Why do I write a blog daily? Yes, I have often been asked that question. Part of that question hides the interpreter's malady. That is to say, such people cannot get themes to write about. Not even for a week! A student of mine wanted to write a blog regularly. We discussed possibilities. She was enthused. Her first attempt was first sent to me. I read it, spruced it up. It was uploaded. She got some happy comments. Yet her blog never went beyond that one 'essay' in all senses of the term, especially 'essay' to mean attempt.
Hence the relevance of why I write regularly. Mind you, I am 'writing' a blog in days obsessed with visuality and/or orality. These days, people either use the minimalist emoji-infested expression to convey what they mean or they choose its still more visual alter ego, the vlog. I have consciously avoided either temptation.
Nor am I speechifying. Yes, that is an alternative chosen by academic activists, if they exist at all, as mostly it is a parroting of a prominent position with a pre-given 'narrative' which echoes with the clamorous claps by the in-group. So the same theme, same talk, same-same speakers and listeners!
That surely is not my ambition. If on every topic, on any given theme, I am making the same kind of sounds, rather, noises, why speak or write? After some five attempts,the audience can pre-empt what the argument would be! To use an image by Emily Dickinson, though I am not providing here the exact quote, how boring to lifelong repeat to the admiring bog the same age(s)old croaks! A hep version of old grannies listening to the same kirtan by the same hardas, while kneading wicks all along!
Well, I began the blog as a tribute to my mother, to my father. I do think that even in their generation, they were unique in being so very children-oriented. No, they did not molly-coddle us. When we were wrong, we had an earful, and that is the way it should be, despite all that cant about parental friendship.
Parents can be companions, but they never can be friends. Friends can be frivolous, can encourage the fiend in you. Parents cannot. Even when you are almost a senior citizen, they can pull you up if you love the primrose path of dalliance a bit too much. Parental love rarely goes wrong. It is a visceral feel, right?
See, I almost began a blog on parents as friends. Parents would not allow the 'laissez-faire' mode of existence. It would make the family in to free market. There is hence a well-meant intervention which accepts its own mistakes, too, as and whenever necessary.
I think, I write the blog regularly because ideas interest, excite me. I love to explore them, give them a shape, a self, and understand how they are 'consumed', too. A blog makes me sharper as an author, as a thinker, a day-dreamer chasing wistful vistas of ideas, of feels, of sensations, of being and becoming, in brief.
Your response matters hugely. Please do get back to me even when you want to critique my blog of the day. It is sure to teach me. So read on and respond!
Pratima@A blog is a talk you share with the self, and do not mind the others listening in/reading on, unlike a personal diary or a private journal, right?
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