Member Praises

An Open Letter to Sulekha Fans

Venkatesh G. Rao

This is not really an article. For a change, I want to write to all of you out there, instead of writing at you. If you are a Sulekha regular, you might find yourself in here; if you are a relative newcomer, this might help you figure out what Sulekha is all about.

Now, I am not the most prolific and certainly not among the oldest members of the Sulekha community, but I think there is one distinction I can lay a claim to. It is this -- if Sulekha has a target audience, I am slap-bang in the middle of it.

A little history might be illuminating here. Like many of you out there, I was introduced to Sulekha by a certain lady named Meera Srinivasan. Her article about IITians reached me through the grapevine at a time when I was in a particularly ugly mood. To cut a long story short, I briefly crossed swords with Ms. Srinivasan and wrote an article, blasting womankind. Dem was fightin' words and I got the fight I was looking for.

But something else happened for which I am thankful to Meera -- I discovered Sulekha.

One cliché, that I never believed, is "necessity is the mother of invention." If anything, in this modern age, the opposite is true. We were perfectly happy without microwave ovens and post-it notes, yet we cannot do without them now. Needs are created by innovations. Sulekha is different though -- as Satya (the editor) wrote me some time back, there was a very obvious -- with hindsight -- need which Satya and Sangeeta spotted. Satya says in his biography that Sulekha and the Fixexpress are the electronic kids of his family. There is more to this metaphor than you might think. This kid, like human babies, is not a tabula rasa. I think it is growing in unexpected ways, which the proud parents did not anticipate.

The members of this community comprise a really odd bunch. There is the charming polyglot Arun Kumar, the talented and shy Ajnabi, the dry, intellectual Kris Chandrashekhar, to name but a few of those whose writings I enjoy. Looking at the list of writers, I can clearly see a distinction between the casual one-time visitors and the regulars. There are, amongst us, published writers like Maya Chandrashekharan and Ninad Wagle, for whom this is probably not a big deal. And then there are the rest of us.

What, I wonder, brings the rest of us here? Obviously, not any particular talent for writing. Though this is ostensibly an amateur writer's forum, few of us are actually impoverished writers hawking our Great Novels. The quality of the writing varies from the pathetic to the nearly brilliant, but that's not really the core of what's going on here. Some clues about what's actually going on, are visible in the Coffeehouse. When the feature was first introduced, I voiced a concern that it might degenerate into an ugly brawling mess like the Usenet newsgroup soc.culture.indian. Old-timers will remember the days when the web had not yet eclipsed other portions of the net (the IT revolution, among other things, has caused the premature aging of many young people like me. I feel very old when newbies inquire innocently, 'What is Usenet?'). On SCI, before it was inundated with tons of rubbish, ('Pakis are bastards!', 'SEX!!! SEX!! SEX!!', 'Make Money Fast'), something very much like this used to go on. There were famous characters –- I suppose they may still be around -- like the delightful troll Jai Maharaj, the dull Mo, and the wry, humorous Prem. Meera, if my memory serves me, used to post her short stories in SCI, received with a lot of rude comments as well as some bouquets. SCI succumbed to that devil of the internet -- noise. A low signal to noise ratio is a characteristic of most parts of the Internet. While there is a lot of good content, you have to hunt for it, filtering out all the rubbish as well as the useful-but-not-to-you stuff. Sometimes though, you make a serendipitous discovery –- a website that is absolutely packed with exactly what you want. One such discovery, for me, was the ITRANS songbook, with lyrics for Hindi film songs. Another is Sulekha. Here is the secret -- Sulekha delivers what SCI promised.

To get back to the clues in the Coffeehouse, go take a look. I have almost never seen a web forum for Indians that is not depressingly stupid. Places like net chatrooms for Indians are full of jerks who walk in screaming, "Hi! Any girls from Delhi around?" There is an abundance of desperate adolescent chatter, little intelligent communication. The first time I logged onto a chat site, I spent twenty minutes watching the clumsy romantic overtures that seemed to dominate the interactions. With friends urging me on, I logged on with the alluring name Alisha and played cat-and-mouse with a few helpless stags. It was a bit of malicious fun, but I have never chatted again. It is quite simply, not a very rewarding experience. Look at the coffeehouse though -- oddly enough, I can spot very few irrelevant or stupid posts. It's early days yet, but I suspect the Coffeehouse will remain civilized. Almost all those who have posted messages there are polite, thoughtful and considerate. To say I am shocked would be an understatement. To be sure there are those who seem unaware of common netiquette. By and large though, most of the interactions, wonder of wonders, are actually sensible and intelligent.

