Nerve Endings Firing Away

Update:This post was published in 2006. DesiPundit was restarted under different contributors and a new model. It does not explain why DesiPundit was shut down in 2010. And no, this time it is final.

The decision to shut down DesiPundit was neither easy nor taken in any haste. To be honest, I had been contemplating it for quite sometime while also thinking of any alternatives that might do justice to the concept of DesiPundit. I may be villified for shutting down one of the desi blogosphere’s favorite destinations but trust me, the decision to do so was one of the hardest I have had to make in recent times and it gives me no joy to do so. I also wanted to gauge the reactions before elaborating on the reasons. Now that DesiPundit doesn’t exist, you may not like to sit through the litany of reasons that I am going to launch into. You can leave now. Trust me, I can ramble quite a bit.

The reasons are not fancy and the ones I listed on DesiPundit are basically it. I resumed my doctoral studies last year and things have been getting busier with each passing day. Frankly, it was a choice between pursuing my academic and professional interests that seem to demand more of my time nowadays and digging up interesting posts to share on DesiPundit. For many, the choice would have been easy.

The need to share links with readers and not disappointing them when they visited the site was overwhelming. DesiPundit is not something you set up and let it run on its own. Unlike many of the web 2.0 sites out there, DesiPundit is powered by the human labor of its contributors who also hold full-time jobs. I have never imposed any minimum post limitation on contributors or have ever hauled up anyone for not posting enough because I assume it is purely a voluntary effort and is done with the intention of sharing interesting links. But I always felt personally responsible for bringing the ‘best of the blogosphere’ to DesiPundit readers and at times, the need to link posts rather than enjoying them myself somewhat blurred my blogging experience, as also mentioned by Ash. The contributors have been absolutely wonderful and this might be the best team I have ever worked with – online or in the real world. I couldn’t think of asking more. With a team this large, the fact that we never had any conflicts still amazes me.

At the risk of sounding corny and cliched, DesiPundit was always a labor of love. Apart from once requesting link love couple of months after we launched, we never advertised DesiPundit. Initially relying on trackbacks, I guess the news got out mainly through word of mouth. Of course, IIPM, Blog Quake Day, and more recently the Blogspot Ban proved to be watershed moments. To credit DesiPundit with acting as a rallying force would be to accord it too much credit. The blog-movements are always powered by individual bloggers acting toward a common goal. DesiPundit simply happened to be a gathering spot. If it wasn’t for DesiPundit, it would have been any other blog.

My post saying farewell on DesiPundit got tons of comments and I am deeply touched by how much DesiPundit meant to so many. There are many questions and suggestions voiced by bloggers; one comment even exhorting me to respond mere hours after the announcement went public. I’ll try to answer to them one by one.

Why don’t you simply hand it over to someone else to carry on?

At this point, I’ll act protective and sentimental. I started DesiPundit initially with the sole intention of listing the posts that I liked. Adding contributors, even asking Ash to join in was an afterthought. Even then, I invited people whom I thought shared the same wavelength and probably explains the lack of internal conflict. It is difficult to let go of an identity and see it transform into something different from what I envisioned. That said, the concept of DesiPundit is no rocket science and it can be easily duplicated by anyone who is willing to invest a good part of his or her waking hours. Names are forgotten and if the concept is that loved and respected, anyone can easily recreate the sense of community that everyone talks about regardless of its name. Also, I might return to DesiPundit in the distant future (and probably in a different form) so I would like to keep that option open.

Why such a hasty decision?

Well, on the contrary it isn’t hasty at all; you were just told the news now. Actually Ash and I deliberated over the past month; some of you even saw it coming. As I mentioned above, the moment it stopped being a passionate task that I loved doing and assumed the form of something that I had to do, I realized that it was time to stop. Everyone agrees that you shouldn’t blog for the sake of it and should continue only if you feel like it. So why is DesiPundit any different? I thought of all possible options and this seemed like the best one. It is like I believe any separation or farewell should be – quick and painful.

Why not reduce the number of links or even make it a weekly/monthly thing?

The linking part is the easy part. Looking for, reading, judging and choosing posts takes bulk of the time. Would you visit DesiPundit if the quality drops or it changes its structure? Probably not. It is better to quit when you are at the top (or at least near it) rather than slowly fade away like some struggling Bollywood actor who refuses to believe he is past his prime and continues to prance around with women half his age.

Why delete the blog and not maintain the archives elsewhere?

For one, it costs to host any content on the web. Free hosting services exist but we know how reliable they can be. DesiPundit already has the hosting curse (kidding). Secondly, we don’t generate content apart from invited essays (those were cross-posted on the author’s blog anyway); we just link to posts written elsewhere. All links are anyway dated. How many readers browse through the archives? Our stats show that none or hardly any. Most of the content we have linked too still exists on the original blogs so the information is still out there. We’ll maintain a customary front page; so you won’t get the ugly “Page Not Found” message.

Why not commercialize it and assume a supervisory role?

As any top Indian blogger (well, except Amit Agarwal) will tell you, blogging currently is not financially viable, more so if you live in the United States. Sure, you get some revenue through Adsense and Text Link Ads but you need another full-time job to pay your rent. Thankfully, financially at least DesiPundit managed to sustain itself within a short time. So it was never a question of money or hosting space. We are donating our surplus revenue to charity anyway. DesiPundit wasn’t started to earn money. If we wanted to, we could have put links that attracted maximum traffic; a link to a desi babes blog I put last October as a joke still gets us hits. We didn’t want to become a TOI of the blog world even if it meant getting lesser hits. Regarding ‘passing the baton’, supervising a bunch of bloggers who are opinionated in their own way is easier said than done, so handing it over to some unknowns would be more mentally taxing.

Why not go the Digg-clone way?

And join the dozen other Digg-clones that exist in the desi blogosphere? I thought you liked us because we were different. We had thought about the Digg-model long before any of the current sites popped up and we chose not to. DesiPundit was never meant to be democratic. It always reflected the preferences of the contributors. Occassionally, we succumbed to the temptation of variety but largely, we linked to posts we liked. Some of you may not have agreed with our opinions but that didn’t stop you from visiting us, did it?

Please don’t go, I love starting my day with DesiPundit; you’ll reconsider, won’t you?

Trust me, if I was on the outside, I would say the same. I remember saying it when Jivha the great quit and got a brief response from him saying, I didn’t expect him to blog forever, did I? I was disappointed but I couldn’t refuse to see the truth in that. Let us not get overly sentimental here. I can understand being emotionally attached but I’m sure within a month, this will be a non-issue and most of you would have found other spots to hang out. Heck, Technorati will forget us within six months.

What now?

There are plenty of Digg-clone sites out there that direct you to other blogs (I haven’t found any that I like; IndianPad maybe). Some of you have even thought about setting up a similar site. Yay! Good for you. I might even support you and put up a link to your site if I like what I see or at least know you well enough. But a gentle reminder; be mindful of the amount of work it involves otherwise you might be where I am right now in no time. Saket, also a DesiPundit contributor is rumored to have given this some thought. Neha, an active and much-loved DesiPundit contributor is already doing a great job at Global Voices and regularly links to desi posts [her response].

Are you sure about this?

Considering my decision to concentrate on my academic and professional pursuits for now, yes I am. For those who have pets, you might understand, you cannot go anywhere without worrying about it and each time it falls ill (downtime or server crash), you have to drop everything and make sure it is feeling alright again. I’ll be still blogging here but you may choose not to read my inane rants. I look forward to renewing my blog-friendships with the people I used to visit and comment on regularly. If someone has a truly path-breaking idea of giving me my life back as well as keeping DesiPundit alive, I am all ears.