Attendance...

Most schools have these rules of attendance. Less than 75% and you lose a point in your grade, or you can't appear for final exams (no one wants to, but that's perhaps a different matter), or some such stuff that is mentioned in one of those papers that you get when you have just finished paying your first semester fees and filling out details for registration.

These days perhaps even blogs have attendance. I read this report which mentioned that thousands of blogs are floating like dead cadavers in the cold ether of cyberspace. Just when you thought there was something that could defy the rules of permanence, comes the revelation that even blogs come with a shelf life. You don't visit your e-temple often, and they label you an e-atheist. An infidel. And the punishment is to write an obituary about something you always held so close.

Your "dear diary..." amongst all the other equally dear ones, from intimate personal details to strange confessions to factual reportage... thousands of words trying to paint a picture, like an artist busily creating a sketch on the boulevard. Somebody would walk down, take a look, pass a comment, and walk away. And if they liked that one painting, they might actually search for you the next time they are on the boulevard. Probably refer your work to others who would then stop to admire, until you get famous. Until they take your name with awe, until the knowledge of your existence becomes a topic of "General Knowledge".

You would hate to see it die, won't you? Probably might be worth visiting the shrine once in a while. Who knows, what prayers might spew forth, and who knows, some of them might even be answered...