As
everybody who visits this blog will have noticed, I have not written for an
uncharacteristically long time. It was gratifying to hear from some of them
asking ‘Are you alright, Sir?’ It was equally salutary to notice how many who gushed so much once upon a time – not always long ago, either – couldn’t
be bothered. Keeping all such people in mind, here are some explanations and a
notice of changes.
I
stopped writing because I felt
1. I
had written a great deal already, and continuously for a very long time. Few bloggers
except those who have kept going for more than a year at my pace will even
begin to understand what that entails.
2.
I have discovered to my entire conviction that
not many people were interested – in the sense of wanting to/being capable of
writing intelligent and decent comments every now and then,
3. I have received a lot of bad vibes, in the form
of irrelevant/stupid/offensive comments, not always from complete strangers,
and everyone has a limit to his patience,
4.
My basic purpose all along was to keep in touch
with ex-students, and after eight years (four of them overlapping with my orkut
community), I know now that it doesn’t work, and it is not on the whole very rewarding,
5.
Now that my book has been published, just about
anybody can have access to the full range of my thoughts for a mere three
hundred and fifty rupees – and I am happy to note that it is selling slowly but steadily
all the time.
6. I
have said this before: I have discovered to my chagrin that while most people
never have anything to say, those who do, or think they do, lose all sense of
manners and decorum when they communicate via the internet, and write in a tone
they wouldn’t dream of assuming with me face to face without wetting their
pants. I don’t like rats trying to act like lions, nor pinheads presuming to be
thinking human beings. So enough.
And
now to the changes. Anyone with half an eye cannot fail to notice that the
number of ‘members’ of this blog has suddenly dropped drastically. Not an accident:
I have been winnowing, and I am not done yet. I discovered that most of these ‘members’
are people I don’t know/have quite forgotten/have hardly ever written a
sensible comment on anything at all. They don’t deserve to be here, nor do they
have to be. Anybody can read this blog, it’s still in the public domain. But
when it comes to commenting, I have changed my settings so that henceforth only
members can comment, and I shall be very careful whom I let in hereafter.
Between
43 and 51, after having lived the kind of intense mental life that I have
lived, one doesn’t really find out much that is new about humanity. This entire
experience of blogging has only confirmed me in my conviction that most human
beings are banal, flighty, opportunistic and insensitive at best, and wholly evil at worst. Oh, I have
met some good people who have warmed my heart every now and then, but that
has been so badly offset by nasty experiences – the worst of which has always
been discovering that ‘nice’ people never meant a word of the nice things they
said to me, at least for any length of time, that it has left me, if not deeply
cynical, at least world-weary beyond redemption. As a (still-) favourite old
boy recently said to me quoting the poet, if anyone comes to look me up now,
“they would not find me changed from him
they knew/ only more sure of all I thought was true”.
And
with this kind of gift from one who has been both daughter and pupil, what do I
care about what the rest of the world thinks? Let it only be remembered that I
am on the whole very deeply disappointed in my students who are all grown up
now: that’s the gentlest thing I can say about them.
