Skip to main content

Half-made blogs



In his 1962 book The Middle Passage, V S Naipaul described his native West Indian people as “half-made societies that seemed doomed to remain half-made”. His argument was that the people lacked self-knowledge or the will to reinvent themselves. I don’t know how far West Indies changed after that damning judgment of god-like Naipaul who made similar statements about India too in a later book of his.

Naipaul was a ruthless writer with an ego that would give Narendra Modi’s ego a good run for all his (country’s) money. He had the messianic instincts without the necessary humility. Just like Modi, again. Just the antithesis of the Buddha, Jesus and the Mahatma. But Naipaul had brains of a different calibre in contradistinction to our own egotist par excellence. So he excelled in writing.

Naipaul was a great writer. What is a writer without his ego? Without the conflicts within his soul? Without the struggles with his own inner hells? Naipaul won the Nobel Prize not for nothing.

Why am I bringing his ghost here now? Arvind Passey raised a very interesting question at a Blogger Community which I am endeavouring to answer here. The question is:



We have come a long way from Naipaul to Modi. In Naipaul’s time people converted their inner struggles into art like literature or music or painting. And they were sincere about doing that job. Hence we got good literature, good music, good painting. Now, in Modi’s time people make money out of anything, even their inner struggles. Look at how religions are minting money nowadays, if you don’t believe me. And they are not even spiritual!

Without subtlety, dear Passey saab, let me answer you: don’t expect anything good in today’s India unless money is involved. There is no money in Indispire. There is money in the competitions.

And the bloggers are not even writers!

Top post on IndiBlogger, the biggest community of Indian Bloggers



Comments

  1. Neeraj KumarDecember 8, 2018 at 7:04 PM

    I would like to differ on the money angle. I mean the money given in the contest is not in the nature of trillions that alone succeeds in luring more entries. I think that the recognition that one gets through the badges of ‘Indiblogger.in’(or other blogging platforms for that matter) is the main factor as regards the contests… otherwise how many days a 40,000 or 50,000 rupees of a gift voucher can be stretched on a spending spree. The recognition in the shape of badges outlive the buying age of the gift vouchers. So, I don’t think that money is the (only) cardinal motivator behind the contest entries. As writing for indispire doesn’t give any kind of recognition (in terms of badges) and furthermore since indispire topics are upshot of individual cogitations, which might or might not have the appeal to engage more brains…for everyone can’t be made to like to write about somebody’s understanding of the life and its situations, therefore it attracts less brains.

    And it is also not that if people are not writing for the Indispire topics,they are not writing for their own blogsite or their own genre and waiting only for the announcements of the contests.

    Furthermore, if a writer is made to write on an outside prompt the chances are that the instinctive writing excitement might suffer a dent. Though I am not saying that outside prompts are an out and out redundant thing…some might benefit from outside prompts as well, as it gives a challenge to mind in the case of those writers who lack to generate it on their own. Yes, contests are also outside prompts but as I said the recognition factor is the main lure.

    Coming back on the point of recognition seeking, if seeking recognition is considered a sin by the doyens of the writing (blogging) field, then why people are at indiblogger(or at any other blogging platform)? Such self-effacing souls should shut down their blogging accounts (or stop any kind of writing that is in the public view) and restrict their scribbles only to the physical diary. Do we have any of such valiant souls?


    And as to ‘Bloggers are not even writers!’…I think that it depends on how you perceive somebody’s writing. Somebody’s garbage could be considered a masterpiece or somebody’s masterpiece could be considered a heap of garbage depending on the perception of the reader. And to my mind someone is first a writer and later a blogger…unless you have a writing brain you can’t be a blogger… but it is again my individual opinion and open to be contested.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 8, 2018 at 7:46 PM

      That's quite something, dear Neeraj. I love this response. Give me a little time to respond. I love this.

      Delete
  2. Neeraj KumarDecember 8, 2018 at 8:30 PM

    Sure sir... I know you will have a meaty and mighty response. I would love to have your side of views on this.

    ReplyDelete
  3. voicesDecember 9, 2018 at 11:32 AM

    Neeraj has blogged a response. Reminds me of the saying that the honest, teetotaller and vegetarians are vain while the dishonest, drunkard, smoker and non veg (largely) respect the other's view. Similarly the legendary Khushwant Singh went a step ahead to place his views on vanity on public domain. Food for thought Sir

    ReplyDelete
  4. Arvind PasseyDecember 11, 2018 at 2:12 PM

    Linking blogging to politics was brave because money and ruling party anyway go together... and there is hardly any scope for art in it. Will it be ok to suggest that indispire too must have monetary incentives linked to it?

    ReplyDelete

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
47 comments
Read more

Insecurity and Exclusivism

“ Hindu khatare mein hai.” This was one of the first slogans that accompanied the emergence of Narendra Modi on the national scene. It means Hindus are in Danger . It reveals a deep-rooted feeling of insecurity. Hindus constitute an overwhelming majority in India – 80%. All the high positions in governance, judiciary, academics, any significant place, are occupied by Hindus. Yet the slogan was born. Strange? It will be facile to argue that Modi used this slogan and its concomitant hatred of Muslims and Christians as a political weapon for winning votes. True, he was successful in that; he rose to the highest political post in the country using minority-bashing. But the hatred did not end with that achievement; rather it spread outward and became more exclusive. Muslim and European rulers of India were booted out from the country’s history books and wherever else possible like the names of roads and institutions. With vengeance. Now there is a concerted effort going on to place In...
15 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

You Don’t Know the Sky

I asked the bird to lend me wings. I longed to fly like her. Gracefully. She tilted her head and said, “Wings won’t be of any use to you because you don’t know the sky.” And she flew away. Into the sky. For a moment, I was offended. What arrogance! Does she think she owns the sky? As I watched the bird soar effortlessly into the blue vastness, I began to see what she meant. I wanted wings, not the flight. Like wanting freedom without the responsibility that comes with it. The bird had earned her wings. Through storms, through hunger, through braving the odds. She manoeuvred her way among the missiles that flew between invisible borders erected by us humans. She witnessed the macabre dance of death that brought down cities, laid waste a whole country. Wings are about more than flights. How often have you perched on the stump of a massive tree brought down by a falling warhead and wept looking at the debris of civilisations? The language of the sky is different from tha...
13 comments
Read more

Nazneen’s Fate

N azneen is the protagonist of Monica Ali’s debut novel Brick Lane (2003). Born in Bangla Desh, Nazneen is married at the age of 18 to 40-year-old Chanu Ahmed who lives in London. Fate plays a big role in Nazneen’s life. Rather, she allows fate to play a big role. What is the role of fate in our life? Let us examine the question with Nazneen as our example. Nazneen was born two months before time. Later on she will tell her daughters that she was “stillborn.” Her mother refused to seek medical help though the infant’s condition was critical. “We must not stand in the way of Fate,” the mother said. “Whatever happens, I accept it. And my child must not waste any energy fighting against Fate.” The child does survive as if Fate had a plan for her. And she becomes as much a fatalist as her mother. She too leaves everything to Fate which is not quite different from God if you’re a believer like Nazneen and her mother. When a man from another continent, who is more than double her age,...
6 comments
Read more