aditya kumar's weblog

According to Wikipedia, often, the word “blog” is used to describe an “online diary or journal”. Dwelling on this fact, In this post, I have tried to find the answer to this: what makes people blog?

The most common form of blogging is maintaining an online journal. In fact, the whole idea of blogging revolves around the above statement. Of course, the topics may differ.

But why Blog? Why have an online journal in the first place?

Many of us have maintained personal diaries and journals. Some of us still do. One of the most common protocols is to update it before going to bed, or for that matter, any chosen time.

Blogging is all that, except that it is for the world to see.

In the beginning, the idea may be a little difficult to grasp. What you write online will not only be read by people but also, often, be scrutinised out there. You may choose to write anonymously or have a nick name which shows a trait of your personality. (Or if you want to try something stupid, you could be like me, keep posting using a screen name but have a URL that divulges the real name so conveniently)

Once this idea is accepted, the real fun starts. Those of us who blog and who have also maintained personal diaries know that at a level, blogging is more exciting than the diaries that we have penned. I think it is so because at some level we want our ideas and thoughts to be analysed, discussed upon and to our delight, finally be accepted by the people. Blogging provides that “level”.

We all blog about anything- from criticising Times of India (which, admittedly, doesn’t take much of research, an example here at CSF. Even someone at Wikipedia couldn’t resist the temptation, here.) to write about the small things that irritate us, just like EP tells us here. We even have a great-first-attempt at Singlish (Singaporean English) humor or on a more serious note, write a splendid account of a city coming to life every morning, as evident from Bombay’s flora fountain.

But we write, and that’s all that matters.

A few days back Uma came up with a very interesting excerpt from the TOI website. For a change, we are not into TOI bashing here, in case you expect that to happen in the next few lines.

From the crew of our melodramatic actors, Farooque Sheikh comes out heavily on stereotyping in Indian Cinema. “The sardar will always be a soldier or shown eating Parathas, the christian girl will always be wearing Skirts and dancing, the muslim household will ‘adab’ each other ‘300’ times in a film.” So true, and we all accept it so gladly. Actors like Farooque Sheikh are hardly interviewed and when they are, its probably to fill up a one odd page in the magazine or somewhere in the backpages of the newspaper. Look at those words closely when that happens and you will notice frustration and restlessness coming out.

It is a pity, we have actors like Farooque Sheikh, Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapoor and Om Puri but we do not have the directors to handle them. But come to think of Shekhar Kapur, Shyam Benegal- maybe we do. But where is the cinema that does justice to them? And if it exists, these movies are overshadowed by the Khan Starers or one of those ‘commercial line’ ones. Since “serious cinema” does not make money they don’t last for more than a week in the theatres- if at all they are lucky enough to reach the theatres that is.

Our audience is so much overwhelmed with movies from the Karan Johars, Yash Chopras and David Dhawans that this brand of cinema goes literally unnoticed. The FilmFares keep awarding one of those movies year after year, one of the Khans gets the best actor for a role he could “sleepwalk” in, one leading lady, so to say, gets into the best actress groove for her matkas and jhatkas and playing a love interest to a hero in a movie that could have done without her in the first place.

And I wonder, how the media has gone away from the common man. This has been a trend. First the newspapers and now the movies portray the rich. All characters live in a bungalow, drive Porsche and wear Armanis. Not like yesterdays Amol Palekars and Farooque Sheikhs who portrayed the common man, eating peanuts while walking near Marine Drive, sipping coffee in the coffee house and deriving the simple pleasures life has to offer. Basically- you cannot even live a part of the life of the hero in a bollywood movie today. That’s a fantasy world, in no way connected to you, supposed to be shunned off the moment you come out of the theatre.

So where do actors like Sheikh, Pankaj Kapur and Om Puri go? Hosting television shows, acting in comedy soaps that could be anyone’s take and working in masala movies, respectively, to earn their rozi roti.

This is the first post on this blog. Just a trial “hello, world” post. Ah and yes, this blog is powered by WordPress.