Roshen Dalal's Blog, page 12

A cow has breakfast

[reposting from another blog, written in 2012]

The car was parked near a nondescript small restaurant in Dehradun, and I watched the scenes around me. A black cow, looking dirty and uncared for, came and stood with its front legs on the single stair leading to the restaurant. Soon a young worker, perhaps just out of his teens, came and fed the cow with left over rotis and naans. Another young worker came and put a pile at the cow’s feet. It did not take her long to eat them all–there must have been twenty to thirty rotis, left over from the previous night’s dinner. The two workers went inside, and the cow eyed the huge bag of tomatoes on the counter. Catching it with her teeth, she dropped it to the ground and began eating them. A worker from a neighbouring shop called out to them, and the two young fellows came out. They pushed the cow away a bit, picked up whatever they could, and then urged the cow to finish off the squashed tomatoes at her feet. Sorting through what they had picked up, they even threw her a few more squashed ones.

Such a pleasant sight–they were amused and not angry, and allowed the cow a good breakfast.

Filed under: cow, Dehradun, Uttarakhand Tagged: breakfast, cow, Dehradun

Newsletters—what type do you like?

I have been planning to start a newsletter for some time now. What will I put in it? That is a question I don’t yet have the answer to. Should it be on history? Religion and spirituality? My books and writing? Or on a combination of all these?

What should be its format? Now on this I have some thoughts. I get a number of newsletters, and there are many that I don’t read, or that I only read occasionally. I am interested in their content, but I don’t like the format. Below I’m making a list of the type of newsletters, in the order of those that I like best.

The type I always read, is one that opens completely in the body of the email. I don’t have to click on a link, but can read everything straightaway. I don’t care if there are pictures or not, this is the type that always gets read.
Those that provide the first para of a topic, and one has to click on a link to read the whole. If there are several such topics, I’ll rarely click on all–maybe just one or two.
Those that provide a link, with a very brief idea of what it contains. I’ll read this if I am really interested in the topic.
Those that hardly provide any information in the body of the email. A click on a link opens to a video, where some so-called expert is speaking–and the video goes on and on, with the information at the end. I can never wait till the end of the video, and once having tried it, I never click on similar links again.

What kind of newsletters do you like? And what topics interest you? I’d really like to know.

Filed under: newsletters, Writing Tagged: newsletters, writing