Megha’s World

Only came across Megha more recently but her poetry and ideas are very personal and powerful.  She is a recent blogger who is well published already coz she writes from the heart hypnotising us with rhythm and rhyme .. your loss if you don’t check her out!

 

Please give a brief personal background and talk about your hobbies/interests?

I was born in a quaint little hilly city called Nangal, Himachal Pradesh, India. I have spent most of life in India and travelled a lot around the Northern states as my father was transferred often. So I have lived in six/seven different states in Northern India. I finally lived in New Delhi for the most part of my life. I was born in a family of three sisters and one brother. I’m the youngest and naughtiest among the sisters and they are my lifelines.

I have always been quite a vocal person my whole life. I was good in academics and public speaking. Public speaking had always been my expertise in the school years. I won a lot of awards for debates, declamation and other public speaking contest at the state and zonal level. I did my Masters in Computer Application. I was in the Information Technology field for over a decade. Business Intelligence and Data mining were my specialties.

Due to the nature of my job, I used to travel a lot around the world, which broadened my horizon and helped me in interacting with new cultures, which I love. I used to travel to the US for work but finally moved and settle here after marriage. I live in New Jersey, the northeast part of the United States. My house is overlooking the river and beautiful skyline of New York. I live with my husband and my super energetic and kindest at heart 7-year-old son. I love singing and dancing. Sometimes I teach dance to the young kids in our community and in the school. I sometimes also volunteer to organise social events in the community.

When, where and why did you start blogging?

I started writing almost two years ago but it was mostly in bits and pieces whenever I could get the time to scribble a few lines. Due to time limitations and not enough motivation I used to write one-two poems in a month. Initially I started sharing my poems privately with friends and slowly on FB. When I got a decent response then I started my blog last year around the end of August. It was a spur of a moment thing when I was reading some article on the blogosphere and thought of creating my own blogging site. I have been writing vigorously for the past few months since I have started my poetry blog. Mostly I write poetry, micro-poetry but sometimes I also write prose about the subjects which are closer to my heart.

Thanks to the talented and generous community of the writers/poets on the WordPress.

What blogging tips or advice would you give someone just starting?

Since being a neophyte in the blogging community, I feel a little shy in dispensing words of wisdom rather I’ll actually share the two most important things I did in the past few months since I started my blog, which helped me in getting all this love and appreciation from the WordPress community.

1. Always write which touches your heart. Do not try to follow the trend and run after something in hope of getting too much traffic or followers to your site. It’s the content that matters. Remember all of it started with a single post and because of your content readers will keep coming back for more.
2. Never fail to appreciate a good post from your fellow blogger. We all need appreciation for our work. Whatever each one of us writes we write from the heart. So if any post touches you in any way, make sure the bloggers get their share of the feeling. It will only take a minute and who knows you will a get an online friend for life.

What do you most enjoy about blogging and what have you learned?

Oh Wow! Believe me, I have written a whole post about how much writing means to me or why do we write. For me, writing is very cathartic. It helps me in penning down my thoughts, my emotions, my reactions to any or every situation in a very creative and artistic manner. Every one of us is a writer at heart but the art of mesmerizing others with your personal experience through writing is a gift.

The most important thing I have learned about writing is that it helps me to connect deeply with my emotions. Because of this fast-paced life, many of our emotions remain deep-seeded or go unnoticed but when you address them through writing not only does it gives you a vent but also helps you in acknowledging them. It gives a more meaningful and deep insight into your emotions.

Has your blog or writing led to opportunities for you?

On a personal level, it has helped me be a more calm person. It is giving me the opportunity to interact with people and learn about their emotional aspects. How people are dealing with the problems in their life and what lessons they have learned from it.

From the writing perspective, few of my poems have been featured in the eminent literary collectives around the world and I got the honour to be on the author panel for both Poet’s corner and GoDogGo cafe literary collective.

What methods do you use to expand your readership?

This basically brings me back to the answer I gave as a tip for the newbies. For expanding the readership, you have to interact with your reader and appreciate or give feedback for their work. Also, the main and most important thing which will click with your readers is the content. When you writing something which resonates with them and touches their heart, they will keep coming back for more.

Time management can be a challenge for bloggers:
how do you stay disciplined and organised?

I have always been a very organized person all my life. Making a to-do list and scheduling the tasks for the whole day is my favourite part. I guess that is what brought out the manager in me in my professional field. I still stick to the same rule and write down the writings tasks and schedule them for the week/day and stick to it.

As far as the time of the day is concerned, mostly I prefer to write during the night when I can find some time exclusively and also when the outside noises die down. But I recently wrote something sitting in a noisy restaurant in the middle of the day, so I guess I’m improving

Which is your favourite post and why?

Naming my favourite post will be too difficult for me as I wrote each one of them with a different emotion in my heart and I guess no emotion is superior over another.

A few of my favourites are:

Brave

When I dance with her

Saintly

Broken promises

Who is a mother?

Who is an artist?

OK, I can go on typing….he he

What has been your most popular post and did you expect it to be
the most popular?

My most popular post has been Snippet

It about a mother seeing her kid come back home. Being a mother I can totally relate to the underlying emotion. I guess the reason it became popular was because most of us can relate to it in one or another. When I write I don’t expect the popularity of the poem, I simply write. There have been times when I have written a poem, something very personal and close to my heart, which failed to garner the attraction of the fellow bloggers.

Share something funky about yourself, or something that most don’t know?

hmmm.. I don’t know about being funky or not but while growing up I was really a talkative kid so much so that I used to literally interview the people visiting my household using the handle of my skipping rope as a pretend microphone. That scared most of the guest away. Haha. Well, it stopped once my mom came to know about it.

I have pulled a lot of pranks on my friends at the school and university but always harmless ones. Since I was studious they were always fooled and couldn’t believe me doing that. Because of this talkative nature once I got a note in the school diary on which I forged my father’s signature and got caught eventually. It gave the scare of my life back then but later I used to flaunt knowing my father’s signature to my siblings … ha ha!

Lastly, I would like to thank you, Kate, for giving me the opportunity to interview for your blog. I really enjoyed all the questions and tried to answer them with my utmost honesty.