Blog Day 2006

August 31st, 2006

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From Gapingvoid

It’s Blog Daytoday and Blog Day initiator Nir Ofir suggests that we link to five other bloggers, from other countries, cultures, areas of interests and attitudes so that:

on this day, blog surfers will find themselves leaping and discovering new, unknown Blogs, celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.

Great Bong linked to PakPositive, The Scientific Indian, PutVote, The Collage and The War For News. As none of these sites are anywhere near Demented, it seems that he has stuck to the “other areas of interests” brief.

Neha linked to Dervish, And Your Little Dog Too, The Head Heeb, A Walk In The Clouds and Indianwriting last year, although she did not link to five blogs this year

Mostly because I link to stuff the year through.

Zickzackly also wriggled out of his list of five, but pointed me to Nir’s original blogand the origin of Blog Day 2005:

Have you ever noticed that the date 3108 (August 31st) looks like the word “Blog”? I have noticed it when I was in the first Blog conference that was held in Israel and I doodled it on a paper. On that day I started to roll an idea that I hope would become a global tradition.

My five links, incidentally, are: Chapati Mystery, Ondhokar Theke Alor Pothe, Karma Dude, Everyman’s Guide To Garbology and Light Within.

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The Blog Day is also an appropriate occassion for some indulgent blogging about blogging and I think I’ll follow Neha’s lead and answer some of the questions posed by Global Voices.

(Q) Why did you start blogging?

(A) I wanted to be a writer, to write for a living, but wasn’t sure if I had a voiceor the discipline to mould it into literature. Blogging is one way to find out. Unless I am able to attract and hold the attention of a few hundred bloggers everyday, I probably wouldn’t be worth the paper I write on.

(Q) What do you blog about mainly?

Everyting, and nothing in particular, really. I blog about myself, and through my posts, try to find out who I am, try to answer questions about identity. I blog about love, memories and other myriad maladies, but less often than before. Sometimes, I blog about news that interests me and my views on it, but my posts are often rants, random thoughts. I blog about books, movies, music and plays, write poems and 55-fiction pieces and cross-post them at Desi Critics. Finally, and increasingly so, I blog about Mumbai, the city I am in love with, and cross-post my ‘Bombaywallah & Mumbaikar Discuss‘ series at Mumbai Metroblogging.

(Q) Do you blog in your first language or in another language, and why?

(A) What is my first language? I was born in Bihar to North Indian parents, so my mother tongue is Hindi. But the language I think and write in is English, which I also consider to be my first language.

(Q) What motivates you to keep blogging even if (like most bloggers) you’re not paid much for it?

(A) Everytime I write a post, I know a little more about myself and a little more about my voice. Every-time somebody comments on my blog, I feel as if I have touched a life, even though in a trivial way. I blog because of that and because I don’t know how not to blog.

(Q) Is your audience mainly inside your own country or around the world?

(A) I think my audience mainly consists of desis, in India, US and UK, although I do have occasional visitors from elsewhere.

(Q) What do your family and friends think about the fact that you are a blogger?

(A) My friends are my family and increasingly, I am making more friends online than offline. I tell my friends that the only way to really stay in touch with me is by reading my blog and, like Neha said,

I think the friends who don’t bother to read my blog miss out on a big part of my life.

(Q) When you blog, how would you describe what you write? Is it part of a conversation? Is it ranting? Is it a daily diary? Is it journalism? Is it some or all of these things at different times? Does the definition matter?

(A) My blog is a rant, a conversation, a daily diary and maybe even journalism. It is all that and more, separately and simultaneously, like most other blogs are.

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I shifted my blog from Blogger to Wordpress about three months back because:

I realized that my blog has assumed too much of a ‘Dear Diary’ character, in the sense that even the posts I have classified as ‘thoughts’ are really about ‘feelings’.

The months leading up to it had not been particularly pleasant; under the weight of posts about heartbreak, the black and orange colour scheme, which I had originally thought of as mysterious, had become depressing, even to me.

And so, I moved, hoping that, under the influence of the brighter white and blue colour scheme, I would write less about love and longing and more about things that tickle my thinking: books, movies, travel and theatre.

Has it worked? Well, the ‘Dear Diary’ posts are still there, prompting reader to leave behind comments like:

The last paragraph was poetic almost. And, I forgot to add….bold as well. Considering the number of people who read your blog, some of whom know you already, don’t you think such admissions might get you into umm….unexpected, unpleasant situations?

BTW, though it does take courage to write intricate details about your life on a public blog, it also shows that at some level no one truly matters to you. As if everyone, past and present, in your life are mere characters. Interesting, interacting modules. As if you have learnt how to objectify everything.And that objectification (and the ability to do so) is what you think sets you apart from others. raises the level at which you live.

I write the way I do, because I don’t know any other way to write, or live. There’s freedom in not having to answer to anyone, about anything. There’s freedom in knowing that people who matter to you already know the worst about you. And there’s freedom in knowing that the script that is your life can stand scrutiny, more often than not.

So, I still write about love, sometimes, but not as much about longing, and therefore, the blog has a somewhat happier feel to it now.

Elsewhere, I have started a What’s On My Mind feed in my sidebar to track interesting posts from others; you must check it out if you haven’t already. Otherwise, instead of merely linking to what others have written, I try to write all my not-really-personal posts in a manner that they can be cross-posted at either Mumbai Metroblogging or Desi Critics.

And, therefore, slowly but surely, this triangular pattern has emerged on my blog - personal ‘Dear Diary’ posts, posts about Mumbai (cross-posted at Mumbai Metroblogging) and all other posts (cross-posted at Desi Critics) - and, in that pattern, the blog has become better, more balanced.

What makes me happy about this blog? That strangers read it and like it and comment on it and become friends.

What makes me sad about this blog? That not enough of my friends read it, not nearly enough.