Freedom of Expression & a Blog Shock

It had been some time since I blogged here. Not that I wanted to stay away from this medium of expression, but there was some thing more important at home that I needed to pay more attention to. And now I am still catching up on some of the pretty bad incidents that have gone awfully wrong in the blogger's world.

Though I have not started writing a Blog in my mother-tongue Malayalam, I am an avid reader of Malayalam blogs and am truly a fan of few of the good & consistent bloggers there like Vishalji, Kuruman, Simi... to name a few. What caught my attention was an image that Vishalji had posted on his blog - "Protest against Harikumar & Kalakaumudi" & I was keen to understand what went wrong. In the last 3 days, I read in length & breadth in what ever available bits & pieces of information available on the blogs & the news sites to really understand what is going on.

And here is my 6 cents to it:-

Web 2.0 possibilities:

A Blog is a 2 - way communication mechanism, so anybody who is a blogger must be ready & open to feedback. It is a media to share & learn. Comments are to be taken in the right spirit as a feedback mechanism, so if somebody has an attitude of "My Way or the Highway" - please go home; shout at your kids, not to the public. (Today, shouting at your kids can be more disasterous). And have this simple rule in mind - If you are going to hit out at somebody, be prepared to receive a few - Life is not a one-man-show!

Freedom of Expression:

The freedom to express what you want to say, to the world, is everybody's right unless you are in some Taliban (or equivalent) ruled land. And with the numerous possibilities of the Internet & collaboration, the tight control & agenda of the press media is loosening out. 'Listen to what I have got' by more than a few hundred thousands of talented writers have replaced 'Listen to what we think you should listen to' by a handful of press media with an agenda. While it is obvious that print media & the so called 'think tanks' have their own set of worries about the growing alternate media related to their own existence, it must not be avenged by tarring a handful of talented writers and making baseless allegations. They should note that their print media might reach a few thousands of house-holds in Kerala & may be few other NRK & NRI households while Blogs are being read by millions & billions
of people online, responding to them by comments, developing a community of sharing & brother-hood...

Blog-Shock: (Thanks to Kaippalli for the terminology)

Instead of making use of such a powerful media like Blogging to reach out to people, a media house like Kalakaumudi has got into a situation where they became party to an agenda of a narrow minded critique who does not even have the resilience to take feedback. I sincerely doubt if what ever he claims as his work is his own indeed, because the fundamental & basic quality of any seasoned writer or critique is resilience & openness to feedback.

It could also be that this gentle-man is still used to be in the days of literary works which was a one-way communication and people could just read them and not necessarily respond - or responses were ignored. Mr. Harikumar, please wake up. This is the new world of bi-directional communication and collaboration. If you write sub-quality articles or stories or what ever... people will respond, give you feedback. Learn from them, take it as an opportunity for improvement. Thinking & crying out loud that others aren't as intelligent as you are - is just exposing your capability, maturity and more over anything, creativity. Thanks for opening up!

I actually wonder how can you dole out criticism to others & survived so long as a critique while you are not ready to take any of them. And finally, Life is not fair - Get used to it!