One clue as to why this should be so, is in the fact that most of the Coffeehouse regulars are Sulekha writers as well. That, in itself, is no big deal. As Satya candidly admits, just about anything that is not completely retarded will be put up here. Eclectic, Sulekha writing is not. In fact, barring anomalous pieces like Meera's Kama Sutra and IIT articles, a sizable fraction of readers of ordinary articles are other writers. Of the hundred odd hits on each article in the first few days, I think the majority is due to other writers. Perhaps many visit certain articles several times to check up on the readers' comments. What this means for the other interactions on Sulekha, is that they are rendered largely decent because everybody knows each other. You don't make unnecessary awaaz when you are around friends. People in the Coffeehouse are not random strangers. We know each other as well as electronically possible. To those, who like me, feel that the interactions that we have with each other are more rewarding than the actual writing, this fact multiplies the value of Sulekha manifold.

What I am getting at here, is that Sulekha seems to have discovered a formula for making people interact honestly on the net. The simple fact is that it is far too easy to be dishonest on the net. Your electronic personality need have no relation with your real personality. You can pretend to be any age, sex, race and nationality you choose. This works because most interactions on the net are not substantial enough to deduce character. You could pretend to be a gorgeous beauty, madly in love with me, and carry it off fairly convincingly. However to retain a convincing mask when you are writing for a mass audience is much more challenging. You really cannot fool all the people all the time. Even those amongst us who choose to be anonymous -- Ajnabi, Desiensus Mobilus, Anamika -- can protect only their identities, not their true natures. That, I don't really care about -- honesty is all I ask for. If some people would rather not reveal their identities, I have no problems with that.

To dwell a little longer on the sociology and psychology of Sulekha members, let's take a look at some statistics. I notice that most articles receive hits at a sort of exponential rate for the first week or so, after which the hit counter settles into a slow, linear growth pattern. The rate seems to vary and has precious little to do with quality. (To be precise, quality is a sufficient reason for a high hit rate, not a necessary one.) Articles by women climb faster than articles by men -– a fact, which frankly, amuses me. Articles with provocative titles ('IIT wallahs and St. Xavier Babus') seem to climb at a dizzy rate. Humor goes down better than gloomy introspection. One thing that I am not quite sure I understand, is how good articles that do not have a very obvious appeal ('Sex in the workplace') manage to make their quality apparent. A good example is Ruth Bushi's Inheritance. The fact of a female name is not enough to explain why this piece is climbing at a faster-than-normal rate. I suspect that there is a pool of Sulekha visitors who do not read everything, but only what somebody recommends to them. A hidden grapevine would explain some of the dynamics here. Since I often recommend particular articles to friends, I think this is a fairly common mechanism. At the moment most articles seem to be reaching the 400-600 range before slowing down to a crawl. Excluding the writers -– I think it is a fair assumption that all writers read everything -– that leaves a quiet audience of around 400-500. Since I personally know several quiet regulars, I can assume that these comprise a large majority of the non-writing audience. The rest I assume, are random strays and people who hear of a particular article. Perhaps they don't stay and join the regulars because they are disappointed with the initial introduction. Of course, visitors who are not at least slightly interested in books are unlikely to linger.

I think Sulekha may well be nearing critical mass now, and may soon become a much better known web hotspot, especially if it continue to come up innovative improvements.

At the moment this is just a forum for a bunch of casual acquaintances who come here for some social contact and a chance to hear the waah-waahs for their amateur efforts. Most of us I think, are either outside India, or otherwise in a situation with an uninspiring social life. (I feel sorry for those who came to the U.S before the net arrived.) There is the possibility now, of the writing and reading populations both exploding.

Anyway, I'll sign off now. Comments appreciated as always. See you later with my more usual light (and hopefully entertaining) output.