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Enter the world of Kannada blogs this Rajyotsava day, urges BAGESHREE S.
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PHOTO: K.K. MUSTAFAH
INTIMATE SPACES Because Kannada bloggers are few, they create the warmth of community among them
What could cyberspace have in common with the chavadi, the courtyard of a house? Nothing, you might say. You might even argue that one is the antithesis of the other, considering that the former is a vast, seamless space and the latter a small and intimate enclosure.
But when you enter the world of Kannada blogs the first thing that strikes you is the sense of a close-knit community. In fact it was this feeling that inspired Jnanpith Award-winning writer U.R. Ananthamurthy to start a blog. "A blog is like the chavadi in old houses where people just dropped in and talked," he says.
Unlike their English counterparts, Kannada blogs are of recent origin and very limited in numbers. This is perhaps why you stumble upon the same names in discussions forums. While one could call this a limitation, this very limitation also creates the warmth of community. You see here a camaraderie that you rarely find in the vast ocean of English blogs.
Also, because it's a new space free of the conventions guiding strictly "literary" forums, there is a new variety in the voices you hear. For instance, while the blog of a well-known critic like O.L.N. Swamy offer some erudite articles on literature and the dynamics of language growth, the debates it generates make for exceptionally interesting reading. The observations of M.S. Sriram, an established writer and a professor at the Indian Institute of Management, on the issue of hybrid identities also leads to many discussions. Arguing that narrowing down Kannada identity is counterproductive, he writes: "The search for a Kannada identity is like peeling an onion. If we go on excluding layers, we will be left with nothing but tears."
These questions, perhaps, become particularly crucial in the blog space where people are drawn from a variety of geographical and professional locations. Many of them, quite predictably, are software professionals from places as far away as Kansas, Tokyo and Costa Rica. Some entries go on the lines of nostalgia for Vidyarthi Bhavan dose, while those like Shyam Kashyap's place identity and patriotism in a global context. Kashyap begins his post by admitting that it is all "half-baked ideas straight from the heart". But the spin-off is an involved debate with varied blogger responses.
But there is much happening in the Kannada blog space beyond these issues. To cite a few, artist Anil Kumar writes engagingly about his Finland and Russia trips, "Benaka" dwells on Japanese culture, Vinayak Pandit analyses Kurosawa movies, Jeevishivu does a series of posts on Pier Paolo Pasolini's cinema, "Srujana-Kannadiga" offers a perspective on mathematics and Ismail talks about all things of contemporary interest. There are even some fake Kannada news blogs (on the lines of The Onion) such as Bogale Ragale and Majavani.
Good start
Two good points to get started on reading Kannada blogs could be sampada.net, an initiative of Hariprasad Nadig, and the Kannada pool at desipundit.com, put together by Sanket Patil. Nadig feels that improved awareness about Unicode and technological advances are making Kannada blogging more popular in recent times. But we have a long way to go on all both these counts, compared to blogs in Hindi and Tamil, says Nadig.
But what drives people to blog in Kannada?
It may be a way of staying connected with one's language and the concerns that surround them for some who have physically and through professional compulsions travelled away from traditional definitions of language identity. Besides it is also a forum that allows you free reign to you creativity without asking for proof of your literary skills.
Setting free
But for some like Sriram, blog world offers liberation from the constraints of the print world too. He says: "Cyberspace releases me from the limitations of size, frequency and immediacy of publication." Equally important for Sriram, who also blogs in English, are the dialogues it makes possible.
"It gives both an identity in my mind of an unknown reader, and also helps me to learn through the process of this dialogue. Over a period of time, I have realised that my interaction in the Kannada world is more intimate, the responses are great and the debates are lively. I find that I can translate my posts in English on to my Kannada blog and get some great responses while the obverse is not true."
Ananthamurthy echoes the same feelings when he talks of how blog spaces make room for a new kind of harate or random conversations. It's an "area of friendships" he was persuaded to enter by his young journalist-friend Ismail "where we can differ and argue. They have a tentativeness, which printed articles don't have and that attracts me. I can be open about my own views and can be persuaded to change them."
In what's perhaps a new mode of poetic justice, Sriram says there have been instances of print journals seeking permission to print his blog entries. "In a way, I have put all my ware on display in the blog and some journals take the responsibility of further redistributing it through the print media to a larger set of people. I love this experience!"
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