Is it the Best Blogger (writer) contest? No, it is the most popular blogger contest. What is the difference? (About Sulekha)

I suppose we should make a distinction between the most popular blogger (which is what a populist sulekha contest would end up being) vs the best poet or a writer on the forum. The best writer or poet would invariably be the one who can be considered publishable, and compose articles or poems or short stories that will stand the test of time. The best writer will possess the hallmark virtues of his or her craft: painstaking research, correct grammar, inspired thoughts and ideas, creative diction and honest voice. The most popular blogger can simply be a person who convinces enough people to cast vote, can bribe them into it, or use flattery or some other appeal to garner votes, and need not know how to even write one paragraph of material than can pass as artistic.

Let us just call the contest "the most popular blogger of sulekha". I know we live in a democracy, but greatness in science and arts can be never measured by mere popularity index. Else we would have discarded the theory of evolution, Newton's laws, theory of relativity, James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, Keats, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Gurudutt's movies, Jaane bhi do Yaaro, Masoom, Satyajit Ray, Ravi Shankar, S. Chandrashekar, Premchand and Ghalib. (A Zauq was more popular than Ghalib.) Of course, they who swear by popularity index will disagree, though there was a time, not too long ago, when even democracy was an unpopular ideal.


I am adding more material copied from what I posted in the comments section.

The idea that everyone is awesome and equal is an old Marxist ideal. If I were to subscribe to it, there will be no difference between the man who drinks everything his wife earns and sleeps all day long, and a man who works extra shift at night to ensure his kids get the best education. Both men serve a purpose, and both are human beings. Yet there is both a subjective and objective differentiation. There is a clear demarkation between a painting by me and by Van Gogh. Everyone is not a Lata Mangeskar.

As long as we are singing in our own bathrooms, any song, be it out of tune, will work. If we get on the stage to sing, it becomes our responsibility to ensure that what we are singing qualifies as a song. We cannot give everyone the first prize, usually because everyone doesn't deserve the first prize. Similarly, we must not award a singer the first prize because his or her dress is the prettiest, or he or she is the most popular kid in the block.

What anyone writes is his problem. If I am expected to read something, served to me as "the best writing from an Indian blog site with maximum subscribers", and if I see it is a farce, a populist piece with no creativity in it, it becomes my problem.

The standard of excellence must be identified before calling something as brilliant: the idea is simple, yet most people don't value the difference between good, popular and great. In few rare cases, good is popular as well as great. Most of the time, they are three different things.

We have let the celebration of ordinary overwhelm our appreciation of extraordinary. There has not been a non-English writer of value in India for over a decade now. Even the English greats are either foreign educated or live outside the country (and hence were picked and showcased ny foreigner before we started to appreciate them). Do we know why?

AND MORE

I have always had problem with the concept - "Power in hand of people where it really belongs" - for this requires a big responsibility and sensibility on part of voters. Indian democracy (and American too) indicates that 1) people typically chose the "least bad" rather than "most good" from "politically correct, sometimes inept" candidates 2) most of the people never vote, and more than half of those who do, vote against the eventual winner (usually, not always). But you know this already.

Perhaps a look at blogging sites beyond sulekha will enable us to see what difference quality makes to the written word. I agree that sulekha always attracts a pool of exceptionally good writers. So there could be Kishore Kumars and Rafis (and even if you think they cannot be compared, remember that they both always competed for Filmfare and National Awards) , but my point is about distinguishing between Kishore Kumar, Bhimsen Joshi, Bathroom Singer and braying donkeys. I suppose some of us don't think blogging community offfers that range, but it is a human tendency. Our own selves and writings offer this range too, and I value an occasional piece you or I write which rises beyond our typical hogwash. I produce a lot of hogwosh, and so does everyone else, but unless we call "keechad: keechad" (mud as mud), we will not value the lotus that blooms there.

There might be a handful good movies made as opposed to hundred run of the mill. We do revisit those handful and remember them and are influenced by them. I hope to challenge people to remember that there is always that handful that must get a louder response and applause that the other hundred.

Yet maybe that handful doesn't need a loud applause. There are writers who write because they must. They strive, for they believe that becoming better is their duty. They write quite well, but it is mainly for their own satisfaction. They will perhaps only shake their heads and leave the room when the crowd becomes too loud.

(Since there have been a lot of comments, adding some more views I expressed in my responses)

I suppose if many of the sulekha bloggers who claim that there are no good or bad blogs are asked to pick a cricket team for India, they will have half a billion acceptable players, and maybe they will include a few players who don't know how to play, just to encourage them, and ensure no one feels left out. Such mentality is responsible for underperformance of an entire nation, and it is outrageous that equality of opportunity is confused with equality of reward by so many educated people. I hope my dissent against the people who wish to reduce everything and everyone to the lowest common denomitaor will be heard by more and more commentators. A healthy competition only produces better players and challenges us to give our best performances.

I respect the Sulekha Management for creating a forum, a network, rather than just a plotform (like blogger is), for writing. The ideal is "sulekha" and that ideal needs to be realized by they who write or comment on writings. The standard of writing in sulekha is as bad as in a classroom, and yet it also throws up very good pieces every now and then. It may not win a popularity contest, and it might be a reward in itself, yet if we see it, we should applaud it. Similarly grammar, word choices, and criticism are integral part of the belief system of good writers. Writers who care for "sulekha"!

The dream of becoming rich or famous is a curious one: for it requires more effort and sacrifices than a common man can afford. Yet people still dream and want the rewards, without worrying about the means.

My motivation or undercurrent of current piece was to stress the importance of scholarship (which requires hard work, enormous talent and solitude) in writing. No noble prize winning writer ever had the time or energy to sit and network with people. Yet we value their work for their writing, and if we wish to become better writers, we ought to value good writing, aspire for it, celebrate it and honor it. Similarly, we have to recognize that there are good and bad writers, and we have to continuously examine our own writing. It is patient and painstaking struggle. Are we up for it?