Did anyone catch last night’s episode on bloggers? It was good to see familiar faces behind popular blogs. I read all of them at times and I felt quite pleased to see them up there on the screen.

Compulsive Confessor

Emancipation of Eve and

Sour Apple Martini

It was supposed to be an episode that took blogging seriously. To my mind, all it did was use shocking quotes from each blog, out of context and ask them this ridiculous question - Do your parents read your blog????

Err…these are adults. We’re all adults. We make decisions about our lives everyday. We don’t check with mommy. So they’re either gay, or not saving it up for marriage or smoking… So what??? They were doing it before blogs happened. Why does blogging make a difference?

A few days ago I wrote a post on my mother being partial to my son. She reads my blog. And I don’t think it matters, because as an adult I am free to write on whatever I please. It doesn’t matter whether we write about sex, sexuality, smoking or serious issues. I think it’s ridiculous to ask adults ‘whether mommy and daddy know’.

Against my better judgment I am going to address that issue. A lot of us who write candid blogs and our parents are aware of them. And I think that reflects on our upbringing. There is a reason we are as candid as we are, and it’s because we’ve been brought up to be open about what we do and not shy away from the truth, no matter how unpalatable. If we are candid, a lot of it is to do with our upbringing. And if we are strong, honest people, it’s because our parents are strong, candid, open, brave people. People who don’t believe in mincing words. People who are aware that behind closed doors, we all lead similar lives. Talking about it on a blog doesn’t make it special.

I often get comments where people ask me how I can expose my children’s lives to scrutiny. And whether it will upset them later in life. And I have just one answer. Brought up by parents who teach them that at the end of the day, nothing is truly embarassing, I will be ashamed of my children if simple childhood anecdotes embarass them. None of our problems are really special. We all have the same issues and if we were less ashamed of them, we’d get solutions faster. For example, I set out being really hurt about the issue with my mum and two days after the post and 60 comments later, I am a lot calmer. I know why she does it and I understand completely and I don’t resent it anymore.

Moving on, what I found really cheap, was the stunt pulled on the show. They picked only the bloggers who write on topics that are sensational. I can almost see them saying - Okay, lets do an episode on blogs, and lets dig up the bloggers who will bring in the viewers. The controversial ones.

No doubt all the three bloggers they chose are popular. But anyone with any news sense would have tried to bring in bloggers from different genres. Why not Amit Varma? What about Brangan? And Amit Agarwal? Why only those who talk about sex? Is that all people blog about? Personal blogs are nowhere near as popular as the rest. Why give such a warped view of the blogging scene? If the NDTV research team only came up with personal blogs, then to me as a journalist, it seems at worst, a cheap tactic for attention at and at best, poor research.

Perhaps the saddest thing I heard on the show was something Kamla Bhatt of The Kamla Bhatt show said. Barkha Dutt made a point about serious journalism and blogs in the US to which Kamla instinctively replied, ‘Oh there are some good blogs here too…. ‘ (You can get the exact line from the show) Basically implying that the three bloggers on the show just churn out rubbish. Opinions are free, but instead of standing by it, she backed down immediately when there was a gasp and the other bloggers turned to look at her and Barkha caught on to it. It was quite funny. To see Kamla try and back out of the foot in mouth situation. It’s sad that she feels that way.

The three bloggers in question however held their own remarkably well despite Barkha provoking them. Meenakshi with a disarming smile and the other two with frank answers and looking her in the eye.

At the end of the show however, I felt it was a waste of time. Nothing new was said, no conclusions were made. The other so called experts blabbered on about nothing in particular. And a few random college kids elected themselves as the voice of India and decided that blogs are a way to get ‘cheap thrills’. An inarticulate chap began rambling about how his classmates are getting blogs to become famous. Sure. Some lady with a vague accent rambled on about how blogs should be regulated because of our ‘culture’.  Rajesh Lalwani was the saving grace. Calm and sensible.