On Blogging

November 3, 2010 at 9:15 AMNov (Friends, Letter, Literature, Media, Musings, Poetry, Slice Of Life)

Another friend of mine has started blogging and asked me to give my ‘expert’ (?) comments on the new blog. The moment i was told about it i recollected what Srajana told me a few days ago when i asked her why she wasnt writing anything in her blog. She had said “I think blogs are very selfish business. There is so much of i and me in blogs.”

I couldnt agree more. Most of the blogs that we come across are like personal diaries which goes on to tell the reader what the blogger ate in the morning, what the blogger bought that evening etc etc etc.

I then promised Srajana to send her a copy of the mail that i had written to another friend of mine, reacting to that friends blog. Today i would like to share that mail even with the  friend who has started bloogging recently:

Adaab

Hope everything is fine in thy world.

I couldnt complete what i was telling you the other day.

Spanish- the language- thats what we were speaking of. Yes, as i am translating a few poems of the Chile poet Pablo Neruda my mind is revolving around Neruda most of the times these days. As i am translating him, i am also learning more about him and his world. Isi dauraan i had a conversation with a senior friend of mine named G.Rajashekhar, who is one of the finest minds of our times. He told me two interesting things about the language Spanish, which was language of expression for Neruda.

In Spanish all the words end with vowels. How beautiful!!! Imagine how musical the language would be! a-e-i-o-u…doesnt that fascinate you? it gives me a high- the very imagination itself!

The second interesting that i was told about is that in Spanish there is no word like ‘you’ and ‘i’. So every expression appears like a collective expression and a collective experience!!! Finally isnt that what poetry and art intends to do? – to transcend from the self and unite with the other and bring other into the self and erase the  line that seperates the self and the other. To merge ‘you’ and ‘i’ and make it ‘we’ and ‘us’.

Even Hindi has that quality to a certain extent. See, for example: “Lagta hai ke aaj baarish hogi”. who feels that its going to rain? there is no ‘main’ or ‘tu’ in the sentence. Kisko lag raha hai? mujhe bhi, tujhe bhi!!! The self and the other has united!!!

There is a reason, why i started telling you about this. You said, the other day, that your blog is like a personal diary. Its not blasphemy to have a diary kind of blog. But how nice it would be if you can express your experiences in a way that will unite the other with your self? or transcend your self to the other!!!

Its the very transcending of the self which i too have tried to do in my blog. I dont know how much i have succeeded but yes i have always tried.

Today congratulating my friend who started blogging recently, for succeeding to lift personal narratives to collective narratives, i say i too shall try to lift my personal narratives to collective narratives.

16 March 2009