aditya kumar's weblog

My New Year was no celebration at all, I was browsing the internet on my computer at home. But yes, music is an important aspect of anything that I do on days like these, so I played U2’s “The Unforgettable Fire” and “New Year’s Day”. I needed Bono’s reassuring, full-of-hope voice.

Bono’s like an old friend to me now. So even if he sings a sad song, I manage to pull out some hope everytime I hear him.

We all have our problems, small and big. It has been a tough year for the World as well. The Tsunami aftereffects, The London bombings, the Delhi bombings, the Kashmir Earthquake, to name a few. People have lost, people have grieved. For me, there has been a personal loss as well.

The New Year is hope for all of us. It’s that time when we have the opportunity to start over, to wipe the slate clean and to give everything a fresh start. I hope that it turns out to be a year that is good and full of hope for all of you, the readers of this blog whom I know, and those who choose not to comment and decide against letting their presence felt.

It would be naive to believe that problems shall go away. They will persist, like always. Here, I wish that the “fine balance” is achieved. Its something that is explained below in the post, so please continue reading.

Meanwhile, A Very Happy New Year.

On a lighter note, the Truman Specials for this year. In no particular order.

1. The Best Album Truman listened to

Without doubt, U2’s “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb”. It grows on you, and finally gets you! What an album this!

2. Errr.. The Best (Non-U2) Artist/Album Truman listened to

I feel it has to be Coldplay’s X&Y. Oasis comes a close second with “Standing on the shoulder of Giants”. Figures say a little different story though. In the second half of the year, I listened to 285 songs of Oasis and 197 songs of Coldplay. (U2’s count for the second half of the year? 694 songs)

3. Best Hindi movie Truman watched full screen

Iqbal. But do I have a choice? Hardly good movies released this year! (I liked “Sehar” too)

4. Best Hollywood movie Truman watched full screen

Cinderella Man. No doubt. But Harry Potter comes a close second. “Finding Neverland” comes third.

5. “If-only-I-could-see” movie for this year

Anniyan. I wish to see this movie. But I can’t understand Tamil. I wish I could!

6. Cricketing action of the year

The Ashes, what else? But then again, the England-Pakistan series was such a downer.

7. Arrogant Cricketer of the year

Andre Nel of South Africa. Click on the link to see his face and you shall know who we are dealing with.

8. Best place Truman visited this year

Home :)

heh, actually, Kasauli. And I intend to visit it again. A close second comes, Karwar

9. Last but not the least, The Best Indian Author book Truman read this year

Difficult. Very, very difficult. Hmmm.. I would say “A fine balance” by Rohinton Mistry.

This is the “Fine Balance” line I was talking about, something that applies to all of us: “You cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair…In the end, it’s all a question of balance Pg 231, ‘A Fine Balance’ “.

Dr. Amitav Ghosh’s “The Glass Palace” comes very close. These books are very moving, in their own ways. Essentials of Indian Literature, these.

But the common factor in these books, is this feeling that overwhelms you, that is reflected in the words below:

‘Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft arm-chair, you will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of the great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true.’

— Honoré de Balzac, Le Pere Goriot

The best thing for me, at a personal level, has been the literature I have read. The treasure is endless and it is priceless. The year gone by, has been the year of the Indian Authors. And no, I am not just talking about the Authors who write books. Just as important, are the Writers who exist in Blogosphere. I want to thank you, to each one of them, for Writing. Writing for a cause, Writing when provoked, Writing to Inspire and more importantly, Writing with responsibility. They know who they are.

Thats it for now, signing off!

The “30 Years Anniversary” Issue from India Today. The big fat issue with the best of India-Today is a collector’s dream. And to say that at Rs 20 it’s a steal, would be an understatement.


And here is Uma’s excellent round up on the literature published this year.


Also, don’t miss R.K.Laxman’s interview by Sonia Faleiro here.

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.

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.

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.

Thanks to Madman, my *own* blog is finally up and running. I had a hard time choosing the template. The WordPress community offers so many themes to modify the look of your blog that it is not surprising to be overwhelmed and finally confused.

I started blogging almost 2 years back, when in my first job while doing night shifts there was nothing much to do at 5 am when the mind finally refused to do any further work. Also, that blog was a result of the frustration that had piled up while I experienced a flurry of rejections from The Times of India while I day-dreamt of writing for the publication. I could not(write), of course, and hence my first blog and now, The Times of Truman.

I hope my old blog friends and readers check this one out. Trust me, if it was not for them, some of my friends and fellow bloggers, I would not be writing this. Thank you, all.