clog

Every year post IPL I go through withdrawal symptoms as far as my TV viewing is concerned. Last year it was Rakhi Ka Swayamwar that got me back to TV. Will it be "Desi Girl" this year. The promos and the first episode show a lot of promise. With all the delectable bitches in the mix pitted against rustic folks and each other, it can make for an edgy 2 months on TV. Let's see if it lives up to the promise it has generated.

For starters, one of the girls comments looking at cow dung - "hauuu, kya yeh gai ka gobar hai?" (Is this cow dung?) as if she just spotted a unicorn. Boy in the house where Anmol (one of the contenders) is staying has taken a liking to her and is planning to convince her to marry him during the show. Two other contestants have already gotten a lashing from their keepers for their dressing.

Initial signs are good like every other talent-less reality show (the only ones I see), let's see how far this one goes.

The question keeps coming back again and again. The last time I publicly thought about it was around 2 years ago. Some of the comment-ers suggested the following two blogs to inspire me to keep writing.

An article on Scientific American and Steve Yegge on why you should blog

Well what prompted me to write it this time is some constructive feedback I received from a regular reader. And mind it, given the number of readers I have, each one counts for a huge percentage. The exact comment he made was "You have trivialized your blog" owing to the presence of many posts that didn't need a lot (or any) thinking at all. Now, there is no way I can say he is wrong, because that's his viewpoint and no logic can prove that wrong, so I won't be trying to do that. What I will however try is to have enough thoughtful posts along with everything else.

While I will do that later, for now, I will try to write why I think I blog. I guess, more than anyone else it is for me to know why I do what I do.


So, here I present my reasons for writing and I am blatantly using content from my chat transcript (perhaps a case of another post that doesn't need a lot of thinking)


I need to balance between what I want and what my readers (I know they are already limited) want but the fact is as much as I write for them, I write for myself no less. So, what I need is probably a middle ground because it's neither a personal diary, nor a newspaper. Actually before I started blogging, I had a diary and recently I read something I wrote 4 years ago and I could relive stuff and realize which parts of my life were more formative than others. Now this chronicling of my life on my blog will also tell me what I had in my mind at certain points. How I changed/evolved (for better/worse). Like last year I was crazy about IPL, so wrote a lot of posts.


I agree blog can't be totally personal, so as I said earlier I need a middle ground. And there are some readers who read these light posts and avoid heavier stuff.


See, I write what I think people will like and something I definitely want to write. Now obviously it won't be palatable to everyone even though I try to make it so. But I won't know until I post it. I don't publish anything knowing that nobody will like it. It's just that I don't get it right in cases when nobody likes it.

So, the transcript ends here.

As a side note, I know of unknown readers (the ones I know now are no longer unknown) also who would never comment, haven't ever met me and I may never about them yet they are there. So, you never know who is reading your blog and what out of it until you actually try which in this case is by posting things whenever you see some value in doing that.

So, as long as I have it in me, I will keep posting for all of you, my known readers, my unknown readers and myself.

Spotted on Bhopal Vidisha road.

is in the news, though many would say not enough. For them, here is something they might like

So, while on topic, of all the celebrities I have ever seen live (being within 5 feet distance is my definition of live here), Anand has to be the biggest. The others in my short list are Digvijay Singh, Kamini Kaushal and Nandan Nilekani (shook hands with him!).

Recently a friend of mine went up close and personal with Amir Khan. That's the biggest celebrity link I have via my first degree contacts unless I am mistaken and there is someone in you, my readers (yea, I mean the four of you !) who has met someone bigger.

Recently while I was attending a conference call I heard a name John Doe a couple of times. Same evening I was watching a movie where the name came up again. Coincidence? That's what I thought until a friend enlightened me the practice of referring unknown people (usually suspects) as John Doe or Jane Doe for reference.

I have been meaning to create a character for my blog especially the ones where I rant. My pet peeve all my life has been shitty Managers. It is always easy to deal with shitty developers since they can do limited damage. I was looking for a name for the guy (hope females won't be looking to be treated equally here) and I came up with Joe, an average manager just like an average Joe and then the first paragraph happened.

Combining the two of them, without any further ado, please welcome Joe Don, our average manager who by definition would be crappy. All things you dream of not becoming while you are growing up.

* This sounds like a real name though I don't know anyone by this name. I don't intend to mean any disrespect if a person with this name exists. If you are the one, and chance upon this blog and have objection, feel free to drop me a line and I can make amends.

Multiple conversations about reading fiction vs. non fiction led me to the conclusion that we are always seeking something. I started my reading in childhood with whatever was available like champak, chandamama, all in hindi. During my engineering I discovered my love for fiction and I went on reading as much as I could. And then I started reading non fiction. The ratio of fiction to non fiction has been going down recently. A couple of friends also claimed a similar pattern and they said they have stopped reading fiction because they realized they weren't 'gaining' anything by reading fiction.

I share the pattern, but not necessarily the reasoning. One of the points I brought up was you can see new ways of thinking and seeing things by looking at fictional characters. Now, I don't know how that would be useful and may be it's not. But, claiming that you know what would be useful knowledge (or not) for you in future considering life is so diverse, would be rather too presumptuous. It's like one of the learning from Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford, where he talks about connecting the dots. You don't always know the immediate benefit of something you are doing. But the fact that you like doing it should be reason enough to keep you going. I would be quick to add a disclaimer here to rule out habits like doing drugs from this category.

So, even if overall our lives are about seeking things, why make it rule every part of our being. Especially when it comes to things like reading which most of us classify as hobby and not work. Also, in large number of cases not reading fiction may not translate in reading non fiction. It probably translates into doing something else, perhaps not as worthwhile or nothing. There I go seeking again !