The Value of blogging

                                                      The Value of Blogging

It has been a while since I blogged. Partly the summer heat that drains one’s vitality, partly a uneasy feeling about what worth is all this blogging, as  few  read and fewer appreciate and still fewer feel roused or dampened by its contents to respond. Of late the fatuity of writing a blog has struck me with such ferocity to freeze my fingers from tapping on the laptop.

I started to ask myself what is a blog? I started as a blogger Inspired by its openness to post one’s personal thoughts and feelings about specific issues of the day, and serve as a platform to share one’s views including fears and anxieties with a large number of invisible audience. The latest TV reality show India Banega Manch, meaning talent will find a stage, (a new talent show that has no votes and no judges, but where the  individual or group winner (s)  is /are selected by their performance to attract the largest number of viewers) reminded me that I had also similarly assumed hema banegi blog will attract a legion of viewers and so I went like a race sprinter clearing mental hurdles one  after another, to reel off blogs on political, educational, social and personal issues of the day. I did not stop to look back if my blogs arrested the viewers with their catchy headlines, well deliberated comments and to some extent the fluency of my language. But despite a fairly large number of page views I garnered, there were very just a few comments , that proved the absence of  impact of my blogs to prick and provoke responses. I decided to discontinue blogging and turned to my vocational pastime of writing literary articles to keep my grey cells working lest they should rust and become unproductive.

 But once a blogger, always a blogger. Two blogless weeks made me feel out of touch with the world. Writing a blog is possible only if one feels passionately about everyday events, happenings and arguments. A blogger develops a keen interest in the world around and engages himself/ herself with all issues that one reads or watches on the TV or discusses with one’s family and friends. But the moment one ceases to be a blogger, the passion dies within and the fizz goes out while  reading newspapers, editorials, articles or watching the big fights on TV shows- in short one no longer remains a dynamic thinker, but a passive viewer. For retired persons, passivity is lethal as it is a sure way to develop amnesia and worse Alzheimer. I realized that a lot of issues of the last fortnight relating to Presidential (s)election, CBSE marking, college admissions, farmers’ plight, Darjeeling bandh, tragic deaths in Kashmir, Indo-Pak rivalry in cricket and hockey, international badminton and tennis matches( with and without Indian faces), not to leave out  news  from Bollywood  had not ignited  the passion and fire that I had always felt as a deeply engaged humanist, passionate romantic and realist involved in everything happening around.  I missed the fire in my belly; my passion and determination to suggest views and ideas to change our world of conflict and  churlishness into a world of beauty, grace, peace and harmony was on the wane and I realized that I was only half alive. I got back to blogging not as an altruistic exercise to share and influence the invisible multitudes who are iterant blog readers, but to restore my zest and intensity for life. Francois Rene de Chateaubriand wrote: “The echoes of passion in the emptiness of a lonely heart are like the murmurings of wind and water in the silence of the wilderness:”

I picked up my laptop and returned to my favourite pastime- blogging. I write about here and now, about present and the immediate, about what touches me as I walk, read, see and hear. I write to express my feelings and fears, my excitement and agitation, my ideas that come with explosive immediacy, my dreams of an impractical utopian world, in short,  I write to cope with the unbearable  lightness of being that comes  with an awareness of a certain lack of ultimate meaning in life, albeit the desire to hold on to life and experience peace and calmness of mind.

What has impelled me to write today? A walk through the park. The welcome summer showers  have given a respite from the unbearable heat of last few days. As I went for a stroll, I noticed the frolicking of the squirrels, the cooing of the Koyal, the mynahs in pairs perched on the branches, and I experienced the thrill of Wordsworth’s famous  lines :

     And all the earth is gay;

     Land and sea

    Give themselves up to jollity,

     And with the heart of May (June as of today)

     Doth every Beast keep holiday;—

Looking at the birds and squirrels, the doves and the crows, all trying to peck at the fallen grains some  kind stroller had thrown on the grass, I realized how unlike the homo sapiens, these different species showed no competitive fieriness and were content to get a share of the tiny grain that their beaks could peck at. The jet black crows, the gray doves with a streak of white at the bottom, the brown squirrels, the multi-coloured wood peckers preening their feathers were similar to our species with its white, yellow, brown and black skins.  But unlike us these were not racists and they were happy if they could have their fill of grain without forcing it out of another’s beak.

 I was jolted out of my somber admiration for these non human species by the giggle and loud whispers of young girls and boys who were making fun of a heavily built couple on their morning walks. I turned round with an admonishing look only to find them trying to suppress their giggle as I became their object of derisive laughter because of my pint size in contrast to the other couple. My sartorial get up in saree and sneakers must have also added to their derisive grin. We Indians in particular revel in discrimination on the basis of colour, gender, racial, physiological prejudices. Added to this list is discrimination on the basis of caste and religion. We mock people who are different from us; we dislike people who have views contrary to ours; we harbour vengeful enmity against those who hold faith and belief that are distinct from ours; today we feel a deep sense of repugnance towards the dietary habits and practices that are not in consonance with ours. We no longer say “Vive la difference” but “ Vive la uniformite” and there hangs the  tale of  perennial conflict and hostility, battle and warfare among our species.

The species that are non- human live on hope to eat and stay alive; they never despair because they do not hanker after anything other than satiation. We who are blessed with the capacity to reason are perpetually in want of something other than what we possess. We are forever in a state of despair forgetting that the only sustaining force in existence is hope. We know from our experience that no one in the world can claim absolute satisfaction and contentment. God grants us one thing and withholds some other thing. Everyone gets his/her share of fullness and emptiness and only a foolish man can claim to have conquered all his wants. Similarly life oscillates between periods of sunshine and periods of darkness with shades of gray thrown in between. This is the law of the world, created by the Creator, a cruel Joker as Samuel beckett calls him  and who has his unique way of joking with His creation and make us learn contentment with whatever quota of happiness we are given and not despair over  quota of disappointment.  Martin Luther King said: “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

Well Nature taught me not to despair but to blog as it is therapeutic and provides space to record experiences that seem  ordinary and are often unremembered. Vive la blog even if the blog has no viewer nor fails to provoke response from one or two odd ones among them..