Every once in a while, bloggers are required to self-indulge and write what is known as a meta-blog post. So here goes.

I started this blog mainly out of peer pressure — a positive kind of peer pressure from my friend Phill, who offered to host this on his website. I didn’t think it would last, but a strange confluence of factors allowed for it to happen anyway:

- I realised I could say a lot of things without much trouble since ‘blottingpaper’ was a relatively anonymous identity.

- I began to fall in love with the aesthetics of the Wordpress dashboard, which I thought far superior to that of blogger, for example.

- I began to use an application called Networkedblogs on Facebook that started getting me readers. I used to send out invites at first, but now I find people joining on their own, which always makes me smile.

- About nine months ago (hmm), I left this online art community and found I needed a replacement for well, my internet activity. This became it.

These aren’t very romantic reasons; I’m sure there are a few weepy ones that I’m suppressing in ways that would get old Sigmund very excited.

Changes

I’ve been thinking about how writing a blog changes your experience of everyday life. It’s curious to see other bloggers say things like ‘Sorry I haven’t posted in such a long time, but real life caught up with and I had to etc etc.’ To me blogging is very much part of my ‘real life.’ That doesn’t mean I post intimate details about myself here — you know I don’t. But saying blogging isn’t ‘real’ is like saying your personal life is real, but not your professional life. It doesn’t work that way.

What I think people mean when they create this false dichotomy (real life/blog life) is that (a) it is possible to keep things separate, to an extent (b) even when you have your name on your blog, you’re still anonymous in a sense, because the people who read your blog generally aren’t the people you meet for coffee, go shopping with, work with, date, etc.

These distinctions are blurring for me, especially the divide I mentioned in (b). My first readers were friends, but not friends that I hung out with in real life. They were, for the most part, people like Phill, who knew  me from other online spaces. (My first readers added up to a total of two, and I am very grateful to both of them.)

Since December 2008 I’ve had an increasing number of readers. I’d clearly smartened up since my previous blog attempt (utter failure and embarrassment that was, like most first children, I suppose), and learnt how to market my blog. It stands to reason that many of these new readers were part of my physical, not virtual, reality.

The first time I noticed it was when one of my classmates said, ‘Are you blottingpaper?’ I gulped. Apparently I had mentioned a certain poem (or was it a short story?) on my blog, and the day before the English lit exam, a bunch of people decided to run a last-minute google search to find some critical material on it. They found my blog, and naturally, I hadn’t said anything remotely useful about the poem/short story.

It freaks you out. It shouldn’t, especially when you’ve made an effort to get an audience, but my god, when people start saying things like ‘Oh yes, you saw suchandsuch film, I read about it on your blog’ you find you have nothing to start a conversation with.

The other scary thing is when people begin to argue with some point you made  in deeply rantful ( <- made-up word) post three months ago, and you’re struggling to remember what exactly you said and whether you still agree with yourself.

But this is scary-good. You take a minute to adjust to the fact that someone knows you in person and online, and you find a way to keep talking. Or at least, let the other person do all the talking.

In a way, it has helped. I used to be notoriously anti-social. Even when I didn’t think I was, I would find my teachers saying things like ‘Aditi keeps to herself’ or a friend accusing me outright of being too caught up in my own world. Well, now I can be social for up to two hours at a stretch. Let’s pretend blogging has had something to do with it.

Regrets

Does this happen to everyone? Becoming more cautious about what you say? My biggest fear is that some aunty of mine will read one of my more porn posts. What a tragedy that would be. Or a priest. Or a student. Or my father! My father has become a wiz at finding out things about me. Like he sends emails to my uncles and aunts with links to poems and suchlike. (I want to go hug him now.)

A word about comments

Comments are good. Even when they don’t make any sense, even when they’re rude (or especially if) or completely juvenile, they are good.

I will say this here, and maybe repost it elsewhere: I do not censor comments. The first time you post on this blog, the comment will not appear on the blog immediately. I will have to approve it. (This may keep happening if you use a different computer or email address.) Spam is immediately deleted. All other comments are approved. If your comment does not appear on this site, it is most likely due to a technical error or an honest mistake on my part. The only case in which I will edit or delete a comment is if the author has explicitly asked me to do so.

This  means that anonymous comments are allowed as well, but are treated with suspicion. Recently someone left an anonymous comment on one my posts saying, ‘This naive article just lost you a long-time reader.’ This only made me laugh. Accusing me of naïveté without explaining why is fine, but posting anonymously is pretty juvenile. Do it at your own risk.

I haven’t received any threatening comments/emails yet (apparently women bloggers are frequent targets) yet. I hope it never happens to  me, but if it is I will deal with it then.

Thanks

This is corny, but I do want to say thank you. I’m a writer of poems first and foremost, but I find blogging an excellent exercise in observation and examination. It also brings me relief and excitement. And it’s nice to have people to converse with and argue with. People who send me links to interesting articles or images, or introduce me to new writers and filmmakers. Or exchange books with me.

One more thing

A couple of days ago I noticed this on my stats plugin. That’s the Poetry with Prakriti festival, which happens in Chennai in December. Twenty-five poets are invited to read, and this year I’m one of them!

It’s a two-week long festival, and I hope they schedule my readings so that I have time to check out some of the other poets, especially Aruni Kashyap, who, I’ve discovered, is an absolute sweetheart and very talented. He was recently in Scotland on a Charles Wallace Fellowship.

Anyway, here are the other twenty-three poets: Dr Alka Pande, Annie Zaidi, Anuradha Majumdar, Ayesha Chatterjee, Deepika Arwind, EV Ramakrishnan, Gopika Jadeja, Keki N Daruwalla, Mahua, Mamang Dai, Nitoo Das, Parnab Mukherjee, Rati Saxena, Sampurna Chattarji, Tenzin Tsundue, Hoshang Merchant, S Murali and Dr Rizio Yohannan Raj.

That’s a healthy mix of established poets and newcomers, and I can’t wait to got to Chennai (or Madras, as Sitara keeps reminding me).

Um, one more thing

I always mention new books I’ve bought/received. I’ve thrown in images in the text above — there is no direct connection; I just like visual relief from blocks of text when I’m reading online.

Chekhov Plays, Anton Chekhov (with an introduction and appreciation by Arnold B McMillan)

Neuromancer, William Gibson, 1984

Forbidden Colors, Yukio Mishima, 1953 (translated from the Japanese by Alfred J Marks)

These I bought from Blossom on two separate occasions. The Chekhov is fairly obvious. Mishima, I’d never read, nor heard of. Apparently he was quite the rage a while ago, and very gloriously committed ritual suicide by seppuku. This was in 1970.

I’ve been trying to get hold of a copy of Neuromancer for quite a while. My library has a copy, and according to the database, it hasn’t been borrowed, but it’s nowhere to be found. Someone must have smuggled it out or hidden it in the cobwebby history section. Blossom has half a dozen Gibsons, but no Neuromancer. I was there with Sumant the other day, and one of the sales boys overheard me complaining that I couldn’t find it anywhere. He immediately sent someone to get a copy they had recently found. I was really lucky. Few would want to resell Neuromancer and I don’t think it’s in print anymore, at least not in India.

And more Dostoevsky’s from Bookworm:

Notes from Underground and The Double, Fyodor Dostoevksky, 1846 – 1864 (translated from the Russian by Ronald Wilks)

The House of the Dead, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1862 (translated from the Russian by David McDuff)

The Gambler, Bobok and A Nasty Story, 1862 – 1873 (translated from the Russian by Jessie Coulson)