Author: Deeya Nambiar

I believe in taking every day as a learning phase, and exploring my writing skills. I have enjoyed the challenges as a journalist, content writer and college lecturer, and at the moment am living life analysing the extraordinary in the ordinary!

Binding Memories

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Life without gadgets, especially our dear mobile phones, has become a dream impossible to even imagine. A recent incident in my friend’s life, was about to make me believe the same.

The endless list of contacts, the pictures clicked at various occasions, the thoughtless pranks captured, family and friends in different poses, and the downloads from mails saved….

These minicomputer like devices, technically speaking, the high end phones with high end technology, bring the world into the small frame, and link us to the people, places and things at the tap of our fingers, which are too large for those tiny keypads. Hmn….

A day without that phone was miserable for her.

Two days after the loss was reported, a complaint was filed; and then the phone reappeared miraculously. Yes, miraculously. God knows the reason for it.

My friend was surprised… Happy … Life could not have been more joyous.

Of course, expensive it was. And the plan to buy a new mobile phone was discarded.

My friend decided to reset the instrument with the new SIM and bring her life back on track.

She opened the phone carefully and I could see shadows of unhappiness setting in. I could not help but look in her direction. The storage card or memory card was missing.

In that shocked moment the only thing I could hear and remember was…. “Somebody has wiped my memories”. She did not cry. No tears rolled out.

As a friend I stood by her watching. So right! Her memories….

The instrument was instrumental in binding memories. What will we be if our memories could not be captured? In bits they remain, somewhere ingrained in our subconscious….

Content Writing: A Marketing Strategy

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Content Writing: A Marketing Strategy

 Writing is an art of expressing ideas, thoughts and information.  The concept of writing has been used through media as journalistic writing, creative writing, research writing, personal writing, and many other forms; and in the current context content writing.

In fact, content writing gained its prominence with Internet. This is mainly because “content writing is a branch of content marketing, which aims at writing in a way that draws the targeted audience to the site in engaging them to active participation. This participation may include readers commenting on blogs and social networks, clicking ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ or ‘Tweet’ about the written post or uploaded video.”
A good content strategy often begins with the use of search engine optimization (SEO) technique to obtain higher number of visits to the site.

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be defined as an Internet marketing strategy that helps to improve the visibility of a web page or a website in a search engine’s (e.g. Google, MSN, Yahoo) search results. A web writer makes use of keywords, searches for new keywords and works on specific keywords to get new traffic.

Here, it is necessary to mention search engine marketing (SEM), which in short, “is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).” In fact, it is a rather broad term that utilizes the technology of search engines with the goal of “combining the two processes of search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC)”. Indeed, it would be better to say that, “no SEM campaign is complete without SEO.”

A link to the power point presentation on Content Writing- A Marketing Strategy – http://www.slideshare.net/DeeyaN12/content-writing-ppt

Connected, Yet Disconnected

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A life was gone. I didn’t know. A condolence message to that friend, which appeared as the recent update on my social networking site took me by shock. I sat to remember the last interaction; it was a birthday post on my friend’s profile.

Social networking sites are the new means of staying connected with friends. School, college, office colleagues, neighbourhood and like-minded people from our profession. The friend list goes on increasing and decreasing, oft and on, as and when, people move in and move out due to their own personal reasons.

However, the question that continued to haunt me was “do we really stay in touch with each and every individual from our friend’s list?” I would not have thought about it had it not been for a friend whom I lost recently.

Today that friend is a living profile on the social networking site. Many may be still waiting for the site to update on the individual’s birthday; a day we chose to wish our friends. Here, I search for an appropriate word, “friend”, “acquaintance” or “contact”. Whoever it is, we hardly know most of the people in our endless list.

On the hindsight, social networking site is an excellent platform to build network. This does not necessarily mean emotional connects. A practical approach to life and the concept of “live, and let live” is the rule to live.

I wished for once to reconnect with my dear and near ones. I was happy that I still could get to speak to them over the phone. I knew they were all safe and sound. And that my cyber indulgence is a far cry from reality. A farce of true value of friendship.

Petrol Price Rise Vs Sentimental Values

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Wish we had foreseen what’s coming our way when planning a future to owe a vehicle. The recent rise in the petrol price has affected the set budget for fuel allowances at every home. Reminding very much of mid- life crisis in a human life, mid-May was no different.

The State-owned oil companies had raised the price of petrol by Rs 5 inviting the displeasure of people in India. This morning, a leading newspaper carried another hint at a possible hike in petrol price by Re 1, “if the cost of crude bought by them (State-run oil companies) remains at the current levels.”

Turn of events for good or worse, the petrol vehicle owners, at least a few known to me, were in two minds. “Should we go for a diesel vehicle?” or “Should we change our vehicle into CNG or LPG?” Also, since the situation has triggered from petrol price hike, there was a very thin chance of getting a good price if they were planning to sell off their existing petrol vehicles.

Many of us have learned to live with the situation by shelling out the recommended prices. “What to do, we have to keep moving” is the utmost we say and do. That’s not all; we continue to indulge in discussions, and purge our repressed energies with little actual solutions.

I could not imagine our priced possession – our car – is suddenly an expensive affair. An artefact representing merely a status symbol in society? In the past few trips that we had taken, our thoughts were vaguely playing with the idea of giving away our small petrol luxury for something more economical.

After one such journey, don’t know what had happened, but instead of walking towards our home I stood there looking at our car. A purple beauty with power steering, high end functionalities, sufficient luggage space and super comfort. It was simply irresistible. Of course, craze for branded cars never fade.

Probably, I have not done anything like this before. But I realised petrol and diesel hardly mattered to me. The four-wheeler evoked old tales of associations only. From being a part of our friend’s wedding to providing comfortable journey to family, our car has shared every single moment.
There are many such fond memories…