“The politicians are untouchables, they can do whatever they want and people like me...the aam janta, we feel helpless,” blogs Anurag Kashyap. Hot on the election trail, the filmmaker writes on news website IBNlive.com, branching out from his regular blogs on a cinema portal. “Some of these MPs also have attendance less than 20 per cent (in Parliament). Imagine if you were in college and had 20 per cent attendance, would they let you sit the exams?” he questions. Reader’s comments have poured in in the last month, in support, while some have been indignant, mocking him for calling himself an ‘aam aadmi’. “You are famous,” says one reader, so why not take the issue to the next level instead of merely complaining?
Blogs from celebrities on issues that have been in the news are finding an increasing fan base among readers.
On the day the Aarushi Talwar double murder case turns a year old, with no conclusive leads, actor Arbaaz Khan on the same portal writes how the “slayers are out in the open” and hopes it doesn’t become another cold case file. The actor says he enjoys blogging at will and not as part of any promotional strategy. “My personal thoughts are out in the open. If, in the process, it does garner support from my readers, then well and good. But I’ll only blog when the moment is appropriate and I’m excited about something, which could be about my son or even a midnight call. And yes, I plan to continue to write in the long run,” Khan tells us.
Blogs which are not overt in their PR gimmicks have gathered a greater readership, and Amitabh Bachchan’s blog is one such. On BigAdda.com, his philosophical tone and a-blog-a-day habit fetches equally philosophical and teary-eyed comments from fans. In a post last week, Bachchan confessed that he has had to politely refuse a number of invitations from corporates for “motivational talk” on the crisis of the global economy. “What gives them the thought that I can ever be capable of indulging in something as severe as all this?” he admits non-indulgently.
If filmmaker Shekhar Kapoor — on his own website — swings between thoughtful poetry and other newsy banter, for director Piyush Jha, his blog is often an extension of work, particularly because his films are often intrinsically related to current cultural circumstances. In keeping with his soon-to-be-released film Sikandar, in which he chronicles lives lived in strife-ridden Kashmir, he blogs on similar thoughts on crisis that has dogged the state for decades. “I’m a writer, I write my films, so to put my thoughts down in words comes naturally to me. Once the multiplex strike comes to an end, I plan to blog on it. I like to write about things that are happening around me,” says Piyush Jha. For fans, meanwhile, larger-than-life icons suddenly appear more accessible, reduced significantly to the size of their computer screens. It’s a win-win situation, we say.
