Complicating Conversation

All of humankind's efforts, everything that we do, is directly or indirectly to escape death--to somehow live beyond the time given for us to occupy this physical space. I understand that this idea is neither original, nor very revolutionary, neither particularly enlightening, but here it is.

We want to be remembered-by someone, for something, after we cease to be. So we raise children, so that someone will carry our names, and our genes, and some broken part of us even when we are dead. We make friends, we marry, and we shun a solitary life, because we want somebody to be our witness-someone to see, and remember that we once were like so. We revere our dead, insist that we show them respect, and in some spaces, even pray to them, their death being qualifier enough for this reverence.

All media is there today because of this one primitive need of humankind-everything- TV, newspapers, radio, cinema, blogs- are in someway or the other ensuring that humankind is not forgotten. They all work to enforce this myth of immortality that we seemingly have achieved.

So we build elaborate discourses on how much we have progressed, how much distance we have covered since human memory stabilized. We are less concerned with where this distance covered leads us to, but we are hoping that it wouldn't be something as banal as extinction. The problem is, that we can only hope.

Blogs Won't Change the World...So They Said

I just realized that I've been blogging for more than two years now. Which reminds me, Happy Belated Birthday Blog! :)

I remember that extremely bored day in college, when I finally decided to give in, and get me a blog. I say give in, because I had adamantly refused to get one at the time, when it seemed like a fashionable thing to do. The page 3 and the intellectual junkies of our class, suddenly seem to have waken up to this new cool thing to do. Blogging was "in". But me, being the wannabe rebel, refused to get myself one, and the reason I gave myself was that it is something that only those people do, who either have loads of time in their hands, or loads of stuff in their head to clear up. I, don't have the time. Or so I tried to convince myself.

But come September, that pretty much changed. I was jobless, and bored out of my skull. All my friends seemed busy sorting out the messes in their life, and none of them particularly expressed a wish to solicit my help. (ah! now I feel like a wannabe broke writer) So well, the point is, I was had plenty of time, and nothing to do in it.

And thus was born this blog. And so far, its been a good experiment. I like the idea of having the freedom of writing what I want, when I want it. I like the fact that a few (just a few!!) people read what I write, and the fact, that even when they are nameless, faceless, I can still know something about them, they can talk to me, and I, to them. It's a nice feeling.

I made a few good friends; I met, in some sense of the word, a lot of interesting people. I love the serendipity of following a random link in a random blog, and then suddenly finding myself face to face, with what feels like a long lost friend. When I read something someone was posted, and think, "Shit! This looks like she/he is feeling what I felt, thinking what I thought!." When I see someone else's blog, I say, " Hey! This feels like me!"

It amazing, how people can share so much in space where anyone can read them. And, honestly most of them, no, most of us, are not really trying to channel what we can't tell people on the face. I remember this huge row a friend of mine had with this guy, about this. "You can't tell me so you out it on the blog" blah. But the truth is hardly that. Most, I realized have an audience who know their identity, who know where they come from. But still its easier to talk here, than talk to someone in person.

I've had endless debates with a very dear friend who firmly insists that blogs will not change the world. I'm not saying they will. Or that they will be the avant gard soldiers to bring in the revolution that makes this a better place, but then blogs have changed the way the world sees, and the way the world speaks. Millions of people who would never have ever said a thing now have a voice--maybe not a very loud one, but then it still is better than screaming to silence.

Blogs are democracy in its true form--a platform where everyone HAS a chance to speak. How loud you are, and how much you are heard depends on what you have to say, and how you say it. Yes, large part of it is just Pinto, Chinto and Bunty explaining why they prefer to their eggs scrambled and not boiled, but then fact is that if Pinto, Chinto and Bunty choose one day to speak about cruelty to animals, they can. And they will be heard. And that's why, blogs will change the world.