Nerve Endings Firing Away

We have a new Miss India — the most beautiful woman in India, screams the master of ceremonies as the stage is showered with confetti. Pakkya shakes his head and points his stubby finger at the flickering screen and says, apni mohalle ki Champa jyada khabsoorat hai. Yeh chhori kuch khaas nahi! (Champa from our neighborhood is much more beautiful. This chick is no great shakes). Others aware of Pakkya’s vile abuse pretend to ignore him. He rattles on for a while until everyone pick him up and throw him out and go to sleep. Few weeks later, Pakkya is nibbling a dosa at a restaurant opposite V.T. station and gets his innerwear in a bunch when he espies a sign that says, taste the best dosa ever here. Swearing aloud (and making a complete fool of himself in public), he goes on to proclaim that he has had better dosas in Chennai and demands that the restaurant take the sign down. Again, he is ignored and eventually thrown out of the restaurant when he gets irrationally abusive.

Incidentally, we have quite a few Pakkya-like characters in the blogosphere as well. Ordinarily you would think that considering the prevalent digital divide in India, the people that inhabit the Internet space are educated, considerably rational, and have the decency to conduct themselves in public even if it is cyberspace. However, I have come to conclude that the latter two characteristics often do not correlate positively with the first one. Recently, a vociferous minority of people have deemed that DesiPundit’s tagline, The Best of the Indian Blogosphere is misleading considering the ‘lousy’, ‘shoddy’, and ‘crap’ posts that we have been linking recently. (Disagreement with a post doesn’t make it bad, people). Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion and although we have maintained that such opinion is highly vulnerable to subjectivity, it hardly placates those who are hell bent on irrational criticism.

We at DesiPundit have always been open to constructive criticism and even have apologized when we have acted in a seemingly inappropriate manner. But we do not condone or tolerate personal attacks on us or on anyone else, especially through blogs that have been set up to do just that specifically. I wouldn’t understand the level of hate that makes such people invest so much time in doing so. Yup! We started out with the intention of collating the best of the Indian blogosphere and in spite of our limited time and resources and ever growing blogosphere, I think we do a decent job of connecting people to quality posts. The term ‘best’ is at best ambiguous and as reliant as the GRE or IIT JEE is in determining intellectual capability of a student.

In all honestly, if we really enforce the tag of ‘best writing’, we would be linking only to a handful of blogs with the occasional one-hit wonder. In that case, you wouldn’t even need DesiPundit. You could simply subscribe to those blogs and read them everyday. But people come to DesiPundit for the occasionally quirky post; something inane that makes your chuckle, something so nostalgic that you could swear it was your childhood the author was writing about; something so fictional that you wonder why the author isn’t making a million bucks writing; something so sarcastic that you almost pity the victim of sarcasm; something so captivating that you could swear that you can feel the sand in between your toes on the beach; something so critical that you secretly know that the author is right even though your ‘patriotic’ instincts indicate otherwise. If we had to link to well-researched and deeply analyzed posts as an aspect of merit, we are better off linking to news articles on mainstream media sites. Why bother with the personalized and opinionated touch of blogs?

Every blogger lends a unique touch to his/her blog that lets us experience an aspect of writing that we never thought had existed. The term ‘best’ gets diluted each time we read a different post and wonder, hmmmm; someone will like this because I certainly do. We aim to be the one-stop resource for the Indian blogosphere but heck, any blogger worth his permalink knows that is not possible. DesiPundit reflects the opinion of their contributors; currently eight people who are scattered in at least six time zones and three continents. But at the same time, every DesiPundit reader is an extended contributor because of the ability to send in tip-offs. We receive many tips and I am glad to say that most of them are worth linking to; so in a way, the circle of opinion of DesiPundit widens. As the libertarian cartel would say, if we aren’t doing our job well, we would experience a drop in our readership and some other aggregator would pop up. If people thought they are doing a better job, they would switch. DesiPundit would then die a slow death but honestly, I wouldn’t mind.

Of course, tell us that the post we linked to sucked but also tell us when we rocked. In both cases, the credit or the blame goes to the blog author. At times, we link to aggregated bunch of posts due to the hot-button nature of the issue at hand. This is done primarily to bring your attention to a topic that we think is significant for us as Indians or even citizens of the world. We support the other desi blog communities out there and honestly feel that we share an excellent rapport with them with not a hint of competition amongst us. The implicit understanding is that we are making at least an iota if not more, of a difference in connecting people. If you are so sure of what you like and what you don’t, just take a moment and read the following paragraph:

“Everyone always talks about confidence and believing in what you do. I remember once going to a class in Kundalini yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation. I think that is also true in a more practical sense. Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much. I think that being skeptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is essential. Of course we must know the difference between skepticism and cynicism because cynicism is as much a restriction of one’s openness to the world as passionate belief is. They are sort of twins” (Source: unknown)

So in conclusion, we believe that we bring the best of the Indian blogosphere and we do not wish to engage in a debate of what exactly best stands for. If you beg to differ, use the power of the free-market against us and stop patronizing DesiPundit. That is the strongest message you can send us. Consider the collective whole instead of dissecting into small non-contextual bits. Live for the experience and experience the untested. You might be in for a pleasant surprise. As we widen the net, we are sure to offer something for everyone. Remember one man’s treasure might be another man’s trash. If you think you are that important that everyone should toe your line of what’s best for everyone, then remember Carl Sagan’s words that you are just an infinitesimal part of something that is an infinitesimal part of the universe. There are at least 6 billion (1.1 billion in India alone) reasons you could be wrong and that is just on Earth. If everything fails, then I suppose desipunditsucks.com is available. We’ll be flattered.

PS. Some might suggest that ignoring such petty criticism might be a better way. But I believe that criticism, however irrational should be addressed otherwise our silence simply lends credence to such hate-mongers. Ask John Kerry on his Swift Boat Veterans experience.

PPS. I have refrained from addressing the more specific criticisms that were raised in the comments on DesiPundit because those were simply meant to launch personal attacks and not indulge in any form of debate. But I might train my guns on the bugger if he resurfaces.