Star journals

Indian celebrity blogs are lazy efforts "" but there are exceptions

"Born in Delhi, raised in Kolkata, lives in Mumbai, loves dancing, reading and helping her mother with interior designing."

Now there's a sweet, homely blogger profile which could have come from any of the thousands of personal journals in the Indian blogosphere "" except that most bloggers prefer to make themselves sound exciting.

But the owner of this journal doesn't need to make that effort. She's called Bips, better known as Bipasha Basu, Bollywood's resident bombshell.

Bipasha's Blog (http://bipashabasu.rediffblogs.com /) is, of course, a publicity gimmick, set up to promote the actress's forthcoming film Apaharan (the film's website also hosts a blog by director Prakash Jha). While blogs may appear to be a good way for Bips to reach out to her fans, what it results in, more often than not, is a lazy, uninformed use of a new medium.

In this instance, someone created a page, put up two posts (in one of which Bipasha disarmingly informs us that she is "a simpleton at heart. In my personal life, I don't wear makeup") and then forgot all about the site. Meanwhile, with no attempt to monitor the blog a mass of comments has accumulated, most of them obscene.

The same idea worked a little better with the blog created for Aamir Khan (or rather, Mangal Pandey) to promote The Rising (http://spaces.msn.com/members/mangalpandey/ ) "" the star participated more actively and responded to user comments. But even there, the blog's shelf-life was tied to that of the film.

Celebrity blogging usually results in half-baked attempts like these, so it was nice to discover the Intent Blog (http://www.intentblog.com/ ) set up by director Shekhar Kapur and spirituality guru Deepak Chopra to provide a forum for some of their friends and associates. This site's founding contributors include filmmaker Muzaffar Ali, actors Nandita Das, Anupam Kher, Rahul Khanna and Rahul Bose, politician Milind Deora and environmentalist Vandana Shiva, all of them frequent contributors

Across categories like Business & Technology, Creative Space, Humour and Media & Entertainment, you'll find Rahul Bose revisiting old cricket memories; Nandita Das reflecting on her visit to riot-affected areas in Gujarat; Kapur himself discussing the power of blogs as a new medium; and Rahul Khanna sweetly admitting to blogger insecurity: "I've started seeing comments as blog-currency. The more you have the richer you are."

The stated purpose of the Intent Blog is "to present original voices on and from Asia and India to inspire, stimulate and engage a dialogue about new paradigms of creativity, communication, and fulfillment". If that sounds like a lot of blah, don't worry. Just surf and pick out whatever you find interesting.

Some of the posts might be vague and rambling, but the site on the whole is fresher and more immediate than most of the hack jobs masquerading as celeb blogs.

(Jai Arjun Singh, aka Jabberwock, blogs at http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com)