For a change its not that I-am-so-smart boy genius but your favorite friend, guide and philosopher, Baba Bangali here. Over the weeks this so called witty-blogger has been putting me to face all his awkward questions for which I am forced to answer. While you laugh at the idiocy of my replies, I keep researching on improving my impromptu skills. So now my friends let us put him in the firing line and see how he rankles at my acerbic questions as I wield the mic.

Bhakta, When did you start blogging and why?

Well Baba, It was in 2004 a week after my birthday. A friend had begun blogging and I just wanted to do the same for the was hep, cool and totally unheard of those days. The very idea of posting your writings out there for the world to read was fascinating and restricted to geek circles.

So it was basically to fit in and earn respect among your geek circles?

When you ask me bluntly, I have to agree. It was cool and chicks dug bloggers back then for we were a rare race. We had blogger-meets in coffee shops and pizza places with a ‘Bloggers Meet’ placard on the table. It was priceless to see the look on peoples faces when they knew that a group of strangers were sitting at a table and discussing geeky stuff at the top of their voices.

Bhakta, It comes across that you were desperate for attention and wanted to stand out in a crowd.

Look Baba, you cant pick away at me like this as I have always been soft on you. Now that you have, let me answer you as well. I was naive and without a sense of direction. My blog
was
just a
reflection of my thoughtsMy blog was just a reflection of my thoughts. Short crisp and immature posts most of which I deleted when I migrated over from Livejournal. This space therefore has only a few posts from 2004 which I found worth keeping.

I like the definition, but then I don’t see any thoughts now-a-days.

I actually still post my thoughts and views only that they are hidden in the posts. Earlier they were more like in the face types, but now with more people reading my blog you need to look between the lines. I somehow don’t like to pour my heart out but nevertheless I still manage to get my message across.

Bowing to reader preferences? Or are you just a lot more cautious?

Its not as easy as you say Baba. I more feel like a columnist of a newspaper that is read by only 50 people. Even though it’s a small number people still religious keep checking this space and refreshing their feed readers for a post from me. I get scraps on orkut or get pinged on GTalk for absence of over a week from my blog. I am now answerable to my readers, I feel responsible to reply to their comments and guilty for prolonged absence. So when there are so many people following me, I no longer feel like writing about how I hurt a fingernail in the gym. I may dress it up as how in our bid to be macho we overlook small injuries even though we want to squirm and scream! The message is the same, only that the latter is funnier and more readable.

So you no longer write for yourself, it’s governed by readers choice eh? A readability filter?

Damn! I hate you Baba, especially when you’re right. I love my readers, I really do. I love it when they add their own tidbits in the comments to my post. It gives me great pleasure when some of my posts bring a smile to their faces. I like making people laugh, I like to seem them happy and if my blog does it then so be it. Every news item I read, every billboard I see, every interesting person I meet or whacky conversation I have, I look for bloggable bits on the blogability indexI look for bloggable bits on the blogability index.

Bhakta, You remind me of a stand up artist, are you turning into one?

In a way it’s true for I like making people smile. I keep my eyes and ears open for new things to write about. I look for inspiration int he weirdest places and I have no qualms about it. I don’t feel like a performer for my post are not artificial. I don’t write just about anything and everything, it’s only things that I can relate to and take a stand. So though every post seems to be catering to the readers tastes, they still have a bit of me and my views if you look between the lines like I said before.

Interesting, But then what’s with the shayari and poems? I’m trying to read between the lines

Ha ha, Glad you brought it up. They actually started of as a few bits I wrote for friends to woo the opposite sex. I gradually found out that I was pretty good at that stuff if not great. Now there was nothing between the lines but just that I could write such stuff even without harboring any feelings. You can call it creative license or just random crap, but my fingers would fly on the keyboard when I wrote stuff like akela, tu, kash, tum and aise hi. They aren’t great but they did the job for my buddies. I soon began writing couplets and some of them did make sense, it continues even now.

So Bhakta, what’s this fascination with movies?

It began with my angst against the weekends reviews in our newspaper. I at times felt that i could do a better job. It infact did work, as a few web portals did contact me to do reviews for them. Movies is more like a pastime and I didn’t like monetizing it back then. I just love the movies and the whole business of film making. I stand up and applaud when its exemplary and at the same time am caustic when they are mediocre. I just love watching bad movies and it’s not just because they are fodder for my blog. I started of with some bad luck as I ran into a string of horrible films, but then I pushed myself to see a few more. It later turned into an obsession and I find them far more entertaining and laugh at their shortcomings. I know it’s horrible but I like to celebrate ineptitude in cinema!

I’m assuming you love your statistics?

Yea I do. I love to check my feedburner stats and see that number increase every week. I like to see the blogstats in my wordpress dashboard. I rankle when they fall in a particular week and when my monthly views dip below 1500. I take pride in analyzing my Google Analytics traffic and the search terms that my blog ranked up for. I feel like a mini-celebrity and hey there’s no harm in an ego-booster.

Now can I have my mic back! I’ve had enough of you…..

(This post started of as a comment to Lekhni but then she asked me to do a longer version)

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