Blogging into darkness

Once upon a time, the reason I blogged was to be read, understood and agreed to. Now I blog just to speak into the darkness, coz blogs are hardly read these days. And it's satisfying, albeit in a strange and inexplicable way. It's perhaps for the same reason that people wrote personal diaries, more commonly about 20 years back. I remember those movies where one's diary acted as a great source of useful information for solving criminal cases after his/her murder... sound funny when I think of those now.

When I moved my blog from o3.indiatimes to livejournal and later to blogger, I stopped enjoying blogging as I was hardly read and commented on. Back then, I used to feel it was no use writing volumes when nobody was gonna read. And eventually a few comments with agreement and appreciation would be the least I should get in return for the effort of writing - that's how I thought. I guess I sought acceptance for my thoughts, my feelings and, well, me.

But over the years as my blog has moved and matured to some extent, so have I, to some extent. Writing for me now has become a way of feeling that connection with myself. When I connect my thoughts into a chain and give it meaningful ends with anchor and grip, I sometimes manage to tie down an idea, that I find beautiful. Sometimes, it's still loose chains of ideas, but if I am able to see links, deliberate or incidental, I still feel happy coz I always struggle with my mind that continuously throws too many bits and pieces of creative or real images that fail to have a sequence of relevant and connected snapshots. Writing helps me force my mind to go back repeatedly and produce focussed and aligned thoughts based on which I can draw tangible conclusions about stuff of life. The natural randomness built into my thinking, however, makes me creative in interesting ways. I just need to capture each of the random thoughts and build on it, possibly by writing about it! And writing into this darkness called blog works quite well as a way to experiment with ideas.

And if I want some post of mine to be read or noticed, I post a link to it on facebook, and I do get a few hits, often driven by subconscious curiosity lost before my page opens in an adjoining browser. Still, I do have a way of turning on a twinkling star in the dark sky. And that's all the hope I need to go on staring into space and wondering about all that is, or is not. And ya, with a pen in my hand and a page to run it on... metaphorical, of course...

Gutthi come back

I used to like Gutthi in 'Comedy Nights with Kapil', but never felt he was so much the backbone of the show until he left the show. It's sad he has, and Comedy Nights is no more what it used to be. It gets boring very often now, while earlier I used to find quite a few bits very funny, and I used to forgive the few boring bits, like those by the buaa.

But the show itself has been fundamentally amazing. Totally desi. And appeals to my sense of humor.

It seems stand up comedy in India has reached a point where it can now explode ahead in a big way... Thanks to The Great Indian Laughter Challenge a few years back, for giving Indian humor and the Indian humorous a platform to take off.

But where have we lost our Haasya Kavis? The best ones have aged. And the younger good ones are not so keen (Kumar Vishwas for example). And they've been outdone by modern media in terms of focused delivery of comic content. And nobody cares much for poetry these days, especially that delivered as such. Besides, I believe poetry is not a requirement for humor. It's more an element of linguistic adornment, more relevant to songs these days. But then, it seems Haasya Kavis were more poets than comedians. So, although it's not right to compare them with the current breed of standup comedians, their business and popularity, whatever little it was before, has been affected by the latter.

Coming back to what I started with, I hope Gutthi comes back...

Need parallel models

I don't have any numbers but I believe a significant number of customers are driven away from stores because the guys in the store, who are there to assist, jump unnecessarily in front of everyone who enters the shop and ask what he/she is looking for. Most shy customers like me simply say nothing or that they are just looking and walk away or out of the store. A lot of impulse buyers and a few serious buyers are driven away in the process. All customers are not alike. One size doesn't fit all. The world needs parallel models for shy and introverted people, which right now are there only for the extroverts and the shameless (pardon the word... does shy have a better antonym? :P).