
And I got exactly what I wanted. Blogging has helped me connect with talented people from around the world, literally. And not just connect, I can even call some of them my friends, and not just the Facebook variety that you wish Happy Birthday and forget for the rest of the year. These are people with whom I can have meaningful conversations, and who give a lot of encouragement and support when needed.
One of my closest online friends is Swarnali, who I first came across via Tripthi’s blog, 'Girl with a Pearl Earring'. Swarnali blogs at 'Dreams and Drama' and I like to think that we hit it off instantly :). Like Swarnali says, we’ve never seen or spoken to each other, but that doesn’t matter in today’s world, does it? We’ve had numerous Facebook discussions on books (she’s a voracious reader), blogs, trolls and much more!
Swarnali is also the one who introduced me to the ‘Indiblogeshwari’ group on Facebook, a group exclusively for female bloggers which was started by the I-don’t-know-how-to-describe-her-she’s-that-awesome Vinita Bahl, blogger at Blogwati G :). As you can imagine, that makes it super fun!! See, that’s how friends are, they have a pretty good idea what you’d like!!
The extremely cool admins of the group introduced the Chain Mail activity, where a group member tags another person in the group and sends her a gift and handwritten note (hand written – compulsory!). The receiver then tags another and the chain continues. The only condition was that you couldn’t tag a person living in the same city as you. Three chains were to run simultaneously, and so the fun began!!
I was lucky to get tagged by Swarnali, and in a short while, I received a beautiful gift and thoughtful letter, written in Swarnali’s hand. Can you believe that, an actual hand written letter? I can’t remember the last time I got one! And that’s not all, she even included a cute little gift for Cub, and boy, was he delighted!! I grabbed the letter and started reading it, feeling a warm glow all over, till the part where the bracelets were mentioned. And then I opened the box to see these lovely bracelets, in a beautiful black box!
Aren’t they both gorgeous!! Although I have to admit, this one is my favorite :)
And here’s how it looks on me:
A look at the whole package:
Here’s a close up of Cub’s gift:
I had to struggle to keep him from opening it till I took pictures :). Soon after, the Angry Birds were all lined up like this:
I think this was the day I was the most glad that I started blogging :). In addition to the pleasure writing gives me, I have found friends whom I can connect with, without having to travel miles or making arrangements for babysitting.
To you, dear Swarnali, and the IB admins and others behind the Chain Mail idea, I have just this to say:
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