Skip to main content

The Fun of Blogging


It’s been a pretty long liaison with blogging now.  I started it way back in 2001 when I bought my first desktop.  It was with Times of India’s blogging space that I began.  Soon I switched to Sulekha which offered many incentives.  Apart from the gift vouchers that came from Sulekha, there were quite a few committed bloggers there whom I really liked.  I got a fairly good share of readers too there.  But the love affair with Sulekha ended when a team of Right wing bloggers dominated the whole platform and started posting unsavoury comments with malicious intent.

Wordpress hosted my blogs after that for a few years.  Then something went wrong.  Apparently someone hacked or tried to hack my site.  It stopped working properly.  Then I migrated to Blogspot where I have remained for all these years.  But many of my fellow bloggers whom I read without fail stopped blogging for various reasons.  Some are in the family way, some immersed themselves totally in their careers, and some just gave up.  Maybe serious writers and thinkers lose interest in blogging because there are very few serious readers in that sphere.  My personal observation is that frivolous writing gets more readers in blogosphere.  I may be wrong, however.  Maybe I have not sought far and wide enough to discover serious bloggers.

Apart from those readers, I miss also the Happy Hours that IndiBlogger used to provide a few years ago.  Happy Hours brought a lot of gift vouchers with which I bought countless books from Flipkart. I wonder why that concept of Happy Hours died.  Maybe, some bloggers didn’t make use of it with sincerity and authenticity.  Maybe, the business concerns which provided the gift vouchers didn’t find it worth.  Maybe, there are other reasons.

Blogging, anyway, is personal writing to a large extent.  It is a personal gratification, at least.  It still remains that for me.  That’s the fun I have discovered in blogging.


PS. Written for IndiSpire Edition 188: #Blogging

Comments

  1. Good to know about your blogging journey.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It has hardly happened that I followed any other blogs seriously except yours. I don't remember how I ended up on your blog about a year ago, but ever since I am hooked and I read every article you post. They are so insightful and thought provoking, sometimes funny and sometimes melancholic!!
    I always wanted to start a blog and share my thoughts which are kind of inline to your thoughts and the way you see this world. I have just started my blog, a long way to go. You are such an inspiration... One day I wish to see blog grow like yours.
    Thank you so much :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm flattered. Never imagined me as an inspiring blogger. Thanks a ton.

      Delete
  3. "Blogging, anyway, is personal writing to a large extent. It is a personal gratification"- Perhaps this is the reason you have lasted for so long!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I thought the left and right wing thing hadn't come to bloggosphere the way they had in social media, till I read about your Sulekha experience.

    And yes, I liked the happy hours and contests in Indiblogger. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sulekha was run by some insane right wingers, I think. That's how it appeared.

      Let's hope indiblogger will revive the Happy Hours.

      Delete
  5. On certain occasions I have witnessed the rush of the bloggers to submit blog posts only to get goodies from that site. I hate being a part of that rush. Blogging for me has become more of a mood, a hobby which is strongly attached to the thoughts that linger in my mind for days. I hate being in the rush and write things just for the sake of vouchers .

    Having said that, I always wanted to know your blogging journey and glad to know now the starting point of that journey . you are really consistent with your passion. And I really find it worth praising.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If bloggers were authentic those happy hours would have done much good...

      These days I'm becoming lazy. But I must persist and go on....

      Delete
  6. You are right Sir. I find blogging to be therapeutic as it helps one to articulate the million thoughts churning inside the mind. And yes, frivolous posts get the maximum likes..maybe because it's all about who is more active and "out there". Thank you for sharing your blogging journey here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Blogging has also become just another social media where likes matter more than the content.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...

The music of an ageing man

Having entered the latter half of my sixties, I view each day as a bonus. People much younger become obituaries these days around me. That awareness helps me to sober down in spite of the youthful rush of blood in my indignant veins. Age hasn’t withered my indignation against injustice, fraudulence, and blatant human folly, much as I would like to withdraw from the ringside and watch the pugilism from a balcony seat with mellowed amusement. But my genes rage against my will. The one who warned me in my folly-ridden youth to be wary of my (anyone’s, for that matter) destiny-shaping character was farsighted. I failed to subdue the rages of my veins. I still fail. That’s how some people are, I console myself. So, at the crossroads of my sixties, I confess to a dismal lack of emotional maturity that should rightfully belong to my age. The problem is that the sociopolitical reality around me doesn’t help anyway to soothe my nerves. On the contrary, that reality is almost entirely re...

Mahatma Ayyankali’s Relevance Today

About a year before he left for Chicago (1893), Swami Vivekananda visited Kerala and described the state (then Travancore-Cochin-Malabar princely states) as a “lunatic asylum.” The spiritual philosopher was shocked by the brutality of the caste system that was in practice in the region. The peasant caste of Pulayas , for example, had to keep a distance of 90 feet from Brahmins and 64 feet from Nairs. The low caste people were denied most human rights. They could not access education, enter temple premises, or buy essentials from markets. They were not even considered as humans. Ayyankali (1863-1941) was a Pulaya leader who emerged to confront the situation. I just finished reading a biography of his in Malayalam and was highly impressed by the contributions of the great man who came to be known in Kerala as the Mahatma of the Dalits . What prompted me to order a copy of the biography was an article I read in a Malayalam periodical last week. The article described how Ayyankali...

Duryodhana Returns

Duryodhana was bored of his centuries-long exile in Mythland and decided to return to his former kingdom. Arnab Gau-Swami had declared Bihar the new Kurukshetra and so Duryodhana chose Bihar for his adventure. And Bihar did entertain him with its modern enactment of the Mahabharata. Alliances broke, cousins pulled down each other, kings switched sides without shame, and advisers looked like modern-day Shakunis with laptops. Duryodhana’s curiosity was more than piqued. There’s more masala here than in the old Hastinapura. He decided to make a deep study of this politics so that he could conclusively prove that he was not a villain but a misunderstood statesman ahead of his time. The first lesson he learns is that everyone should claim that they are the Pandavas, and portray everyone else as the Kauravas. Every party claims they stand for dharma, the people, and justice. And then plot to topple someone, eliminate someone else, distort history, fabricate expedient truths, manipulate...