aditya kumar's weblog

Based on my personal experience- the phases of blogging:

1. You finally start a blog. It seemed an obvious thing to do. There is so much to write, so much to talk about.

2. You write. About your past, your present. There is no stopping you. You do not care what other people write on their blog. They do not care what you write on yours. No one reads your blog except you and you are sure about it.

3. Ah, a comment. Your first visitor. Or at least the first visitor who cared to comment. Now you know what you write will be read by someone else too.

4. More comments. Appreciation. You are surprised because you have just come to know some bloggers have “blogrolled” you. Wow that feels cool doesn’t it?

5. Time to get into the groove. You get more applause as you write. The comments never stop. The sitemeter runs like an airplane’s speedometer. You wonder what had been stopping you all this while to start blogging. Welcome to Blogosphere.

6. You have to think harder when you write. It’s because you know what you write is going to be scrutinised out there. Appreciation is a hard thing to earn but let’s face it- for a writer it’s the ultimate drug.

7. A few bad posts, couple of harsh comments and you are analysing where you went wrong. Heck you even got one hate mail.

8. You get everything into perspective. At least you think you do. Why think of people? You remind yourself that you write for no one else but you. Comments or no comments, who cares. And you do NOT crave for attention.

9. You have had enough. no, really. All these complications are uncalled for. You delete some of your old posts. You contemplate killing your blog too! You think it’s the stupidest thing to do, this blogging. At the moment you are toying with the idea of deleting your blog.

10. In the case your blog is history by now, you think of starting over on a fresh note after some time. This time you would do better. Learn from your mistakes. In case your blog survives Phase 9, you move on with the comments link disabled. That is because you wish to write and concentrate on the writing aspect rather than think about the comments.

11. You enable the comments. Feedback is such an important aspect of writing and you did not wish to miss on that.

The process continues.

Today, while I was in the auto, on the other side of the road I saw an ambulance stuck in the middle of a traffic jam. Its red and blue bulbs flashing and the siren enveloping every other noise on the road. But it was helpless. No one bothered. Not one effort was made to give it a clear way. All the special instruments that it had equipped itself with of no use, the ambulance was just another vehicle in the thick sea of metal frames of a yet another traffic jam in this city. And for most of the drivers, I figured, with its sharp siren, it was a yet-another-nuisance.

So did the patient survive I wonder. I hope that person is still alive.

In our cars, stuck daily in the traffic jam while we go to work, we criticize the government. We demand a better civic sense not only from the government but also from the driver of the car ahead of us. We question why the roads are not wide enough. We even proudly claim that we pay our taxes and we deserve a much better city.

But do we stop the car to let the blind man cross the road? Do we make way for the ambulance behind us? Do we, just for a second, think of the person who might be actually living his last moments inside the van which is supposed to take him to the hospital? Is not that the least we can do sitting in the air conditioned interiors of our car? In those minutes while we swear countless times, is there no room for compassion at all?

In India, life comes cheap. The economy is doing good, isn’t it?

We are a careless, heartless society. We have grown into one.